Linux: concerns over systemd adoption and Debian's decision to switch

Thu Oct 23 07:15:06 UTC 2014

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 10:05:30PM -0500, Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
> To achieve the level of integration that timedated has with the rest
> of systemd would require more than just putting code into timedatectl
> to write out /etc/ntpd.conf and starting a service.  timedated talks
> to networkd (that
> DHCP server that everyone is hating on as well) in real-time to
> determine the state of the network and to get any NTP servers that
> were sent in DHCP packets.  To do that for chronyd or ntpd in the same
> way would require code changes and the systemd developers didn't want
> to do the work,

This is the core problem with systemd, in my mind -- and what has gotten
Linus, amongst other people, so thoroughly cheesed off with the systemd
devs.  They don't play well with other children.  They don't appear
particularly interested in reusing any existing code, because it's a lot
more fun to write new code.  I'm a strong proponent of Joel Spolsky's views
on rewrites (sorry, no URL, I'm on the train) and I don't doubt that all the
same problems will come to haunt systemd on its way from being the new kid
on the block to being legacy code[1].

- Matt

[1] A computer industry term which means, "it works".