Don’t think of it as relearning a tool, think of it as learning one tool which works for everything. You no longer have to implement your own log rotation, compression, etc. or work out which configuration each program needs to do that in the manner you expect – for example, “is it safe to rotate a log file?” requires you to know implementation details on each program.

>think of it as learning one tool which works for everything.

For how long?

I've been around for decades at this point with people telling me how the newest and greatest thing will obsolete everything that came before it.

The best way to look through logs is still to materialize them in as text in a files hierarchy and use find with grep to look for issues.

I’ve been doing this for decades, too, but I don’t miss having to deal with everyone inventing multiple log hierarchies, different rotation conventions, compression strategies, etc. not to mention all of the other things which systemd removed from daily toil around process management.

> For how long?

Debian switched to systemd about 12 years ago, so at least that long.

A quick google indicates that it was made default in debian 8 in 2015, which is 9 years ago, not 12.

Perhaps it was available prior to then, but so were daemontools, upstart, and probably a variety of other alternatives.

One thing to remember is that a lot of people use the testing distribution so they would have seen it before the Debian 8 release changed the default. The debate in the community took ages but one factor in concluding it was that people were using it for years without it being anything like the more hyperbolic predictions some opponents made.

Yes, you're right. I saw when it was added not when it became the default. Still 9 years suggests it's not going to disappear overnight!

Find came out in 1974.