Version 251 of systemd coming soon to a Linux distro near you
- Reference: 1653402712
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/05/24/version_251_of_systemd_released/
- Source link:
The unified system and service manager for Linux continues to grow and develop, as does Linux itself. There is a comprehensive [1]changelog on Github, so we will just try to pick out a few of the highlights.
New releases of systemd appear roughly twice a year, so the chances are that this will appear in the fall releases of Ubuntu and Fedora.
[2]
The new version now uses the GCC compiler's C11-with-GNU-extensions standard, nicknamed [3]gnu11 .
[4]
[5]
This brings it into line with the Linux kernel itself, which uses the same standard as of [6]version 5.18 – in turn facilitated by kernel 5.15 [7]moving the minimum required GCC version to 5.1.
Were we betting types, we'd wager that probably the most controversial changes in the new release revolve around the new [8]systemd-sysupdate and [9]kernel-install features. The former is still described as an experimental feature, so relax – for now.
Change in packaging
No, this does not mean that systemd is becoming a package manager. Like it or not, though, the nature of operating systems is changing. Modern ones are large, complex, and need regular updates, and as The Register has examined in depth recently, this means that [10]the design of Linux distributions is changing radically .
The prime example is the [11]ever more mature ChromeOS , including Google's new [12]move into the mass-market hardware space, ChromeOS Flex .
[13]
What that means (in brief) is that the nature and use of package managers is changing. What is disappearing is their role as the tool that allow end-users to customise and update their OS. Instead, they are becoming the tools that vendors use to build the distributions.
ChromeOS doesn't have a package manager; neither do [14]Fedora's Silverblue and Kinoite versions . You get a tested, known-good image of the OS. Updates are distributed as a complete image, like they are today with Android or iOS.
ChromeOS has two root partitions: one live and one spare. The currently running OS updates the spare partition, then you reboot into that one. If everything works, it updates the now-idle second root partition. If it doesn't all work perfectly, then you still have the previous version available to use, and you can just reboot into that again.
[15]
When a fixed image becomes available, the OS automatically tries again on the spare instance. The idea is that you always have a known-good OS partition available, which sounds like a benefit to us.
Presumably the users are happy too: [16]Chromebook sales may be down , and [17]they only have a fixed lifespan , but there are still well over a hundred million of them out there.
NixOS and the changing face of Linux operating systems [18]READ MORE
So, no, systemd is not going to become a package manager, because ordinary distros won't have a package manager at all, except maybe [19]Flatpak, or Snap or something similar . The new functionality, including managing installed kernels, is to facilitate A/B type dual-live-system partitions.
For some insight into this vision, Lennart Poettering, lead architect of systemd, has described this in a blog post titled [20]"Bringing Everything Together ."
Version 251 has other features, of course. It requires a minimum of kernel 4.15, which dates back to January 2018. There are some changes to [21]systemd-networkd , such as [22]systemd-resolved starting earlier in the boot sequence, and more cautious allocation of default routes.
[23]FreeBSD 13.1 is out for everything from PowerPC to x86-64
[24]At last, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 slips out
[25]Pop!_OS 22.04: New kid on the Ubuntu block starting to show real muscle
[26]12-year-old revives Unity desktop, develops software repo client, builds gaming environment for Ubuntu...
The [27]busctl tool for monitoring DBUS has changed its output format from the old PCap format to the newer [28]PCapNG .
Handling of environment variables and unit statuses is improved, including setting a status for processes killed by the [29]systemd-oomd out-of-memory [30]killer .
If you still prefer to avoid systemd, don't despair. There are still a selection of distros that eschew it altogether, including [31]Devuan GNU+Linux , [32]Alpine Linux , and [33]Void Linux . ®
Get our [34]Tech Resources
[1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/releases/tag/v251
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yo0BIiSn3WubkIkuGvnBGwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Standards.html
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yo0BIiSn3WubkIkuGvnBGwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yo0BIiSn3WubkIkuGvnBGwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=50560ce6a0bdab2fc37384c52aa02c7043909d2c
[7] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=316346243be6df12799c0b64b788e06bad97c30b
[8] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-sysupdate.html
[9] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/kernel-install.html
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/03/nixos_linux_os_design/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/22/chromeos_update/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/22/chromeos_update/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yo0BIiSn3WubkIkuGvnBGwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/12/fedora_36_released/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yo0BIiSn3WubkIkuGvnBGwAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/14/chromebook_sales/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/22/buying_a_chromebook_dont_forget_to_check_when_it_expires/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/03/nixos_linux_os_design/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/26/linux_software_installation/
[20] https://0pointer.net/blog/fitting-everything-together.html
[21] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-networkd.service.html
[22] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-resolved.service.html
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/20/freebsd_131/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/10/red_hat_enterprise_linux_9/
[25] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/pop_os_2204_is_here/
[26] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/04/rudra_sarsawat_ubuntu_projects/
[27] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/busctl.html
[28] https://wiki.wireshark.org/Development/PcapNg
[29] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-oomd.service.html
[30] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/01/systemd_248/
[31] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/15/devuan_4_chimaera_released/
[32] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/25/alpine_3_15/
[33] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/16/contributing_to_keep_small_linux_alive/
[34] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Software Junk
I submit that there are several things that contradict you.
[1]
As I linked in the article, the default support lifetime is 6½ years:
https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/22/buying_a_chromebook_dont_forget_to_check_when_it_expires/
For a rock-bottom price bracket, cheap consumer laptop, 6 years is a pretty long time. I suspect a great many of them will be clapped out or broken by then.
[2]
They won't suddenly stop work working. They just stop getting OS updates. They may continue to get browser updates for a while.
[3]
Secondly, as the ChromeOS Flex article I linked to also points out, it *is* possible to "root" most ChromeBooks and install your own OS. If you do that and install ChromeOS Flex, you get OS updates again.
Re: Software Junk
For a rock-bottom price bracket, cheap consumer laptop, 6 years is a pretty long time. I suspect a great many of them will be clapped out or broken by then.
The Chromebook was positioned as an internet appliance rather than as a laptop. That is, it's a piece of kit sold for doing pretty much one thing — running a browser — rather than as a general-purpose computer.
Most appliances, once purchased, can be used in their original state until they do fall apart, because they have one thing to do and they don't get any worse at doing it until they begin to fail mechanically.
A Chromebook, though, is unlike most traditional appliances in that it does need occasional updates to correct security failings in the original programming.
My Chromebook is about a dozen years old (it's one of the original Acer C720s) which means it's been out of support for almost half its life. It isn't clapped out or broken, and it does still work well as a browsing tool ... but I wonder whether it is as secure as it was or as it should be.
They won't suddenly stop work working. They just stop getting OS updates. They may continue to get browser updates for a while.
Which is really not good enough. A device that is used as an interface to the wild and hostile world of the internet really needs its security to be up-to-date.
... it *is* possible to "root" most ChromeBooks and install your own OS. If you do that and install ChromeOS Flex, you get OS updates again.
That's true. One of the things I had in mind when I bought the C720 was that if I didn't like ChromeOS I could just install Debian/whatever instead. Unfortunately although Acer did make a 4GB version of the C720 I couldn't find one in the UK, so I have a 2GB machine. I could run a normal Linux distro on it, but that's a bigger system than ChromeOS and I wonder how usable it would be in that little RAM? I've never tried.
I shall have to look into ChromeOS Flex when it becomes a little less "early access".
Why is the init handling system updates. This is so far outside the scope of process initialisation that I'm surprised even Poettering can justify it, without collapsing into an infinitely dense kernel of smug arrogance.
Systemd is not (just) an init system, and was never intended to be so. The init system was just one of the first modules of Systemd, and was used to get its foot in the door in most distros.
Since then we've pretty much just had to accept whatever the Systemd team gave us, because they're well funded, have feet in all the doors, and its codebase is complex, ever changing, and monolithic.
(someone's going to want to now come back with "Systemd isn't monolithic, it's modular!" because they don't understand the difference between codebases and processes)
-> Why is the init handling system updates.
Becoz systemd is not an init system. It is The Blob, it is the boiling mass of alien gubbins in the Quatermass 2, it is The Thing. Our miserable earthly weapons are useless against it.
You will be consumed.
I've just read his blog post that was linked in the article - its long.
I don't like Poettering, I don't like systemd. My first encounter with him/it was when some GUI packages started requiring it, back then I was using FreeBSD, and his approach to non-Linux back then was "I don't care. This is about Linux". He seems to have a natural ability to alienate people.
Reading his blog post, he's trying to solve a lot of valid issues. How do we have a fully secure OS? How can we treat a PC like an appliance, to make it more reliable and bulletproof? How do we add software to an OS? What is a package?
The problem is that he sees all these problems, and the answer that comes to his mind is "lets add an extension to systemd that handles this". So you have systemd-boot for working out what kernel to run, systemd-sysupdate for updating your "system image", systemd-oomd for handling OOM, systemd-nspawn for running containers, systemd-portabled for running isolated services, systemd-sysext for adding system packages to the OS, systemd-repart to automatically create/destroy partitions on the fly.
All of this work, for him, is essential, and all of it is developed under his aegis. It's not the collaborative pick-n-choose, best of breed wins style that Linux is based upon (eg, cron. When the original cron didn't quite fit its need, people developed many different versions - the one we use today is the best of those - thanks Paul Vixie).
I don't disagree with most of his blog post.. just his methods.
They call it progress
So Linux is as impenetrable to the average nerd at home as is Microsoft Windows. Professionalism, one might say; other remarks are not fit for a civilised general readership.
Just as the internet 'routes around damage' ...
so does 'open source computing' - it just takes a little longer.
"There are still a selection of distros that eschew it altogether,"
You missed out PCLinuxOS and Slackware.
Choice is still there and I for one am glad of it.
Systemd, the thing that keeps on taking.
"you can expect it to feature in the next version of your preferred distro."
Go fsck your distro. I run Devuan, and AFAICT more and more are adopting SystemD*ck-free distros every day.
Software Junk
Presumably the users are happy too: Chromebook sales may be down, and they only have a fixed lifespan, but there are still well over a hundred million of them out there.
Have we really come down to having Computer hardware that is so locked down that at the end of its [cough][cough] supported life we are expected to send it to Landfill?
I know that we have a disposable society but this is getting stupid and is a total waste of finite resources.
Google and the people behind this can go ''F' themselves. This makes me even more determined to extinguish google from my life.