[ale] please bow your head for a moment of silence...

[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 9 Sep 2017 20:25:49 -0400
Solomon Peachy <pizza at shaftnet.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 09, 2017 at 06:41:40PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> > You systemd guys just can't help using the Appeal to Novelty
> > Fallacy, can you?
> > (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty)  
> 
> Who said I'm a systemd guy?  

Your past performance on this mailing list.

> And since you're such a fan of logical 
> fallacies, I shouldn't have to point out that you're committing
> appeals to tradition, 

No. I didn't say runit and s6 are better because they're older. In many
other postings on this list I gave my reasons why they were better (or
actually, why systemd is worse).

> with an unhealthy dose of appealing to
> authority

What authority? I could bring my Rich Felker, and you could bring your
Lennart Poettering. I don't think either of us did that so far.


 sandwiching moralistic fallacies.

I had to look that up at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_fallacy , and I don't recall,
**in this thread**, doing anything resembling that.


> 
> > Just because newer phones are better (in most regards) than older
> > phones doesn't mean that newer inits are better than older inits.  
> 
> But that also doesn't mean that newer inits _aren't_ better than
> older inits 

Pre-cisely! Age of something doesn't indicate its betterness or
worseness, or even betterness or worseness for a given usage.

> -- Congratulations, you just committed a another logical
> fallacy. Now its precise name escapes me, but I'm sure that you and
> your superior grasp of logical fallacies can educate us.

OK, let me rephrase to get rid of the slightest hint of any fallacy,
although logically this sentence is the same as my original:

Just because newer phones are better (in most regards) than older
phones doesn't *NECESSARILY* mean that newer inits are better than older
inits. 

Let's leave age out of the discussion: It contributes nothing.

> 
> > And of course, systemd is about the same age as superior inits like
> > Runit and s6.  
> 
> Now who's appealing to novelty?  Meanwhile, "superior" is a
> subjective term, 

You're right, it's subjective. Let me substitute the following text for
"superior":

=========================================================
An init system that's 1 to 3 orders of magnitude more complex, meaning
more parts, more interactions (especially circular ones), unless one of
systemd's special features is essential and there's no other way to
provide it.
=========================================================

Three or four block diagrams with less than 10 boxes apiece, all fitted
with interaction lines, describe the architecture of runit. S6 would
require a similar number and style of block diagrams. But systemd is so
complex that I've never seen a complete block diagram of it **complete
with interaction lines**.


> and if you're being remotely intellectually honest,
> you will concede that others might use different evaluation criteria
> and as such, might come to different conclusions.  

This is true. I believe that complexity comes with a significant cost.
Anyone not believing that would have no reason to eschew systemd. I
believe that the only time I'm willing to pay the price of
massive complexity is if I can't get along without what it gives me.
This includes the smog control in my car engine and the Linux kernel.
For those who really, truly need features like cgroups, per-seat
computing and can't use Linux Terminal Server Project, or need to start
daemons on an as-needed basis (superserver) and for some reason can't
use xinetd, the complexity cost of systemd might be acceptable. For the
vast majority who don't fit that description and do believe complexity
has a significant cost, systemd doesn't make sense.

One might say "well then just change out the init system." That is VERY
difficult to do on a systemd distro, because systemd gets its roots and
tenticles into so much software you can't chisel it out without busting
a lot of software that's hard to put back together. So realistically,
you have to go with a sans-systemd distro to use something like runit
or s6. Understand, it's pretty easy to swap in runit or s6 for
sysvinit. The *only* popular Linux init that makes itself irreplacable
is systemd.

> Otherwise, you're
> just begging the question and/or commiting circular reasoning.
> 
> If you want to live by the fallacy, be prepared to die by the fallacy.

Wait! It's not *me* who is living by the fallacy.

SteveT

Steve Litt
September 2017 featured book: Manager's Guide to Technical
Troubleshooting Brand new, second edition
http://www.troubleshooters.com/mgr