s6 Alternatives

s6 is described as 'Small suite of programs for UNIX, designed for process supervision. It can be used as an init system. You can also use all its programs separately' and is an app in the os & utilities category. There are more than 10 alternatives to s6 for a variety of platforms, including Linux, BSD, Mac, FreeBSD and Docker apps. The best s6 alternative is systemd, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like s6 are OpenRC, runit, Launchd and sysvinit.

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Alternatives list

  1. systemd icon

    systemd

     16 likes
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    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

    Platforms

    • Linux
    systemd screenshot 1
     
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    2
    Comments about systemd as an Alternative to s6
    Guest
    Negative
    1

    People who use s6 are precisely the ones who want to go away from systemd.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    burnx50
    Negative
    0

    systemd is not portable, is not truly modular and is not small code-wise.

    systemd icon

    • systemd is the most popular Linux alternative to s6.

    • systemd is the most popular Open Source & free alternative to s6.

    • systemd is Free and Open Sources6 is also Free and Open Source

  2. OpenRC

     5 likes
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    OpenRC is a dependency-based init system that works with the system provided init program, normally /sbin/init. It is not a replacement for /sbin/init. OpenRC is 100% compatible with Gentoo init scripts, which means you can probably find one for the daemons you want to start in...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     

  4. runit

     7 likes
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    runit is a cross-platform Unix init scheme with service supervision, a replacement for sysvinit, and other init schemes. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, MacOSX, Solaris, and can easily be adapted to other Unix operating systems.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
     

    • runit is the most popular Mac alternative to s6.

    • runit is Free and Open Sources6 is also Free and Open Source
  5. Launchd icon

    Launchd

     3 likes
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    a free system array created by Apple inc. For BSD - including macOS as macOS is based on the Darwin kernel of BSD

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • BSD
    • PC-BSD
    • FreeBSD
    • DragonFly BSD
    • FreeNAS
    • NetBSD
    • OpenBSD
     
  6. sysvinit icon

    sysvinit

     5 likes
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    The Sysvinit package contains programs for controlling the startup, running, and shutdown of the system.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Linux
     

  7. nosh

     3 likes
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    The nosh package is a suite of system-level utilities for initializing and running a BSD or Linux system, and for managing daemons.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     

  9. finit

     2 likes
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    Finit is a small SysV init replacement with process supervision similar to that of daemontools and runit. Its focus is on small and embedded GNU/Linux systems, although fully functional on standard server and desktop installations.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Linux
    finit screenshot 1
     
  10. systemE icon

    systemE

     1 like
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    Using the tooling in this repo, I am able to boot from linux to sinit as PID1, and from there to Emacs acting as PID2 using --script mode, performing all typical rc.boot system initialization using Emacs lisp until we hit the getty.

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  11. Hummingbird Init icon

    Hummingbird Init

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    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...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Platforms

    • Linux
     

  12. nitro

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    tiny but flexible init system and process supervisor.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Docker
    • BSD
    • FreeBSD
     
10 of 10 s6 alternatives