What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?
What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?
The main functional difference between systemd and others is that systemd will just work. Others will require you hand tune and hand tinker with a non-mainstream Linux distro.
If your hobby is init systems by all means mess around though.
I personally quite like systemd. Unit files are clean, timers services and sockets are easy to manage etc.
Honestly it’s a non-problem. Best advice is to use what is best supported. Don’t let the extremely fringe (but loud) tiny group of systemd haters throw you off.
As someone who’s created a timer, cron is much more straightforward.
Systemd has its good points, but most of that is the core functionality as a sysvinit replacement in my opinion. And it’s entirely likely that at least one of the newer alternatives is a better option for that.
I think if you know cron from the start it can be easier, but it gets really annoying really fast.
Compare:
0 0 * * * /usr/bin/flock -n /tmp/myjob.lock bash -c 'sleep $((RANDOM % 3600)) && /usr/local/bin/myjob.sh'To:
[Timer] OnCalendar=daily RandomizedDelaySec=1hThat and things like systemd preventing overlapped delays, handing what to do if the system was down during the last cycle, built in logging and event tracking. Seeing successful vs non successful runs etc.
Once you add in those production corner cases cron gets annoying fast and timers are easy.