I've been daily driving Slackware since the late 90s or early 00s (don't remember). There's no systemd, and no drama. I run KDE plasma 6, steam with proton, flatpak, rocm for AI shenanigans and whatever else I want. Even the rolling release is solid as a rock. There are dozens of us! And we're not all greybeards. I started going grey in high school, but I ate cookies for breakfast today because I'm both a grown ass man and a child.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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If you want the convenient features of systemd without the cancerous assimilation of the entire userland then dinit is recommended. OpenRC is a mature choice. Server folk seem to recommend S6 but I dont have enough personal use of it to verify.
- expect every response trying to provide useful info here to be drowned out by systemd brigading
The main functional difference between systemd and others is that systemd will just work. Others will require you hand tune and hand tinker with a non-mainstream Linux distro.
If your hobby is init systems by all means mess around though.
I personally quite like systemd. Unit files are clean, timers services and sockets are easy to manage etc.
Honestly it’s a non-problem. Best advice is to use what is best supported. Don’t let the extremely fringe (but loud) tiny group of systemd haters throw you off.
As someone who's created a timer, cron is much more straightforward.
Systemd has its good points, but most of that is the core functionality as a sysvinit replacement in my opinion. And it's entirely likely that at least one of the newer alternatives is a better option for that.
I think if you know cron from the start it can be easier, but it gets really annoying really fast.
Compare:
0 0 * * * /usr/bin/flock -n /tmp/myjob.lock bash -c 'sleep $((RANDOM % 3600)) && /usr/local/bin/myjob.sh'
To:
[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
RandomizedDelaySec=1h
That and things like systemd preventing overlapped delays, handing what to do if the system was down during the last cycle, built in logging and event tracking. Seeing successful vs non successful runs etc.
Once you add in those production requirements cron gets annoying fast and timers are easy.
For adding a quick thing to make something happen at a specific time, I can add a cron job in a couple of minutes. To add a timer takes creating a couple of files with syntax that took me a while to look up last time I needed it, and running a command. Then debugging. Sure, the timer has benefits, but cron jobs are still simpler.
On the bright side, there's actually a "crontab -t" command that apparently can be used to generate timer files from a crontab line, which I hadn't known of before today.
That’s because you know cron. If you knew timers equally as well they would be easier. And they let you handle the edge cases (retry, randomness, tracking, logs etc) without the need for a custom script.
Once you factor in the production edge cases I think timers are clearly easier. You get all of it for free.
As someone who didn't know anything about either a short time ago, I found cron easier to learn and use. Systemd timers look more visually clean, but the way cron works is more simple and straightforward.
I can see how for some people cron is more straightforward to learn, at least till you need to handle logging, checking for cron results, handling when the triggered event can’t happen that instance, ensuring only one instance of the triggered thing happens at once, adding time jitter, etc.
Then timers are way simpler. Timers let you create robust timed events for free. With cron you need to do all that yourself.
I can add the two files required to run a timer in systemd in a couple minutes, but writing the complex incantation to cron for having it do something that is the default in systemd is pure pain and takes me 3 hours of googling
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I find systemd easier I don't have to google the timer syntax all the time.
If you have to ask this, then its probably good idea to stick to systemd. I don't see any reason to change, other than to protest. In the process doing so you will probably encounter issues. People switch away from systemd for various reasons, but not for performance. In example they don't like who develops and controls systemd. And they don't like that it does more than just initializing the system, as bunch of other tasks are bundled into it. If all of that does not bother you, stay with systemd in my opinion.
And if you really want to switch to systemd, then I recommend to use a dedicated operating system (a distro) with that in mind. Don't forget, that systemd has many features and services, that its expected as a standard. You do not just change an init system, but replace all other components too.
Not sure if i agree with you on the performance part. There's definitely people out there that try to find the "fastest" init and some inits out there definitely boot faster. I personally don't care about it that much since it's usually a matter of a few seconds, but it is a thing.
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I use systemd it's fine and requires very little extra thought.
If you use your computer for gaming, probably best to stick to well known/supported (in theory it shouldn't matter, in practice if you are asking this you really shouldn't).
Oh good, this again!
OpenRC here, on Gentoo.
It works pretty well, fast and simple, honestly I never felt the need for SystemD.
I use the latter at work sometimes, I don't really like how it changed the way stuff works, but I have nothing against it. I just feel the extra complexity is not needed in all of my home setups (laptops, servers, etc). So it's OpenRC everywhere for me.
Dinit for desktop, s6 for server.
Btw, why is systemd even a thing for server distros?
Dinit for desktop, s6 for server.
What is wrong with s6 for desktop?
I find how it works, with the database compiling, is more suited for stable and reliable than for Desktop with always changing conditions.
Try OpenRC. It's pretty simple.
Systemd is fine. Stop getting trolled by antiquated neckbeards.
Unless you find a specific problem with something, don't go looking for reasons to fix that which is not broken.
Systemd is fine, but we should be aiming for better than fine.
That being said., there's definitely something to be said for sticking with "fine" until something else proves itself to be at least adequate with potential to be better than merely fine.
Systemd is the worst init system except for all of the others.
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I've not had any gaming issues. The only real perfmance impact is boot time (which can be better or worse than systemd). The future I hope for is dinit with turnstiled. dinit is really quite nice. But openRC also works quite nicely. Unless you wish to excessively engage with system services, none of it makes that much of a difference. The real difference in usability is in how well everything is packaged and maintained (which is why openRC on gentoo is great for example,).
If you are asking about "gaming compatibility" you should not switch to a non-systemd distro. You will end up going through extra hoops for zero benefit.
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it’s one of those cases where if you have to ask, you should probably just use systemd. anything else is outdated or a passion project based on some idealism, which i’m all for, but if you’re worried about gaming performance as a primary concern i’d put it out of your mind. for example, i’m an obsessive tinkerer that uses NixOS and Arch before that and i use nushell and Neovim and Hyprland, but i use systemd cuz i don’t see a reason not to. it’s well supported and stable.
it’s one of those cases where if you have to ask, you should probably just use systemd.
I just said the same, lol. This is my default responds to questions like these.
Except for systems with very limited resources, systemd or not won't make much of a difference in performance. A lot of tutorials on reading system logs and managing background services will assume that you are using systemd.
I've only ever used distros with systemd, not necessarily with intent, but because it was the default and well-supported. Probably won't switch unless
- Debian switches
- there's a change that breaks my workflow
- it somehow starts phoning home to a big datacenter.
i actually like systemd. i'm not sure why I wouldn't want to use it.
my one critique is pretty subjective, but i find it difficult to find simple clear documentation online about how certain syntax works and how certain tasks are accomplished.
Recently i was trying to set up a cron-job type automation to run a script every minute. I know how to do that in cron (and if i didn't, there are tons of good resources online) but i had a hell of a time figuring it out for systemd.
i'm not a power user so it's entirely likely the information was hidden in plain sight and i completely missed it
Were you looking at man systemd.timer? Pretty much everything you need is on there and it is not too complicated.
Systemd, systemd-boot, systemd-snapwn
Good stuff
I would say the big thing that might give you trouble is not the init system, but NetworkManager. NetworkManager is the... network management software (wow who woulda guessed?) used on desktop linux distros.
People have many criticisms of it, that are similar to criticisms applied to systemd (it's also Red Hat software), so I see my friends switching to iwd, wpa_supplicant, or other alternatives when trying something other than systemd as well.
It gives them a lot of pain. None of the other alternatives are as reliable as NetworkManager when it comes to connecting to Wifi. Switching away from Systemd shouldn't be too hard, but NetworkManager is much tougher to give up. Thankfully, you can run NetworkManager on non-systemd setups.
This comment is a bit misleading. NetworkManager uses iwd or wpa_supplicant as a backend, it cannot manage wifi connections on its own. You can of course use either standalone.
Runit is softly better but Systemd is perfectly fine. I would prioritize runit on very old hardware.
I use OpenRC on most of my systems, which honestly works well enough that I've never felt the need to change. SystemD at work though, which is also fine. If I have any complaints, it's just not what I'm used to.
Switching could be tricky, and may not be worth the hassle. It'd really depend on what you want to get out of it. As always though it'd be a good way to learn as you'll inevitably break something and need to figure out how to fix it.
I'm switching to GuixSD. Fortunately I have an old laptop and can build up my system there until I feel confident enough to do the real switch.
Pros I have encountered so far: booting in 20 seconds. Nice, although small, community. Scheme is cool. When the time comes, I will just need to copy two text files (and my dotfiles) to the main laptop, and my system will be (theoretically) the same, and it will be (theoretically) unfuckable.
Cons I have encountered so far: some kinks that were quick to research and fix while on an Arch-based distro, now are a bit more of a pain (but most of them in the fun way at least). For now I have given up trying to make the Thunar archive plugin work and switched to PCmanFM. Also I had to install Logseq as a flatpak. I have started very recently and I have not installed much yet so no idea about the impact on gaming.
ETA: there's !guix@lemmy.ml and !guix@infosec.pub on Lemmy.
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