Init Systems
An init system is PID 1 — the first process started by the kernel during boot. It is responsible for initializing the system: mounting filesystems, starting networking, launching services, and managing the display manager. All other processes descend from PID 1.
Antergos NeXT ships with Dinit as its default init system. The pages below describe the major init systems available on Artix Linux. To switch init on an installed system, see Changing init.
Available init systems
| Init | Philosophy | Complexity | Speed | Used by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dinit | Modern, dependency-based, parallel | Medium | Very fast | Antergos NeXT (default), Chimera Linux, Artix |
| OpenRC | Traditional, modular, shell-script-based | Low | Fast | Gentoo, Artix, Devuan, Alpine |
| Runit | Minimal, supervision-based, Unix-like | Low | Very fast | Void Linux, AntiX |
| S6 | Full supervision suite, modular | Medium-High | Very fast | Artix, embedded systems |
Shared characteristics
- No systemd — all four are independent implementations
- Service files — services are configured via files in
/etc/ - Runlevels — groups of services that start together under different conditions
- Plain-text logging — logs are written to
/var/log/
Comparison
| Aspect | Dinit | OpenRC | Runit | S6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service format | Declarative .conf files | Shell scripts | Executable run scripts | run scripts + s6-rc database |
| Dependencies | Automatic | Manual (need/use) | None | Automatic (s6-rc) |
| Supervision | Optional | No | Yes (runsv) | Yes (s6-supervise) |
| Logging | None built-in | syslog | Per-service (optional) | Per-service (s6-log) |
| Init script | None needed | /etc/init.d/ | /etc/runit/1/2/3 | s6-linux-init |
Switching init after installation
See Changing init for step-by-step instructions on switching to OpenRC, Runit, or S6 on an installed system.