What's something that you were surprised to find out a lot of people hate?

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Systemd apparently. Every time someone brings it up, the thread devolves into a religious flame war.
- I've never got this either. I've been using Linux exclusively for over 4 years, multiple devices, tested dozens of distros, almost all Systemd-based and I havent ever experienced any problems that the anti-systemd folks talk about.
  Or at least, they were so rare and minimal that I didn't notice.
  Coming from an IT background dealing with 99% Windows machines and Microsoft products, maybe my bar was on the floor, but Linux has been soooo much more stable and dependable than Windows.
  
  Been using Linux since 2004 and systemd has made my life significantly easier. People bickering about systemd are usually ultra nerds without arguments real people would consider important.
  
  I remember in my coding class when the prof claimed the language we were learning didn’t have GOTO, but it also didn’t need it because anything that could be accomplished with GOTO could be accomplished with loops and conditionals.
  Now looking back I can’t believe what a tech debt nightmare goto is, and I’m glad I weaned off it.
  Startup scripts seem more powerful because they’re code you know will be executed sequentially. For a developer that feels nice.
  But a declarative system like systemd is so much more predictable and stable, specifically because it does NOT allow for sequential execution of code.
  Once I made that switch I was a fan. It’s so much more predictable and standardized.
  
  Exactly my sentiment. Why would you want something with more moving parts than systemd which is also slower? :D
  There are some good alternatives to SysV init.d scripts nowadays which only came to fruition after systemd existed and people noticed it's possible to write something like this.
  I used OpenRC and s6 and both of them worked better and were easier to configure than SysV init.
- I agree. Coming from the Windows world, systemd felt quite familiar compared to other components in a typical linux system, I always liked it. It doesn't really follow the unix philosophy though, so it gets a lot of hate.
  
  F*ck the Unix philosophy, this is Linux, not Unix.
  
  Ditching the UNIX philosophy is a bad idea.
  It's a very useful guideline. There are times when those rules should be broken - systemd may be one of those - but by and large the UNIX philosophy has served us well.
- fUcK sYsTeMd ItS fAsCiSt BuLlShIt If ThEAy PuT iT iN lInUx AnD tAkE oUr FrEeDoM i WiLl SwItCh To BsD uMmM IdK wHaT iT dOeS rEaLlY sOmEtHiNg WiTh SeRvIcEs I gUeSs FuCk SyStEmD!!11!!
- I used Linux (and some Unix) before systemd was a thing and init scripts are jank. So much boilerplate and that was before things like proper isolation existed and other more modern features.
  I don't understand why anyone would want that back.
  A replacement of systemd with something else would be fine, but please no more init scripts and pointless run levels.
  
  Upstart was fine. It does the parallel init thing without taking over the whole OS.
  
  I almost forgot it existed. It was a slight improvement, but with a whole bunch of new problems (most notable race conditions which were never fixed) and it was made obsolete by systemd.
  It was a good evolutionary step only used by Ubuntu iirc. It was better at that time than the previous init system, but not more than that and it never found wide adaption.
  
  Yeah when systemd came out it was over a decade since I touched an init script. So the only difference to me was my computer booted up faster.
- Was a little bit of a hassle initially to convert various custom init scripts into systemd unit files, but it was worth it IMO. Now the init scripts feel kinda jank in comparison lol.
  On a barebones or embedded system I can see a lightweight init having a very big appeal though
- Systemd is awesome. I used to use init.d and was annoyed when I had to learn systemd instead, but once I did I’m so glad it exists. Declarative is the way to go.

579 comments