Can you please explain what you mean with respect to Docker? I've been using it (and the other software in its ecosystem) for three years and have never run into files and scripts that were not plaintext. Even image layers are just tarballs of files and metadata.

> systemd

Isn't systemd's configuration entirely plain text?

Some of the configuration is plain text: unit, service, and environment files are plaintext. Which services are enabled and disabled cannot be controlled through file manipulation that I know of. Journal (log files) are binary.

I think what bothers me about both is that the presence of text files in a predefined location is not enough to make things happen on its own. Instead of the simplest possible everything-is-a-file and interacting with the filesystem is the interface, you have an additional requirement of calling binaries and their subcommands.

Generally systemd manages enabled/disabled services through symlinks in /etc/ (/etc/systemd/system/ on my Fedora 24, for instance), which you can add/delete in the shell if you want to. It's admittedly not plain-text, but manipulation-wise it's about equal.

It's using the default database (the filesystem) for it's configuration in that instance.

Nice - learned something new. Thanks!

IIRC enabling and disabling services in systemd are done via symlinks. You'd have to call a binary to start newly-added services, though. (i.e. systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl start service)

> You'd have to call a binary to start newly-added services

It reloads its configuration on SIGHUP (same as daemon-reload).