why do we use systemd?

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2014-07-05 at 10:03 -0400, Garry T. Williams wrote:
> On 7-5-14 14:30:39 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > +1. One of my pet gripes about systemd is that it introduces a lot of
> > new terminology without a clear explanation.
> 
> Have you looked at the manual pages?

Yes. I quoted one of them in my comment.

> I know of no other project that
> has the breadth and depth of documentation that systemd has.

Then you can't have seen much documentation for large-scale tools such
as databases, windowing systems, text processors etc., not to mention
the Linux kernel.

To go back to the same example as before, the concept of "unit" seems to
me not well-defined. The man page says a unit is an object, but then it
talks about various types of units, some of which are associated with
events, others with sets of processes, others with system states, while
still others are recursively sets of other units. This seems to me
symptomatic of a lot of technical documentation, i.e. the author knows
what he's talking about but doesn't appreciate the need to get the
reader to understand it. At certain points I find myself wondering if he
actually meant to say "objective" rather than "object", but that
wouldn't fit either. Since the concept of unit appears to be basic to
understanding what systemd is all about, this is a serious deficiency
IMHO.

> Your statement is, on its face, incorrect.

My statement is an opinion, as is yours.

> Also (among many others):
> 
>     http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html 
>     http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd-for-admins-1.html 

I've looked at both of them before now (currently they aren't
responding), and at some others. I maintain my view that there is a
better explanation of systemd waiting to be written.

poc