Thoughts about non-systemd init systems?

Hello! As the topic suggests, I am curious what are opinions of using init systems such as runit, openrc, dinit, s6, etc.
I am currently using Artix Linux with dinit and have not encountered any issues apart from not havaing any pipewire scripts. (Workaround but I just start them via my wm)
I have heard that creating systems with a different init is very hard for the developers, but I am curious why? I understand that you cannot switch init systems / it’s very very hard to do so, as such, packaging each init system takes time on the development end. I tried to search why but couldn’t find any information on it.

There are several reasons. Here are a few:

  • systemd is a system management solution, not only an init system
  • Increasingly, software relies on systemd
  • Since services include scripts to start and manage them, supporting more than one requires shipping each one with more than one option which is a packaging nightmare

Speaking personally, after getting used to systemd as it exists in 2023, I have no interest in alternatives unless they provide the full breadth of functionality that systemd offers. Since the whole point of alternatives that they don’t do that, I don’t have much interest in non-systemd distros.

systemd has made it vastly easier to manage for me and I would not want to go backwards.

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I see, thank you very much!

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