cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36342010
Nitro is a tiny process supervisor that also can be used as pid 1 on Linux.
There are four main applications it is designed for:
- As init for a Linux machine for embedded, desktop or server purposes
- As init for a Linux initramfs
- As init for a Linux container (Docker/Podman/LXC/Kubernetes)
- As unprivileged supervision daemon on POSIX systems
Nitro is configured by a directory of scripts, defaulting to /etc/nitro (or the first command line argument).
IMHO systemd tries to go above the requirements of an init system and behave more like an abstraction layer to the OS, in the same way Linux is an abstraction layer to the hardware. Would we be better with a micro kernel, instead of the Linux beast? Maybe, but we do all use it and it is mostly a standard nowadays. Same for systemd. Could it be simpler? Sure! But having a standard abstraction layer at user level for all distros is excellent for an app developer. And, AFAIK, it should be possible, albeit less verified, to disable most features and use alternative implementations.
Totally fair and exactly part of my original disdain. I was happy with SysV and Upstart. But here we are and I’ve got things to do. ;)
I hated repackaging all my software for systemd. lol. We waited as long as we could before eating that pie.