why do we use systemd?

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2014-07-05 at 15:10 +0200, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> What exactly does systemd do differently that would speed up booting?
> 
> One trivial complaint I have with systemd is that I have to type more

It allows the various components to have specific dependencies so they
can start as soon as everything is in place. Older mechanisms such as
the traditional System V init scripts were much more limited and could
only do this with very ad hoc and buggy per-service tests, so they
mostly didn't.

> "sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager.service" against
> "sudo service NetworkManager restart".
> Not much difference, perhaps, but to me the necessity of adding
> ".service"
> shows that the developer just didn't think of the user's convenience.
> I know there are rare cases where one has to say something else,
> but why not make the default to add ".service" if nothing is given?
> Or perhaps TAB could complete it?

+1. One of my pet gripes about systemd is that it introduces a lot of
new terminology without a clear explanation. I still don't understand
the difference between a target and a service.

poc