this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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I didn’t use Linux two decades ago (I started on a systemd distro a few years ago), and the init system I use (runit on Void) is both simple to use and boots faster than any systemd-based distro I used; which is what I personally care about. I never used any “advanced” features of systemd other than timers and user services, and these have many alternatives.
I think systemd is fine, and has generally proven itself as reliable, but that doesn’t mean the current alternatives have no merit.
I would be interested in understanding how it boots faster considering that systemd init is fairly small and the features of runit is parallel process starting, which is also something that systemd provides.
Are you sure it's not just that void itself has less crap to load?
This feels like I'm going to have to set up a couple of Arch installs to compare for myself.
I also had a Debian setup for a while with SysV init which also had a faster startup than systemd (on the same exact setup otherwise).
That Debian install would actually startup faster than my current Void setup, though I wouldn’t recommend it.
I would be interested in understanding how the hell it's such a big issue, honestly. Even if we generously assume that runit boots 5 times as fast as systemd, on modern systems it makes like a few seconds difference, which... who cares? Who goes around constantly rebooting their shit so many times a day that those 5 seconds they save per boot add up to any significant amount of time?
Calm down, I only said I was curious!
I'm on Fedora so I'm unlikely to be switching from systemd for my main system, I have very little interest in switching init's and I'll use the one that comes with my distro but people talking it up makes me wonder.
As for rebooting, my couch gaming system gets started and shut down for each session because it could be days/weeks between use so shaving 10 seconds off the start up time is an interesting concept. Although I could probably do better just replacing the grub delay that HoloISO added for some unknown reason.
Why are you so invested in systemd that you have to project your values on other people?
Besides, different approaches can be educational and solutions to improve performance can always be reincorporated into systemd to improve life for everyone.
If you don’t care, good for you; I do care though.
And you can generously assume whatever you want but with systemd I sometimes (across multiple OS’s and machines) had random boots which took way over 5x my current boot time (not to mention extremely long shutdowns, more than 2-3 minutes sometimes compared to less than 2-3 seconds now).
I know this stuff can be analyzed and fixed with tools provided by the systemd project, but I never had to fix anything with runit.