What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?
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.
Maybe I should not have said it in the way I did. I should have said “usually people switch…”. From what I see, performance is not the main attraction for “most” people who changes it. I wonder how much of difference it makes and how people measure it.
do you think you’ll continue to use sysemd once it start embracing gov’t id requirements to use it?
i ask because i hold a similar position, but it’s adoption of the first step towards this end goal has me wondering if i should start looking for an alternative.
The developers of systemd said they will never support that, so I think its safe for now. Also why do you think systemd would “require” a government id check? systemd is just providing the functionality; it is the distribution / operating system that implements all the functionality. So if an operating system does implement it, I might find a different operating system, regardless of if it uses systemd or not. That is true for any other component too, not just systemd.
a government id requirement is the next logical step after its needful framework has been built as a result of the age verification laws that have already taken affect in the uk and california.
and because it’s a government law, it’s out of the systemd developer’s hands. linux is influenced heavily (if not outright controlled) by corporations like red hat who have to abide by the law if they want to continue operating and, in a likewise fashion, the systemd maintainers must also comport themselves if they want systemd to remain the dejour method that linux uses to initiate itself in those ecospheres.
That is speculation. And as said, its not the decision of systemd to implement that, it is a decision of the operating system / distribution. I live outside the areas of those laws. What the next logical step is, is open to interpretation and that is not what I am discussing here.
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.
I use systemd it’s fine and requires very little extra thought.
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.
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.
No, it’s not fine. But I agree with the last sentence.
Try OpenRC. It’s pretty simple.
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
I have heard that systemd is “heavier” than alternatives. I haven’t experienced that. I don’t think gaming is impacted at all.
I use openrc on Gentoo for desktop. It requires some script hooks for things that expect systemd, but works quite well. I don’t pay attention to it much, unless I’m writing an init script.
I’m using shepherd right now and i’ve used runit in the past. Shepherd is definitely a beast of its own since it’s configured in guile scheme, but in the case of runit it just runs schell scripts and the commands are for the most part just as simple as systemd. I’ve seen people claim that some programs won’t work without systemd but i’ve never come across something that didn’t work.
Why you want to switch from systemd? I hate how complex it is, this age verification and that they’re trying make make Linux more Windows like, but in that bad way (it’s created by people who prefer Windows over Linux so yeah). But if your installation is working and don’t have troubles then don’t switch.
Switching to “alteratives” shouldn’t affect gaming compatibility at all, cause you don’t need any daemons to play your games (maybe if you want to host server or use vpn for multiplayer). Remember that systemd is not init system, but software suite which provide init system also. I think that systemd might use more resources than other solutions. Some software can rely on systemd, but when are you installing program from your system repositories it will work cause it’s prepared to work if you’re using solid Linux distro. I had situation on MX Linux that I downloaded Mullvad VPN from Mullvad’s Debian repositories and it wasn’t working, because of no systemd. Then I discovered that MX Linux have Mullvad VPN in own repositories and it worked. On every non-systemd Linux distro you can install elogind which is usually preinstalled and it also care about compatibility layer.
If we speak just about other init systems try what you like. My favourite is runit, but the most popular alternatives are OpenRC (this is what I usually using, even right now on laptop and PC) and sysvinit. sysvinit was terrible experience for me on Devuan, on MX Linux okay; OpenRC is just okay, but I have few reasons to hate it.
Systemd is used by the most of people so if something will screw up more people can help you and there’s more tutorials on internet, also sometimes you need to tinker more on other init systems from my experience as systemd is more handholding. But using different init system will give important experience and learn you more how your system works.
If you’re looking for non-systemd distros check MX Linux which is the really good system, also for not advanced users who just want to run their games. It’s using sysvinit and you have GUI tools to control daemons.
