General Appraisal / Linux over the ages / Linux+systemd

cfuchs

I feel I am usually only complaining about something in LSF201, so for once I'd like to say thanks!

I think this course focuses on being very concise / focuses on the general concepts from the major distros, from the recent years. Part of my job currently is to help updating proprietary software packages (as rpm) for some 2011 SUSE systems (still running somewhere...), from that perspective I appreciate and value that the course also considers not only the leading edge techniques but also honors still-in-use techniques (like ip vs ifconfig, yum vs dnf, and so on).

Btw, in that regard, I see that systemd will be a sub-topic in chapter 39; but I'd expect that systemd itself probably needs a course of its own. (Or the community goes to some Linux-systemd-symbiosis as the next thing?)

coop

Thanks for nice words and glad this is helpful to you. LFS211 covers systemd in more detail and it permeates all of our classes. In a lot of ways it makes life simpler as most things look the same now on all distros (and I'm not going to get caught up in holy wars made difficult by not easy to deal with people on all ends.) But as systemd keeps expanding its sphere of influence and taking over many things not directly involved with "init" it becomes difficult to keep up. We have been diminishing anything that refers to old distros as it makes it more difficult to see best practices and complicates things in a way most students just don't need. Likewise, as network manager evolves we can get away most of the time from dealing at a low level with files in /etc which vary a lot. It is also why we avoid distro-specific methods -- like "snap" and "netplan" on Ubuntu when we can get away with it as other distros are just not interested and so I suspect atrophy will come, but one never knows.