One of the most fundamental distinctions in modern Linux systems is whether they use SystemV or Systemd. Here are the main differences between the two.
- SystemV is older, and goes all the way back to original Unix.
- SystemD is the new system that many distros are moving to.
- SystemD was designed to provide faster booting, better dependency management, and much more.
- SystemD handles startup processes through .service files.
- SystemV handles startup processes through shell scripts in /etc/init*.
Indicators
- If you’re starting and stopping things using
systemctl restart sshd, etc, you’re on a SystemD system.- If you’re starting and stopping things using
/etc/init.d/sshd start, etc, you’re on a SystemV system.Which distros use which?
Many older versions of SystemD distros were SystemV.
Here’s an incomplete but hopefully useful breakdown of which distros are on which system.
Systemd: Amazon Linux, Red Hat Enterprise, CentOS, Fedora, Debian/Ubuntu/MintRelated
an ics/scada primer
SystemV: Gentoo, Alpine, Slackware, Linux from ScratchNotes
There are other startup systems as well, such as Upstart and BSD.
