systemd is a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-2.0)
Platforms
- Linux

Launchd is described as 'A free system array created by Apple inc. For BSD - including macOS as macOS is based on the Darwin kernel of BSD' and is an app. There are more than 10 alternatives to Launchd for a variety of platforms, including Linux, BSD, FreeBSD, OpenWrt and Docker apps. The best Launchd alternative is systemd, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Launchd are OpenRC, runit, s6 and sysvinit.
systemd is a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system.

The Sysvinit package contains programs for controlling the startup, running, and shutdown of the system.
hummingbird is an init system designed for speed. It does nothing more than start the system and stop the system by default. There are three main "runlevels", fs which is called directly after the pseudo filesystems necessary for the system to run have been mounted...