Follow
Linux

What are the best Linux init systems?

5
Options 
Considered
83
User 
Recs.
Last 
Updated
Related Questions
Activity
Ad
Have feedback or ideas?
Discord logoJoin our community
on Discord
Here’s the Deal
Slant is powered by a community that helps you make informed decisions. Tell us what you’re passionate about to get your personalized feed and help others.

5 Options Considered

5 Options ConsideredPriceLast Updated
OpenRC
Jan 18, 2018
runit
Jan 19, 2018
sysvinit
–
Oct 23, 2017
systemd
Mar 14, 2018
Upstart
May 31, 2017
See Full List

OpenRC

Add Video or Image
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

No feature creep

•••
OpenRC follows the UNIX philosophy of 'do one thing and do it well', while it's true that it has more features than sysvinit, it does not stay away from its primary function with unnecessary added features.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Fast

•••
OpenRC builds on top of sysvinit and adds some more useful features (like parallel booting) while still the simplicity that sysvinit is know for. Because of this it generally boots faster than other init systems, especially when parallel booting is enabled.
rindeal
Top Pro

Extremely simple

•••
All configuration is done via shell scripts and symlinks. Shell scripts can then use various specialized utilities to ease the development of init scripts.
Jonathan
Izmo
Top Pro

A very balanced compromise

•••
Basically OpenRC doesn't replace SysV init, but rather works with it, providing features that SysV is lacking while taking advantage of its benefits. It's also used by a fair amount of reasonably popular distros and is well supported and developed.
WiseLuna
Top Pro

Less dependency creep

•••
Using OpenRC does not lock in a distribution by providing specific NON-POSIX extra services which programs then would rely on.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

No socket activation

•••
OpenRC does not have socket activation yet. It will be added in the future though.
See 4 more ProsSee 4 more Pros

runit

Add Video or Image
Tom Bortels
Top Pro

Fast, parallel startup

•••
After the system's one time tasks (stage 1) are done, the system services are started up in parallel. The operating system's process scheduler takes care of having the services available as soon as possible.
Tom Bortels
Top Pro

Small and unix-like

•••
One of the runit project's principles is to keep the code size small. As of version 1.0.0 of runit, the runit.c source contains 330 lines of code; the runsvdir.c source is 274 lines of code, the runsv.c source 509. This minimizes the possibility of bugs introduced by programmer's fault, and...
Paolo
Steve Robertson
Top Pro

Easy to use

•••
Simple scripts linked to the proper directory is all that's needed to bring a service up at boot, and everything is up and running quickly.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
See 2 more ProsSee 2 more Pros

sysvinit

Add Video or Image
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Very stable

•••
Since sysvinit does only one thing (initialize the system) and one thing only, it's very stable and it's impossible for it to fail for any problems unrelated to booting the system.
Евгений Терешков
Top Pro

Simple to understand

•••
Callixtus
IndependentBuchis
Top Pro

Better boot time and overall performance

•••
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Can lead to slow boot

•••
Since init starts tasks serially, it has to wait for a certain task to finish in order to start the next one. But when startup processes end up I/O blocked, this leads to considerable delays during boot.
thermoplastics
Michael Gratton
Top Con

Launches a bunch of processes to launch a process

•••
Every init script spawns at least sh/dash/bash, and probably also additional processes such as cat, echo, start-stop-daemon, etc, just to start a single daemon that may not even be needed at the time of boot. This massive overhead results in poor performance, and is a killer for embedded systems.
thermoplastics
Michael Gratton
Top Con

Duplicated implementation for every service

•••
Every init script needs to reinvent the wheel for every script: argument processing, start/stop/restart/reload/status/whatever processing, finding/clearing/creating PID files, sourcing defaults, building and setting configuration options, so on and so forth.
Евгений Терешков
Top Con

Initscripts is not portable

•••
It is virtually impossible to write portable sysvinit-scripts
thermoplastics
Евгений Терешков
Top Con

Hard to write sysv-initscripts

•••
As one needs programming skills (opposed to a declarative style).
See 6 more Pros & ConsSee 6 more Pros & Cons

systemd

Add Video or Image
Евгений Терешков
Top Pro

Cgroups processes control

•••
Systemd groups all processes by services using Linux's cgroups. Think about memory/cpu/tasks/IO/Net limits and accounting for any service.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Login management out of the box

•••
Systemd contains a daemon called logind which is used for managing user logins.
rindeal
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Default for many popular distributions

•••
Systemd is the default init system for many popular Linux distributions (Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, etc..). It should also be noted that some of those distributions allow users to use a different init system if they want.
Michael Gratton
Top Pro

UNIX-Like

•••
Does one thing and does it well.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Not UNIX-like

•••
One of the main argument that people who are against using systemd is that it does not follow on of UNIX'S core philosophies. 'Do one thing and do it well', instead systemd represents a collection of dozens of tightly coupled libraries. With responsibilities that exceed those of a simp...
Paolo
Steve Robertson
Top Con

Makes dependent products difficult to port

•••
Software dependent on systemd. Becomes difficult to port to systems that lack systemd.
Yoshiyuki
InventiveTailtiu
Top Con

Lead developer shows near complete lack of care for standards of quality needed for developing a part of an OS as integral as the init system is

•••
See 5 more Pros & ConsSee 5 more Pros & Cons

Upstart

Add Video or Image
Slade Colling
Top Pro

Simple .conf file in /etc/init

•••
Jonathan
Izmo
Top Con

Ubuntu abandoned it

•••
The original developers (Canonical) seem to have abandoned this project. At least they're no longer using it in Ubuntu.

83 Community Recommendations

Steve Robertson
Rudy Lorren
Rostislav Matl
Michael Gratton
Jeroen Bollen
Ernesto Chapon
Alessandro Vitali
Javier Miguel
Sam McJibbers
Ross Hadden
Trimalchio Pertinax
+48
Request recommendations from the community
LikablePhobos
LikablePhobos
Contributor for 5 months
1
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
systemd
Recommended 5 months ago
5 years
Pro
 Login management out of the box
Pro
 Cgroups processes control
Pro
 UNIX-Like
See full
Currently displaying 1 out of 83 total recommendations.
I Recommend...
Help millions of people make better decisions.
Each month, over 1.7 million people use Slant to find the best products and share their knowledge. Pick the tags you’re passionate about to get a personalized feed and begin contributing your knowledge.
undefined