This looks cool, I like this... but if I read the screenshot correctly, it took them 12 seconds from initrd to fully loaded. Maybe this would make sense there, but my laptop boots so fast, those 12 seconds are like two seconds. It would take longer to render the screen than it would just spraying its usual text to the VT.
(Honestly, it spends more time in uefi preboot than it does to actually boot the system.)
This is an ongoing pet peeve of mine, how the UEFI of a completely solderd laptop board can take longer than the OS to initialize a fully-known set of components.
I usually don't like TUI's and just want outputs into emacs text buffers, but this interface is beautiful, A nice thing to glance at that tells you everything you need to know about your systemd units. Well done.
For profiling the latest boot, use `systemd-analyze critical-chain` (Unicode tree of blocking units) or `systemd-analyze plot > boot.svg` (SVG profiler view of all units).
but also no reason to not render the tree with proper graphics, TUI is an UI just like GUI is and living dags are particularly well suited to be animated.
This is outstanding user interface design. Whoever came up with this is a real talent.
I would love to understand the process of coming up with the UX design is, what the principles are, and where the understanding of what "good" looks like, comes from.
Heh, I’m so old that I remember when systemd promised that the new init system would be easier to understand than those "vague startup scripts."
Meanwhile, on systems where I don’t use systemd, the entire initialization process can be displayed in about 30 lines on the screen - and I don’t have to wade through a chaotic web of dependencies, some of which are even auto-generated. As far as I can tell, I currently have about 350 of them active.
Boot times were supposed to be fast, too - yet, curiously enough, systemd often ends up saying, "waiting 1m30s for..."
Imdeed. Ubuntu tried its own upstart for a while, and there were a few others too. Gentoo has (had?) some alternatives to sysV.. Devuan felt like boycotting systemd. Didn't seem to help stop the spread but at least you could use something else if you wanted. Systemd is indeed a bit of a mini OS under the OS.
We came a long way but I also feel that the improvements didn't necessarily result in faster boots.
This also tickles some part of my brain that likes watching spinners, and it gives you an intuitive idea of what’s happening on your system. But for those who find it scary you could just default to a splash.
Come to think of it I don't think I even have parallel boot enabled on my OpenRC systems since the Linux boot time is so much shorter than whatever the BIOS does before it hands control over (or before it even displays anything on some machines).
This looks cool, I like this... but if I read the screenshot correctly, it took them 12 seconds from initrd to fully loaded. Maybe this would make sense there, but my laptop boots so fast, those 12 seconds are like two seconds. It would take longer to render the screen than it would just spraying its usual text to the VT.
(Honestly, it spends more time in uefi preboot than it does to actually boot the system.)
This is an ongoing pet peeve of mine, how the UEFI of a completely solderd laptop board can take longer than the OS to initialize a fully-known set of components.
That's a taken from the demo `sample-vm-slow-services`, which is intentionally slow to show off all the features.
Like it :)
What i don't get is why booting still takes seconds. When power is on, the hardware is on.
You can initalize most hardware in parallel, reading the amount of operation system into ram is fast.
I usually don't like TUI's and just want outputs into emacs text buffers, but this interface is beautiful, A nice thing to glance at that tells you everything you need to know about your systemd units. Well done.
Just tried this out, very cool!
`systemctl status` gives you a tree already, just not live view
For profiling the latest boot, use `systemd-analyze critical-chain` (Unicode tree of blocking units) or `systemd-analyze plot > boot.svg` (SVG profiler view of all units).
And not in the boot console
`watch systemctl status`
love it! finally an improvement after 30 years.
but also no reason to not render the tree with proper graphics, TUI is an UI just like GUI is and living dags are particularly well suited to be animated.
Everybody G(UI)angsta until they have to use the serial console to get a box booted up.
It's perfectly fine for the system's essentials to be non-fancy, to ensure they will also work under adverse conditions.
This is outstanding user interface design. Whoever came up with this is a real talent.
I would love to understand the process of coming up with the UX design is, what the principles are, and where the understanding of what "good" looks like, comes from.
Heh, I’m so old that I remember when systemd promised that the new init system would be easier to understand than those "vague startup scripts."
Meanwhile, on systems where I don’t use systemd, the entire initialization process can be displayed in about 30 lines on the screen - and I don’t have to wade through a chaotic web of dependencies, some of which are even auto-generated. As far as I can tell, I currently have about 350 of them active.
Boot times were supposed to be fast, too - yet, curiously enough, systemd often ends up saying, "waiting 1m30s for..."
> Boot times were supposed to be fast, too - yet, curiously enough, systemd often ends up saying, "waiting 1m30s for..."
wouldn't that be the fault of the service it's waiting for and not systemd itself?
Imdeed. Ubuntu tried its own upstart for a while, and there were a few others too. Gentoo has (had?) some alternatives to sysV.. Devuan felt like boycotting systemd. Didn't seem to help stop the spread but at least you could use something else if you wanted. Systemd is indeed a bit of a mini OS under the OS. We came a long way but I also feel that the improvements didn't necessarily result in faster boots.
This is very cool. It should be the new default on all distros.
It may terrify windows and osx refugees, but that's a sacrifice I am happy to make ;)
This also tickles some part of my brain that likes watching spinners, and it gives you an intuitive idea of what’s happening on your system. But for those who find it scary you could just default to a splash.
Love it. Now I need to figure out if I can do a similar thing with OpenRC. Thanks for the inspiration.
Come to think of it I don't think I even have parallel boot enabled on my OpenRC systems since the Linux boot time is so much shorter than whatever the BIOS does before it hands control over (or before it even displays anything on some machines).
I hate systemd with a burning passion, but this is the first time I ever thought it might be slightly redeemed.
> I hate systemd with a burning passion
Why?
I also dislike it very much.
edit: Having written that, this tool looks very cool and useful when you need to deal with a systemd distribution.
If it only takes an animation to make you like systemd that means you don’t understand systemd and linux init systems at all.