When comparing runit vs Dinit, the Slant community recommends runit for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux init systems?” runit is ranked 2nd while Dinit is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose runit is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
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 makes it more easy for security related people to proofread the source code.
The runit core programs have a very small memory footprint and do not allocate memory dynamically.
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.
Pro Init purity - does what an init system must do and nothing more
UNIX philosophy, easy to add new services, easy to manipulate, really fast.
Pro Supported by several Linux plumbers
Myself included. Development is no longer stalled.
Pro Runs on every POSIX system
Pro Fast and easy to use
Pro Faster boot time than with systemd
Faster on older systems, especially those running on HDDs.
Pro Robust
Written with a focus on being secure and correct.
Pro Compact
With a reasonable feature set, but not at the cost of high complexity.
Pro Well documented
Check the extensive manual pages!
• dinit(8) manpage
Pro Portable
Written in portable C++ code; compiles and runs on a variety of Unix-likes (Linux, various BSDs).
Pro Free and Open Source
Distributed under the Apache License version 2.0.
Pro Fast startup times
Boots very fast.
Cons
Con Not GPL
Con Slow
Con Development stalled
Last patch was back in 2014.
Con Still new
It happens to freeze pretty often (tested on 2 different servers, 1 desktop and 2 laptops).