I’m already running a grafana instance, so I’ll look into elastic/filebeat. Thanks.

It’s fun to point at the crappy performance of current technology. But all I can think about is the amount of power and hardware the AI bros are going to burn through trying to improve their results.

This is perfectly logical and I agree. Except that this controversy has prompted me to go learn about Lennart Poettering. I’ve been using systemd forever and I like it - I like journald and remote journald, I like networkd, I even deleted cron off my systems and use systemd timers exclusively. I knew there was some controversy about Lennart, but I didn’t really care. Now that I’ve read a bit about his background and, maybe more importantly, his new company - I don’t have a good feeling for the future of systemd.

I’m thinking the same. I understand the people saying it’s no big deal, it’s just an optional field. But the existing optional fields (GECOS) have been there since the beginning of time. The original Unix user database (/etc/passwd) was created in a different time. Things have changed in the last 50 years and we now know that a simple field in an OS level database is not really an appropriate place to store PII. I don’t know what the solution is, as these laws are coming and there will be some people that need to comply, but I don’t think the current change to systemd is the right approach.

On the plus side - this controversy has prompted me to look into other options for my home servers and I’m loving the minimalism and simplicity of Alpine. (This isn’t a knee jerk reaction - I’ve been frustrated by the bloated feel of mainstream distributions for a while - more the straw that may break the camel’s back)

I never said I can’t do it - I’ve been running different varieties of unix for over 35 years. I said it’s not trivial.

And, being a bit pedantic with your terminology - systemd does not “centralises stuff that does not relate to each other into one single program”. systemd, systemd-journald, systemd-networkd, systemd-resolved etc. etc. are all separate programs, provided by the systemd project, with their own configuration. You are free to pick and choose which parts of systemd you use and which you don’t.

All that being said - I am a bit over complexity of modern mainstream distributions and am now considering moving to Apline for my servers.

It might be trivial for you, but not for me. I like systemd - perhaps because I came to Linux from AIX? Anyway, because I like it, I use it on all 4 of my servers - I have custom systemd unit files for applications I run that don’t natively support it, I’ve removed cron and use systemd timers for all my scheduling and I use systemd’s remote journal capability to centralise logs to my monitoring server.

Really?

My list of “not trivial to replace” is:

• firefox - desktop and android
• ImageMagik - I don’t use it directly, but other things I use depend on it
• VLC - yeah, I know there are other options but VLC has so much else going for it, it’s hard to change
• Jellyfin - what’s the alternative? Kodi? Oh wait…
• curl
• rsync
• .NET - I don’t use it directly, but things I use depend on it
• python
• vim - I’ve been using vi for 35 years, I’m not changing now. But I’m happy to use old versions.
• Joplin - argh, just finished migrating my documentation into here
• KeepassXC
• Mastodon
• Lemmy
• systemd
• Linux Kernel!!

Sadness and dread is a perfect description. As I started reading I was building a mental list of things to stop using - I didn’t get very far before I gave up. So many projects I’ve held up in high regard.

Sadness, dread and defeat.

Edit to add - I want to be clear that I’m not judging the developers of these projects. If they’re being overwhelmed with AI generated PRs, they’re being forced to use these tools in their “real jobs” and it spills over, or they just feel that this is the way things are going or whatever reason - they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do to survive. My sadness, dread and defeat comes from the state of the world and this is just the symptom that’s currently front of mind.