Hi Russell and all,
Most people involved in this discussion could have spun up a virtual machine running systemd in less time than they spent arguing.
Well, I cannot help but I can say I have similar thoughts about your time spent. You spent plenty of time arguing that you do not need to put your arguments on the table. I have read a few things by now but you came nowhere near of engaging in technical argument.
Why not just test out systemd and see if it works for you?
Well, I can install Windows on my laptop and figure out "whether it works for me". And I can tell you: No, even if it installs and starts. It is a system which is too hard to understand for my brain. I just come back from the room next door where Acrobat on Win7 is not working, it is starting and stops after three seconds without visible output. Go figure. To be honest, one of my best arguments (for me) in favour of FreeBSD is the simple logic driving the development process. It is easier to understand (and to administrate) than a modern Linux. It is quite lean too. I know what I am running, and it is not running "69 magic binaries" which aim to make it a real operating system. FreeBSD works according to the 10% effort for a 90% perfect result rule. If that is not good enough there are additional tools to come closer to 100% (or a tool covering the one percent which I want to achieve.) Systemd instead seems to be an attempt to get close to 100% by rewrite so introducing new problems we would not have without. The commercial examples cited by you aren't convincing. Apple does not want you to understand how it works. That is not really their aim.
This thread on luv-main was never about explanations of systemd. It was always about people who have decided against it without reason who think that they know more about the topic than people who use systemd and have read the code.
That is simply not true. I asked a few times what the pros are. I have not found the "killer feature" which makes systemd so superior. Where is it?
But this mailing list has given plenty of examples to show that anyone who wants to work on systemd must ignore unqualified people.
Well, I am qualified enough to understand this: https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/4W6rrMMvhWU His workarounds demonstrate quite clearly the shortcomings when dealing with a Linux system these days. I had similar experiences. E.g. I had, at times, to put similar "weird configs" in place to get around some Policykit magic. It comes awful close to Windows;-) And it gets even better if I need all this "desktop magic" when all what I want is a server which will never have a USB stick attached or a wireless network driving by or whatever the reason are to put these things in place. And I do not boot my servers everyday so I do not care that much about 30 seconds more uptime per year. I am not 100% convinced by PC-BSD but it has the right concept (in my eyes): Make it easy to put FreeBSD on the desktop. For that reason it makes a few userland changes to adapt the FreeBSD system. Last time I checked Debian was not a system entirely dedicated to the desktop. Maybe systemd is written and supported by people who want to make the rest of us uneducated so nobody interferes with the wise leaders who manage the world on our behalf? Back to my beloved Acrobat and Windows 7! Regards Peter