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submitted 1 week ago by iByteABit@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?

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[-] hunger@programming.dev -4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

What you can expect when switching from a system management tool written for Linux to an init tool targetting the least common denominator of general Unix functionality?

Less functionality, less security, less information about the state the system is in, less reliable switching between states and a whole lot less of linux kernel features exposed to your use in convenient ways.

It's not as if systemd was started to be complicated, the world got complicated. E.g. we used to just create all the device nodes in /dev statically during system installation. Then USB became a thing and supported so many different kinds of devices with thousands of potential ports to connect them to. They would not fit into the device node namespace! So we needed to make device nodes dynamic, which is also convenient.You do not have lots of device nodes that do not exist on your system and you no longer need to change system configuration when you plug your mouse into another port of your system.

Filesystems, security (often linux specific) features, everything is easy more complex (and more dynamic) today than it was when sysv init was a thing. That simple stuff was great when you had to power off your machine to change its available devices. It is less cool when you plug an USB-C cable into your laptop and want to use all the stuff that is now suddenly available.

this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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