The systemd controversy

[GreyGeek]

...If you think systemd is a disturbing change to Linux as you know it, take a read on this.

Wow, dibl! I wish I had read the article you linked to before I made a fool of myself in a previous post. That article is VERY informative and presents an entirely different picture of the goals of Systemd compared to the other articles I've read and the graphic I posted from one of them. I made a few notes while reading it. Here are my notes:


Goals:
1) Vendor neutral packaging system (app or whole OS) for the end user with dependent libraries and packages defined.
2) Distro neutral end user or admin package installation.
3) A solution covering updates for full systems, virtual systems, end user apps, programming ABIs, etc..., for a self-managing system not needing an admin
4) A trust chain from SecureBoot, through boot loader, kernel and initrd. Encrypted security for the desktop, apps, servers and embedded devices.

They plan to achieve their goals by building upon the concepts in btrfs and the Linux file name-spacing. btrfs partitions that adhere to this naming scheme should be clearly identifiable. "It is our intention to introduce a new GPT partition type ID for this."
1) Making heavy use of btrfs sub-volumes with a clear naming scheme.
1a) Vendor snapshot: usr:<vendorid>:<architecture>:<version>
1b) Operating system snapshot: root:<name>:<vendorid>:<architecture>
1c) Runtime naming snapshot: runtime:<vendorid>:<architecture>:<version>
1d) Vendor framework snapshot: framework:<vendorid>:<architecture>:<version>
1e) App bundle snapshot: app:<vendorid>:<runtime>:<architecture>:<version>
1f) User home dir snapshot: home:<user>:<uid>:<gid>

The "How To Use It" section following the goals and plans is a vision of power, beauty and simplicity rolled into one scheme. It's a joy to read about it and gives one a sense of excitement!

It would be the "Unstable User's Dream". When booting select a root sub-volume, then the matching user sub-volume. Yes, by this scheme a user can have several vendor, OS, runtimes, build frameworks and app bundles to choose from, probably from a single boot up menu. To list the system users merely list the home snapshots. When a user logs in his home directory is mounted from his snapshot. When the user runs an app a new file system name-space is created (sort of like a snadbox) and the app sub-volume is mounted to the appropriate vendor sub-volume and the appropriate runtine sub-volume, etc...

If the "systemd cabal" (Kay Sievers, Harald Hoyer, Daniel Mack, Tom Gundersen, David Herrmann, and Pid Eins) can bring this scheme to fruition it will be the greatest advance in Linux architecture since 1992. Personally, I can't wait.

BTW, reader, if you are not familiar with the butter file system (btrfs) I suggest that you install Kubuntu on another partition and use btrfs as your file system, then review the posts on this forum which discussed btrfs. It's a fantastic fs!