Top all-time · #393
Lennart Poettering
Personal blog · 0pointer.netsystemsprogramming
Lennart Poettering's personal blog at 0pointer.net covers systems and programming. Since 2014, 138 different Hacker News readers have linked it 187 times, most often “Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Linked as the primary source for systemd's design rationale, its critique of Upstart, and ideas on stateless, image-based systems, plus file-descriptor limits and D-Bus.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called a good D-Bus introduction and well explained; also recommended for packaging and file-descriptor limits.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems23 people · 29 mentions · first linked 2014-09-01
- Fitting Everything Together13 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2022-05-09
- Brave New Trusted Boot World10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-10-25
- Authenticated Boot and Disk Encryption on Linux (2021)7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-11-07
- File Descriptor Limits7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-10-26
- Mkosi by Lennart Poettering – A Tool for Generating OS Images5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-06-29
- Dynamically Allocate Users with Systemd4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-03-01
- Unlocking LUKS2 Volumes with TPM2, FIDO2, PKCS#11 Security HW on Systemd 2484 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-01-13
- Introducing Sd-Event: The Event Loop API of Libsystemd4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-11-20
- Casync – A tool for distributing file system images4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-06-20
What Hacker News says?
Upstart came before systemd; much of the reason for systemd’s creation was fixing what was considered fundamental design mistakes in Upstart: < http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd#:~:text=On%20Upsta... > (under the heading “On Upstart”).
Comment linking /blog/projects/systemd
on “Debian 13 “Trixie””Submitted Authenticated Boot and Disk Encryption on Linux as a story · 342 points
HN discussionYou may not like it, but “arbitrary” isn’t a fair description; there’s reasoning behind it that is over 10 years old: http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/stateless.html https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseFor... That said, my knee-jerk is also that this is about strong-arming distros. Which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’d be interested to hear other viewpoints though.
Comment linking /blog/projects/stateless.html
on “Debian 13 “Trixie””Submitted Linux boot partitions and how to set them up as a story · 259 points
HN discussion> GDPR And yet all German sites must have such thing: https://0pointer.net/imprint
Comment linking /imprint
on “Launching RDAP; sunsetting WHOIS”Submitted File Descriptor Limits as a story · 236 points
HN discussion> Gnome OS these days uses A/B updates with dual read-only /usr partitions and verified boot in the mold of https://0pointer.net/blog/fitting-everything-together.html . Hang on. I have to say [[citation needed]] on this. I write about systemd regularly, and read Lennart's blog and Mastodon feed. As evidence, I did an in-depth on systemd 258 just a month or so ago: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/systemd_258_f…
Comment linking /blog/fitting-everything-together.html
on “KDE launches its own distribution”Submitted Brave New Trusted Boot World as a story · 156 points
HN discussionYour data is out of date. Gnome OS these days uses A/B updates with dual read-only /usr partitions and verified boot in the mold of https://0pointer.net/blog/fitting-everything-together.html .
Comment linking /blog/fitting-everything-together.html
on “KDE launches its own distribution”Submitted Walkthrough for Systemd Portable Services as a story · 152 points
HN discussionhttp://0pointer.net/blog/projects/stateless.html
Comment linking /blog/projects/stateless.html
on “Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System”Submitted Unlocking LUKS2 Volumes with TPM2, FIDO2, PKCS#11 Security HW on Systemd 248 as a story · 148 points
HN discussionTo my understanding, Ubuntu Core is much similar to the idea of Lennart: http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linu... I don't feel saying them as either bad or good compared to Nix. Until you try a system, there's little to say only from the theory. We'll see how Ubuntu Core with snappy performs, and this question will be more relevant in a few months. Nix is not perfect but certainly has a long s…
Comment linking /blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html
on “Announcing Ubuntu Core, with snappy transactional updates”Submitted Casync – A tool for distributing file system images as a story · 138 points
HN discussionLennart explains it quite well in his initial blog post project announcement: http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/systemd
Comment linking /blog/projects/systemd
on “Building Rich Terminal Dashboards”Submitted Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems as a story · 110 points
HN discussionCouldn't agree more. Once familiar with the big picture this page is the best starting point whenever to you want change something. To get the big picture I read the systemd posts on https://0pointer.net/blog/archives.html But that's 10 years already! No idea what would be recommended today.
Comment linking /blog/archives.html
on “Systemd by Example”Submitted Testing my system code in /usr/ without modifying /usr/ as a story · 98 points
HN discussionHe needs one, and you shouldn't get downvoted for saying this. Systemd has brought lots of good things to Linux, but tons of bloat and insanity too. I'm quite scared because the next thing they seem to be tackling is one of the core things that makes Linux so nice, package management [1]. They intend to container-ize everything. While that might be in principle good (NixOS got it right), their solution is likely to…
Comment linking /blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html
on “No POST after rm -rf /”Submitted Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems as a story · 96 points
HN discussionThe people that you are looking for are the systemd and FreeDesktop people. The former have a manifesto addressing this: > The emphasis of systemd to provide a platform instead of just a component allows for closer integration, and cleaner APIs. Sooner or later this will trickle up to the applications. Already, there are accepted XDG specifications [...] that are not supported on the other init systems. > systemd is…
Comment linking /blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html
on “Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source”Submitted Introducing Sd-Event: The Event Loop API of Libsystemd as a story · 56 points
HN discussionAaaand retreat to the bailey. Systemd - the init - is not that bad. I think it does some things well. Most of what you listed is part of all the other junk I described. The "systemctl chunk" - the init itself - is not the problem. > That's the point. It's not insulting and it makes you sound like you're twelve. > What you're doing is most likely using a piece of software, finding it doesn't suit your particular use…
Comment linking /blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html
on “Cool but obscure X11 tools”Submitted Revisiting how we put together Linux systems (2014) as a story · 55 points
HN discussionsystemd [0], which you're probably already using, can do IP Accounting: > TL;DR: systemd now can do per-service IP traffic accounting, as well as access control for IP address ranges. It can be enabled using: [Service] IPAccounting=yes systemd won't, AFAIK, give you per second values -- just the aggregate totals -- so you'd have to constantly retrieve the updated values and calculate the differences yourself. The to…
Comment linking /blog/ip-accounting-and-access-lists-with-systemd.html
on “Why do we use the Linux kernel's TCP stack? (2016)”Submitted Authenticated Boot and Disk Encryption on Linux (2021) as a story · 54 points
HN discussionI was using Arch with gnome and the main issue was text size for certain applications, in particular at the time no chrome build, not even dev tip would render text in menus etc. at a non-tiny size (though I could zoom websites and get nice retina graphics) I've now switched to having a dedicated linux desktop and just letting my mac continue to just be a mac for now. After many hours of effort there's a point where…
Comment linking /blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html
on “Has modern Linux lost its way? Some thoughts on Jessie”Submitted IP Accounting and Access Lists with Systemd as a story · 54 points
HN discussionGood recommendations. OSes today are more than kernels. Filesystems, init systems, shells, and the configuration conventions would all be part of it. And probably also the windowing system and desktop environment. The most innovative concepts historically would be Plan9, BeOS, and seL4. Plan9's approach of "everything is a file" is something that was unique. BeOS's extensive use of journalling and metadata in the fi…
Comment linking /blog/projects/stateless.html
on “Interview with Andreas Kling of Serenity OS (2022)”Submitted Systemd for Administrators – Container Integration as a story · 51 points
HN discussion
