I went down this exact same path. Started simplifying everything and it did wonders for my velocity. It took me a while to realize that we have teams and teams of people maintaining all this crap I was trying to spin up myself. It just wasn't worth it.
I went to basic principles, FreeBSD. systemd has taken Linux in the wrong direction in my opinion. I don't want anything fancy, I don't want to learn another persons resume building framework, I want to use technology that has proven longevity.
Our technology space moves so fast, for my personal work, I have to leverage the first principle technologies that I have mastered over my career. The latest framework may make some problems easier to solve, but I don't deploy technology without achieving some level of competency. That takes significant time. I'm getting wiser with how I spend that time, it's not always easy to know.
This process has also taught me why we have this proliferation of SaaS solutions. It's tempting, and maybe one day I'll be wise enough to realize that this is the route to take. However, I'm still able to leverage my core skills and open-source technology enough that SaaS solutions don't look attractive to me. I can see the benefits either way, so I suppose maybe in five years when I reflect I'll know if I made the right investment.
I've often heard people saying that systemd attempts to do too much and as a result is bloated, but personally i've found it to be sufficient for what i want to do - making certain software run and/or automatically restart on a server.
Some of the alternatives that i've heard of:
- SysVinit (i think older RPM distros used it) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SysVinit
- OpenRC (i believe that Alpine Linux uses it as its default) https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OpenRC
- and here are some other links https://alternativeto.net/software/systemd/
For better or worse, i've mostly just stuck to using systemd because it's good enough - and init systems that require scripts to be written manually intimidate me, since it seems like it'd be easy to make mistakes and the scripts wouldn't be standartized enough. Personally, i prefer to create a configuration file that just defines where the software is, how to keep track of its PID, where and how to get configuration for it, as well as what user/group to execute it as (among other things).
Maybe the poster you're replying to will provide some arguments against systemd and situations where it isn't very nice to use.
The reason I asked is because I'm really not well educated on the alternatives. I've just used SysVinit a little bit (on older Ubuntu) and while I've been learning more and more sysadmin-related stuff this past couple of years, it's all been systemd.
I went to basic principles, FreeBSD. systemd has taken Linux in the wrong direction in my opinion. I don't want anything fancy, I don't want to learn another persons resume building framework, I want to use technology that has proven longevity.
Our technology space moves so fast, for my personal work, I have to leverage the first principle technologies that I have mastered over my career. The latest framework may make some problems easier to solve, but I don't deploy technology without achieving some level of competency. That takes significant time. I'm getting wiser with how I spend that time, it's not always easy to know.
This process has also taught me why we have this proliferation of SaaS solutions. It's tempting, and maybe one day I'll be wise enough to realize that this is the route to take. However, I'm still able to leverage my core skills and open-source technology enough that SaaS solutions don't look attractive to me. I can see the benefits either way, so I suppose maybe in five years when I reflect I'll know if I made the right investment.