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4 Linux init systems that almost replaced systemd (and why they failed)
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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Tl;Dr they all failed because they're init daemons and not entire system management daemons. Article gave a nice description of the different choices but I gave up reading after runit because the reason for failure always boiled down to
More than that: "its only an init daemon that does not even make use of Linux features". They all try to work on all posix systems while systemd is Linux-only and uses everything the kernel can offer to make things safer and more reliable.
There's also the addendum to "s6" which is a bit more interesting, since it seems it found a viable niche outside of hobbyist distros. Somehow I had never heard about it before.
Not just that, but a good amount of software wouldn't work or even install because of a direct dependency on systemd.