Re: systemd and its journey towards taking over the world !!!
I like sysv-rc-conf, but to be honest most of the time I just use update-rc.d.
Posts by Lomax
354 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Mar 2009
Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted
Saturday 31st January 2026 10:28 GMT
Saturday 31st January 2026 10:15 GMT
Re: Honest question
I've exclusively used Linux for the last 15 years, on my desktop, laptop, various servers and embedded systems that I build and maintain for a living - the majority of which still use SysVinit. I can honestly say that I have never, ever, had any kind of trouble with SysVinit of any kind whatsoever. In my experience it just works, and it's (almost) as easy to add custom services to as SystemD. I totally fail to see what "problems" SystemD solves - though I know well the new problems it creates, for example the inexplicable pain of binary log formats, and the confusing mess of dependencies. I prefer SysVinit and find it easier to understand and configure. Am I allowed to?
Saturday 31st January 2026 10:04 GMT
Re: systemd is not that bad
Also, as someone who doesn't use SystemD, I'm happy to own that and write my own init.d scripts for those rare cases where a) something must run as a service and b) that something does not have an init.d script already. It's not hard once you've done it a couple of times, and boilerplate code is readily available. Sure, it's more lines than a typical SystemD unit but very readable if you speak a minimal amount of Bash/Dash (which you really should do if you're using Linux). The only show stoppers would be packages that have hard dependencies on other parts of SystemD, but I can't remember encountering any of those. Even things that are typically part of SystemD can be run without it in some cases, e.g. Pulesaudio, though why you'd want to I have no idea. Also, Debian and its SystemD based derivatives can be switched back to SysVinit without too much trouble; I have done so with (headless) PiOS Bookworm for example. So the door is still ajar, if only just. The best way to ensure it doesn't shut completely is to continue to use and support the alternatives.
Saturday 31st January 2026 08:35 GMT
Re: Sounds familiar
I think MeeGo was what Microsoft found so scary, seeing as it was by far the best mobile phone operating system the world had ever seen. Several parsec ahead of Windows Phone, and Android - arguably iOS as well - in terms of functionality and polish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9
Despite a limited release, the N9 received widespread critical acclaim, with some describing it as Nokia's finest device to date. It was praised for both its software and hardware, including the MeeGo operating system, buttonless 'swipe' user interface, and its high-end features.
Friday 30th January 2026 21:05 GMT
Re: From available evidence below...
Agreed, but the reality on the ground is that wind and solar are growing rapidly as a share of electricity production, and that's not "wishful thinking" - it just is. I know this simple fact is infuriating to some people, though I struggle to understand why. The energy companies are clearly not charities; they simply do what's best for their bottom line and their shareholders, and renewables are more profitable, cheaper to install and maintain, and easier to deploy locally. This last point is significant, as it offers further savings. There is no question where the trend is going: renewables are for sure going to replace fossil fuels, the only question is how quickly. Energy storage technology (or the lack of it) is probably the most important factor here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz947djd3d3o
Record year for wind and solar electricity in Great Britain in 2025
In 2025, wind, solar, hydro and biomass generated more than 127 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in Great Britain, according to BBC analysis of provisional Neso data. That beats the previous high of 119TWh in 2024.
This is even more remarkable when you consider that only fifteen years ago the number was in single digits.
Friday 30th January 2026 12:33 GMT
Re: From available evidence below...
> wind and solar can not power modern industrial societies without economically viable long term energy storage we have not the slightest idea how to build
The EU’s electricity transition reached a new milestone in 2025 with wind and solar generating more power than fossil fuels.
Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
Friday 30th January 2026 13:30 GMT 
> Brussels is pushing an open source‑led exit from hyperscaler lock‑in
Well done EU, you got there in the end! Now put your money where your mouth is and use some of those Euros to support Jolla and SailfishOS. When talking about "digital sovereignty" surely nothing can be more important than the software running on the digital mole we all carry in our pockets. Since the smartphone is now a mandatory tool for everything we do, gatekeeping all our communications, with full access to all our secrets and all essential services, it needs to be open to review. Every last line of it. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the very survival of free democratic society depends on this happening. Today.
Raspberry Pi 5 gets LLM smarts with AI HAT+ 2
Friday 30th January 2026 11:56 GMT
1. Fair enough, my mistake.
2. Of course, but when you want to use the Pi specific hardware, such as the GPU and camera interface the desktop packages get pulled in.
3. The BTT Pi v1.2 accepts 12-24V via screw terminals, and 5V via a USB connector, while retaining the Pi form-factor. The discontinued x86 based Rock Pi X accepted 9-20V, and 5V via a USB connector, while retaining the Pi form-factor. It also incorporated an on board RTC, though this was powered through an external battery. The Banana Pi uses a standard barrel jack for its 5V DC input, while retaining the Pi form-factor. The Odroid N2+, while being larger (and more expensive) than a Pi accepts 12-18V on a standard DC barrel jack, which makes it suitable for in-vehicle use. It also incorporates an RTC. There are other examples. My point is that it's always been a nuisance that you have to go and buy an expensive Micro or C USB cable only to cut and solder it to your power source to power a Pi - that or connect to the 5V pins on the GPIO header, which prevents a hat being fitted. I sometimes replace the 5V & GND pins with longer angled ones which stick out the back of the PCB to get around this.
4. Sigh. Ok, let's do this. Most computers do not have the kind of hardware interfaces that are typically found on microcontrollers, such as GPIO, i2c, SPI, DSI, etc - these days most of them don't even have RS232 ports. Most computers also consume several orders of magnitude more power than a typical microcontroller, making them unsuitable for battery powered applications and requiring complex cooling set-ups for embedded applications. The Pi has all the interfaces you're used to finding on a microcontroller, while drawing a relatively small amount of power, making battery powered and embedded solutions easy to develop. This is what I mean when I say it sits (or used to sit) somewhere between a microcontroller and a full blown Linux system. I know that you know that I know that you knew that this is what I meant.
Tuesday 27th January 2026 12:37 GMT
They do. Or rather FFMPEG does. Which is needed by the official camera apps. You can modify picamera2 to drop the dependency but you then lose most of the video and audio functionality.
> why would the Pi people be able to do anything about it?The same way the Devuan people are able to modify some packages to work better for their users. It's not a matter of ability, but whether there's a will and the necessary developer resource. But since the Pi5 is incompatible with the previous hardware... Eh, whatever, now we're just going around in circles.
Thursday 15th January 2026 15:07 GMT
Judging from the downvotes my post seems to have been misunderstood. When I talk about "the hardware" I'm specifically referring to things unique to the Pi; the camera and display interfaces, the GPIO, quirks of the SoC. Of course you can run whatever Linux distro you like, and customise it to your liking, but when you need to support the Pi specific hardware you often have to install packages which depend on Wayland and/or SystemD. It may be wrong to blame the Pi Foundation for this - but I cannot think of anyone who would be better positioned to do something about it. I also reject the notion that the best answer to bloat is to increase system resources.
Thursday 15th January 2026 13:26 GMT 
I for one would prefer if some effort went into being able to use the hardware without the full desktop environment dependencies, "AI" or no "AI". Everything and their cat seems to require Wayland (or X) and SystemD nowadays, and not many fucks appear to be given by Debian or the Pi foundation. To me the Pi was always meant to shine as a minimalistic low power platform for things like automation, robotics, IoT, signage, media players, etc, etc - none of which benefit in any way from the added bloat of a desktop. I found it tremendously useful as a cross between a microcontroller and a full blown Linux system. If you really need the kind of muscle provided by the Pi 5 (gaming? web browsing? transcoding?), why not opt for one of the many mini PCs made by the likes of Lenovo, Dell and HP instead? I recently picked up a HP EliteDesk with a Ryzen 5 CPU, Vega iGPU, 16 GB RAM, NVMe and SATA - an order of magnitude better performance for about the same $$$, in a sturdy & practical case with standard size connectors to boot. I personally do not see any application for all those MIPS which simultaneously requires the I/O capabilities of the Pi platform. If I dared to dream it would be great if the Pi 3 / Zero platform could be kept active and gain a wide voltage range (say 5-28V) power input jack that didn't require USB. But maybe that's just me.
Senate bill would require companies to report AI layoffs as job cuts reach 20-year high in October
'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft engineer says, explains how to fix it
Azure's bad night fuels fresh calls for cloud diversification in Europe
Friday 31st October 2025 13:46 GMT
Elementary
The many issues that come with relying on Google / Micros~1 for critical services really ought to be blindingly obvious to infrastructure engineers, especially here in Europe. We desperately need home-grown alternatives that are compatible with our laws and values. It's nice to see Element's CEO weighing in here; Element is a brilliant example of exactly the kind of initiatives that are needed. They deserve our support. Longer term I would like to see an EU law that makes it a requirement for all public bodies to use open source software, except in those cases where only proprietary solutions exist - for reasons of transparency, democracy, accountability, security, economy and innovation. See for example LiMux.
Mobian makes Debian's latest 'Trixie' release pocket-sized
Tuesday 21st October 2025 17:38 GMT
Re: There are too many of these
It depends on your definition I guess, but I would say that Sailfish is 100% feature complete - I've been using it as my sole mobile OS for almost a decade and rarely miss anything, and that's without using the optional Android compatibility. It's now on version 5 and I find it stable, responsive, and very polished. Granted, device support is quite limited; mostly Sony Xperia handsets and some of Sailfish's own efforts, though community ports do exist for other phones. The mind boggles when one considers what might have been possible had Nokia not been shredded by Mircos~1.
Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover'
Tuesday 21st October 2025 10:10 GMT
Re: Good!
Ruby Central are still contributing, but ownership of the RubyGems and Bundler repositories has been transferred to Rails core team, where arguably it always belonged.
Monday 20th October 2025 09:50 GMT 
Good!
I think this is good news; it was never right that Ruby Central (and by extension Shopify) wielded so much power over RoR, so I for one am happy to see the foundation take over these critical projects. It's of course unfortunate it had to happen under a cloud of negativity, but the lightning this triggered has been a welcome discharge of built up tension. DHH is free to publish whatever toxic opinions he wants, just as the community is free to tell him where to stick it. We do not owe him a platform, and it's entirely on him if he wishes to be sidelined.
RubyGems maintainer quits after Ruby Central takes control of project
Monday 20th October 2025 10:53 GMT
Re: While we're here, whatever happened to Ruby on Rails anyway?
I use Rails 8 completely without any of its native JS functionality, and it works beautifully. The result is easily one of the most responsive websites I've ever seen - it's astonishingly fast even when rendering large and complex data sets. I particularly enjoy the built-in authentication, russian doll caching, asset management, flexible routing, class mixins and delegated types. A great platform for any kind of web development, whether you prefer SPAs or more traditional interfaces.
Meta debuts its first 'mixture of experts' models from the Llama 4 herd
Monday 7th April 2025 12:27 GMT 
Reality be damned!
> "It's well-known that all leading LLMs have had issues with bias — specifically, they historically have leaned left when it comes to debated political and social topics," Meta's launch post states, before attributing that to "the types of training data available on the internet."
The data on the intertubes isn't right wing enough because the sheeple haven't been fed enough alternative facts - we'll just have to fudge it for now. But give it a generation or two and our new world order will adjust their way of thinking, and the training data will gradually need less "adjustment". Of course we'll have to de-fund science and history to keep the truth safe, but I'm told that's already being done (cheers Elon).
Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament
Thursday 20th March 2025 09:40 GMT
Re: I hope this happens
This is all true. The OS was called LiMux. The documentary can been watched on YouTube. It is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in public sector IT procurement - including El Reg staff and readers. Or indeed anyone who pays tax. Too often the claims of the likes of Microsoft & Google are accepted without questioning. It is worth remembering in whose interest they are operating (hint: it's not the taxpayers').
Dell discloses monster 20-petaFLOPS desktop built on Nvidia's GB300 Superchip
AI running out of juice despite Microsoft's hard squeezing
Wednesday 19th March 2025 11:01 GMT
Maybe my irony detector needs new batteries. Are you saying that a thing that is a thing isn't a thing because it's just a thing? Does the truth even matter? Who can tell these days.
The world’s data centres are using ever more electricity. In 2022, they gobbled up 460 terawatt hours of electricity, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects this to double in just four years. Data centres could be using a total of 1,000 terawatts hours annually by 2026. “This demand is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan,” says the IEA. Japan has a population of 125 million people.
As the world heats up toward increasingly dangerous temperatures, we need to conserve as much energy as we can get to lower the amount of climate-heating gases we put into the air. That’s why the IEA’s numbers are so important, and why we need to demand more transparency and greener AI going forward. And it’s why right now we need to be conscientious consumers of new technologies, understanding that every bit of data we use, save, or generate has a real-world cost.https://www.vox.com/climate/2024/3/28/24111721/climate-ai-tech-energy-demand-rising
Google admits in its latest environmental report: “Our [2023] emissions […] have increased by 37% compared to 2022, despite considerable efforts and progress in renewable energy. This is due to the electricity consumption of our data centres, which exceeds our capacity to develop renewable energy projects.”https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/energy/generative-ai-energy-consumption-soars/
Researchers have been raising general alarms about AI’s hefty energy requirements over the past few months. But a peer-reviewed analysis published this week in Joule is one of the first to quantify the demand that is quickly materializing. A continuation of the current trends in AI capacity and adoption are set to lead to NVIDIA shipping 1.5 million AI server units per year by 2027. These 1.5 million servers, running at full capacity, would consume at least 85.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually—more than what many small countries use in a year, according to the new assessment.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ai-boom-could-use-a-shocking-amount-of-electricity/
Monday 17th March 2025 10:51 GMT
Referring to machine learning as "artificial intelligence" is akin to calling an aircraft an "artificial bird". While it's true that we do not have a good understanding of what exactly "intelligence" or "consciousness" is it's still misleading to claim that an algorithm we do understand is "intelligent" or "conscious". The very fact that we are lacking a definition should in itself be enough to disqualify the claim. Outside the realm of religious beliefs the onus is usually on the one making the claim to prove that it is so - which is difficult to do without a working definition. But I would say that "AI" is neither intelligent nor artificial, since all it can do is to regurgitate a remixed version of its training data, which I think is very different to what we usually mean by "intelligence" or "consciousness". For one thing a conscious intelligent organism is able to solve problems that they have not been previously trained on. For another intelligence implies the ability to have new ideas, test them, keep what works, and discard the rest. LLMs do not do this; they can only look to their training data and the input from their (occasionally) intelligent users to determine "truth". Which explains why they tend to have such a poor grasp of the concept.
Monday 17th March 2025 09:14 GMT
Re: What's the next boondoggle?
In Sweden you have to pay a tax on the electricity produced by your PV installation if the total output power exceeds 500kW - even if you consume all the electricity generated yourself. So a factory hoping to harvest free energy from the sun to cover its own electricity needs will still have to pay for every kWh produced.
SuperHTML is here to rescue you from syntax errors, and it's FOSS
'Uncertainty' drives LinkedIn to migrate from CentOS to Azure Linux
The future of AI/ML depends on the reality of today – and it's not pretty
Wednesday 28th August 2024 08:40 GMT
Re: Good for fun
I don't think that's true; in my admittedly limited experiments with ML generated code I've repeatedly been given code that just plain does not work. Often the reason has been the "AI" dreaming up function names that do not exist or are only provided by some (unknown) external library, or that the code does something completely different to what was asked for - but sometimes the code has contained bona-fide syntax errors as well. I would not trust any code provided by one of these systems, other than perhaps as a very crude starting point for writing my own. In one particular case where I was pairing with someone using GPT to generate code we ended up spending significantly more time trying to figure out why the code it offered up wasn't working than it would have taken us to just write the damn thing ourselves.
Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience
Friday 19th July 2024 21:25 GMT
Re: Disk encryption on servers?
I guess if you're worried about what the law might find on your servers in the event of a legal... situation... then perhaps it makes sense. But in that case won't you be required to hand over the keys anyway? I wouldn't know, because I'm not involved in any potentially criminal activity. Are they?
Friday 19th July 2024 21:03 GMT 
Disk encryption on servers?
I must have been missing something; why would you use Bitlocker encryption on a server that is already (one would hope) physically secure? I encrypt the disks in my laptops with LUKS, since being laptops they might end up being left on the tube after a wet night out, and desktops because burglary etc, but I have never considered that encrypting my server disks might also be important. I've mainly regarded disk encryption to be valuable where unauthorised physical access might be an issue, but perhaps I need to think again? In my (admittedly limited) view the main threat to a server comes via its network connection, and possible vulnerabilities to network originated attacks in the software running on them - but from that end the disks will already be decrypted anyway, right?
Polyfill.io claims reveal new cracks in supply chain, but how deep do they go?
Wednesday 3rd July 2024 09:44 GMT
You had one job...
> the Sisyphean slog of maintaining special access for those who can't or won't get with the program.
I don't find complying with standards a "Sisyphean slog" - if anything it makes my job easier. Becvause I follow simple standards the sites I build will work in any browser that is standards compliant and able to render HTML5 (and supports TLS1.2+). I barely even need to test this - apart from some minor pixel level rendering quirks it just works. Sure, the sites will look better in a graphical browser that supports CSS3, and the interface will be more user friendly if JavaScript is allowed to run, but text-to-speech and Lynx users should have little difficulty perusing the information they serve, nor will anyone not wanting to trust my client side code be prevented access.
Where interactivity is needed I usually build it using HTML and HTTP first, and use these same endpoints asynchronously with XMLHttpRequest. Often these fragments can be cached on the server. Resources have URLs, and these are human (and machine) readable, and they can be bookmarked. Browser history works without requiring any hacks - including ending up at the same scroll position when returning to a previous page. To the extent that I rely on external APIs I prefer to do so on the server side, and I will ensure that these fail as gracefully as possible with cached and fall-back content. I do not like single points of failure that are outside my control (I'm looking at you, Cloudflare). JavaScript is only used where it offers a clear usability advantage. I find no need for any client side libraries like JQuery or Vue.js since browser support for standard JS methods is really quite good across the board, but I do use some specialised libraries like Chartkick. Client side code is is combined, minified and served from my own servers, with a strict CSP. The most important metric to me is speed, particularly LCP (ideally <1s), and running lots of code on the client can (and does) negatively impact this. Rendering everything on the client also leads to a ludicrous amount of duplication of work, with more or less exactly the same instructions being executed not only for every visitor, but for every content load. That this is an insane approach and that SPAs were a terrible idea should have been obvious from the start, yet here we are.
None of this is rocket science, nor can it be considered a "Sisyphean slog" - it's just the job. Shame so many of us seem to have forgotten how to do it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
