s6
Shares rank 6 of 9 init systems by recommenders
Free process supervision suite in the daemontools lineage that avoids systemd's downsides. Critics find it complex and not configurable through simple config files.
Free process supervision suite in the daemontools lineage that avoids systemd's downsides. Critics find it complex and not configurable through simple config files.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not 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.
- 4.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Follows daemontools-style design lineage
“looks like whoever wrote this is a fan of the DJB style, as am I”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “S6 is a process supervision suite, like daemontools” “daemontools, runit, s6 solve that problem”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Complex tooling frustrates users
“every time I see the existence of s6-rc-compile I get heated”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster (2014)” “the complexity was hidden away from me”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster (2014)”
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
8 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The description of that tool opens with a circular definition.”
“LFS could have chosen a simpler init than the domain standard, like runit or s6-init”
“daemontools, runit, s6 solve that problem”
“the complexity was hidden away from me”
“every time I see the existence of s6-rc-compile I get heated”
“looks like whoever wrote this is a fan of the DJB style, as am I”
“runit, s6, and OpenRC don't have the downsides of systemd, but they also only cover a subset of its features”
“s6 is in the works from what I hear, but not configurable via simple config files yet”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.