Work in progress: 82,651 of 181,233 sites checked so far, more every week · updated 2 Nov 2026Missing a blog? Tell us

Top all-time · #280

H

http://0pointer.net/

Personal blog · 0pointer.de/blogsystemsprogramming

http://0pointer.net/ is a personal blog at 0pointer.de about systems and programming. Since 2008, 177 different Hacker News readers have linked it 229 times, most often “Rethinking PID 1 (2010)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.

No feed foundVisit the blog
229mentions?
5recommend?
177HN people?
2008–2026first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 37 in 2014

Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?

Why HN links it

HN readers link Lennart Poettering's blog for background on systemd's design, especially the introductory 'Rethinking PID 1' post and the systemd myths post. It is valued as clear, interesting systemd history and rebuttal of common objections.

Recommended for · 5 comments
Intro post called highly recommended and incredibly interesting; a great introduction; Upstart criticism pointed to.

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?

  1. Rethinking PID 1 (2010)
    43 people · 51 mentions · first linked 2010-04-30
  2. The Biggest Myths (about systemd)
    33 people · 38 mentions · first linked 2013-05-28
  3. Rethinking PID 1
    9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-11-02
  4. An overview why file locking is broken in Linux
    9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2010-06-26
  5. Systemd for Developers – Socket Activation (2011)
    9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2014-07-08
  6. Systemd for Administrators: Socket Activated Internet Services and OS Containers
    6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2013-01-28
  7. /blog/projects/why.html
    6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2013-05-28
  8. Brave New Trusted Boot World
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-10-25
  9. /public/gnomeasia2014.pdf
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-10-07
  10. Systemd's Biggest Myths
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-09-18

What Hacker News says?

  1. It is, quite simply, not aimed at launching daemons in the first place. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11391961 * https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-o... I strongly suspect that you will never see systemd working on the Windows NT kernel. Getting systemd to work doesn't just involve supporting the Linux kernel system calls, but also involves getting what those system calls do to work…

    Comment linking /blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

    on “Ubuntu on Windows”
  2. Submitted Systemd: The Biggest Myths as a story · 131 points

    HN discussion
  3. Some distros don't install lsb_release by default. It might be better to consult the /etc/os-release file instead. https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/os-release.... http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/os-release.html

    Comment linking /blog/projects/os-release.html

    on “Linux Productivity Tools (2019) [pdf]”
  4. Submitted Brave New Trusted Boot World as a story · 63 points

    HN discussion
  5. > basically every app should run in a docker container Why does it have to be "Docker"? Any other container framework should do as well, no? Note that systemd can create cgroups and namespaces for processes it manages: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/security.html

    Comment linking /blog/projects/security.html

    on “Dotfile madness”
  6. Submitted Introducing /etc/os-release - End to distribution specific release files as a story · 60 points

    HN discussion
  7. > without any issue It's easier than you think to corrupt SQLite if you access from multiple threads and especially from multiple processes (yup, I've done this before). Also, there are no concurrent transactions in SQLite. The entire db file gets locked (using POSIX locking, which is known to be broken [0]). Better to queue/batch transactions on a single connection. If your web server consists of multiple processes…

    Comment linking /blog/projects/locking.html

    on “SQLite is not a toy database”
  8. Submitted Rethinking PID 1 (2010) as a story · 57 points

    HN discussion
  9. > Why do you think this is an attempt at a persuasion tactic Because they said so: > As part of that we sometimes adopt schemes that were previously used by only one of the distributions and push it to a level where it's the default of systemd, trying to gently push everybody towards the same set of basic configuration [1] 1. https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

    Comment linking /blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

    on “Debian 13 “Trixie””
  10. Submitted Libabc: Best practices for library writers from Lennart Poettering as a story · 42 points

    HN discussion
  11. I know, nor did or do i mean to troll and it will be the only way nowadays to keep using linux as somebody started to learn it, started to like it, and for many now need it, etc. And also will require much more time from them to maintain their new os, while they has a base os to work on for years which suddenly changes drastically, and for many for no proper reason. The time they could have spend on their code, prod…

    Comment linking /public/gnomeasia2014.pdf

    on “"Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"”
  12. Submitted The Most Awesome, Least-Advertised Fedora 17 Feature as a story · 25 points

    HN discussion
  13. Just a fyi if you're going down that path, the hardware watchdog is disabled by default in most distros. Enable it using RuntimeWatchdogSec. Second, if you are running an important service, see if it can support systemd notification socket and even better the software watchdog protocol with systemd. The service just has to send a heart-beat every X seconds otherwise systemd will restart it. This ties in the hw watch…

    Comment linking /blog/projects/watchdog.html

    on “Considerations for a long-running Raspberry Pi”
  14. Submitted Brave New Trusted Boot World as a story · 17 points

    HN discussion
  15. I find your comment here sadly indicative of the level of discussion around systemd from its haters. Your metric is utterly misleading not only because you're almost certainly counting non-code files, but more crucially, because the systemd repository contains the code for *sixty-nine* entirely separate binaries, separate tools under the overall systemd project umbrella , so counting their collective code size as if…

    Comment linking /blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

    on “Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced”
  16. Submitted Factory Reset, Stateless Systems, Reproducible Systems and Verifiable Systems as a story · 16 points

    HN discussion
  17. Poettering actually did model systemd on launchd. See http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html . It's kind of funny because launchd and especially launchctl made a lot more sense to me after I learned systemd. In both good and bad ways.

    Comment linking /blog/projects/systemd.html

    on “Palo Alto Networks sends cease-and-desist letter to take down review videos”
  18. Submitted An overview why file locking is broken in Linux as a story · 15 points

    HN discussion
  19. freedomben · 2022-01-24Recommends
    > well... systemd is a clone of launchd sort of. Systemd took a lot of lessons from launchd but also from sysv and upstart. For anyone who hasn't read Lennart Poettering's "Rethinking PID 1" post[1] I highly recommend it. You'll understand the history, but most importantly you'll understand systemd a ton better. [1]: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html

    Comment linking /blog/projects/systemd.html

    on “We're migrating many of our servers from Linux to FreeBSD”
  20. Submitted Google doesn't like my name as a story · 13 points

    HN discussion
  21. Well, it seems that Google thinks "Poettering" must be a made up last name. Guess whatever they er, googled doesn't know who wrote that avahi code they're surely running. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/google-doesnt-like-my-name....

    Comment linking /blog/projects/google-doesnt-like-my-name.html

    on “Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"”
  22. Submitted Rethinking PID 1 as a story · 11 points

    HN discussion
  23. Lennart Poettering pops to mind: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/google-doesnt-like-my-name....

    Comment linking /blog/projects/google-doesnt-like-my-name.html

    on “Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"”
  24. Submitted The Biggest Myths (about systemd) as a story · 10 points

    HN discussion
  25. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd-for-admins-3.html

    Comment linking /blog/projects/systemd-for-admins-3.html

    on “Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)”
  26. Submitted The Most Awesome, Least-Advertised Fedora 17 Feature as a story · 7 points

    HN discussion
  27. ...or socket-activated systemd service [1, 2] [1] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/socket-activated-containers... [2] https://developer.atlassian.com/blog/2015/03/docker-systemd-...

    Comment linking /blog/projects/socket-activated-containers.html

    on “Serverless Architectures”
  28. Submitted Unique Hardware and Software IDs in Linux as a story · 6 points

    HN discussion
  29. Neither is systemd. Were you thinking of journald,... etc. instead? http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

    Comment linking /blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

    on “System Down: A systemd-journald exploit”
  30. Submitted Rethinking PID 1 (2010) as a story · 4 points

    HN discussion

Search all of HN for 0pointer.de

Linked by the same people?