when unix reactionaries say "systemd is bloat" it puts this idea into uninformed people's heads that systemd uses a lot of CPU or RAM or something
this is patently not true. first of all, systemd is not a pile of shell scripts or based on shell scripting at all. this provides the major advantage that running systemd and systemd services does not require spawning billions of new processes, which is actually very expensive! on low end devices, complex shell scripts can take a long time to execute due to spawning lots of processes, whereas interacting with systemd services is fast since it's just C programs communicating over unix domain sockets
@confusedcharlot @haskal i do think there's huge potential for some articles on debugging systemd. like, with a debugger. obviously a different level of the game than debugging some shell scripts. but given the wide-spread adoption of systemd, i think it's due and just that there be some walkthroughs of seeing how things work.
the fact that there aren't a bunch of "here i am, at the end of my rope, debugging this garbage" videos is basically, imo, proof that for the most part it works quite well, & in predictable understandable ways. but it would be fun to have the wizard's lab out in full effect, prodding at systemd, carefully watching & learning of it.
@confusedcharlot @haskal Definitely opaque on the how-it-all-works side, but /using/ it is very textual! Its unit file format is great IMO.