why do we use systemd?

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2014-07-05 at 20:01 +0200, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > Have you looked at the manual pages?  I know of no other project
> that
> > has the breadth and depth of documentation that systemd has.
> 
> This is probably a minority view but I don't think a man page should
> try
> to tell you everything about a command.
> 
> When I first used Unix (version 5) it was explicitly stated
> that a man page should literally fit on one page.
> 
> In particular I don't think it is necessary to list dozens of options,
> some of which are rarely if ever used, just because they exist.
> (I recall that there used to be a regular competition
> for the most useless option one could add to "cat".)
> 
> To me, a man page should address the likely needs of 95% of users,
> and should use any spare space to give examples of usage.
> A pointer to a reference work would be a useful addition.

I'm an old Unix hand so for me the man page *is* the reference in most
cases, though for something as large and complex as systemd I have no
issue with there being supplementary material as long as I don't need to
access it just to remember a basic command. In fact I get annoyed at
many of the desktop tools which don't have a proper man page because
they expect you to reach for a browser or one of the lame built-in help
tools. However that's another story.

poc