dinit
Shares rank 6 of 9 init systems by recommenders
Portable init system with systemd-style features, a focused scope and simple service files.
Portable init system with systemd-style features, a focused scope and simple service files.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Systemd-like features in smaller scope
“it combines a lot of the nice advantages of systemd with a finite scope and being portable across OSs”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “From Azure Functions to FreeBSD” “The best challenger to systemd in terms of feature parity is probably dinit”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “Runit Linux: Complete Guide to Unix Init Scheme with Service Supervision” “I use dinit instead and that is what I would have liked systemd to be”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great” Focused, lean scope
“It's focused but it has dependencies and the services are defined by a DSL rather than startup scripts.”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “Runit Linux: Complete Guide to Unix Init Scheme with Service Supervision” “dinit is a good service manager that doesn't feel obligated to reinvent the kitchen sink”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “Systemd Linger” Simple service file format
“It has a simple and useful service file format that's trivial to use”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Devuan – Debian Without Systemd” “dinit is far easier to understand than sysvinit”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Linux from Scratch Ends SysVinit Support”
Other init systems people recommend
The four most recommended other init systems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 9 init systems, rankedWhat people said
11 of the 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“dinit is a good service manager that doesn't feel obligated to reinvent the kitchen sink”
“I prefer the approach of 'dinit'”
“mostly because of dinit's parallel initialization”
“Dinit is a good choice there”
“dinit is far easier to understand than sysvinit”
“it's C++ that just works - I can stop start, list and reload services with reliability.”
“It has a simple and useful service file format that's trivial to use”
“I use dinit instead and that is what I would have liked systemd to be”
“it combines a lot of the nice advantages of systemd with a finite scope and being portable across OSs”
“It's focused but it has dependencies and the services are defined by a DSL rather than startup scripts.”
“The best challenger to systemd in terms of feature parity is probably dinit”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.