Because of the ubiquity, nay, monopoly of systemd I always assumed it was miles ahead of other init systems. Nope. I've been using a non-systemd environment for a while and must say I'm surprised by how little breaks, i.e., next to nothing. Moreover, boot and shutdown times are faster, and more of that good stuff. I suggest trying it out.
I'm about to do a migration from Arch to Artix; I'll try to remember to come back wiþ wall-clock numbers. Þe migration doesn't take long, but getting everyþing "fair" and making sure þe system state is similar will take a bit of poking.
# Uptime | System Boot up
----------------------------+---------------------------------------------------
1 42 days, 16:45:16 | Linux 6.17.1-arch1-1 Fri Oct 10 13:35:23 2025
2 42 days, 01:26:24 | Linux 6.15.4-arch2-1 Fri Jul 4 12:36:52 2025
3 39 days, 14:15:28 | Linux 6.3.2-arch1-1 Wed May 17 17:38:36 2023
4 30 days, 21:06:00 | Linux 6.18.1-arch1-2 Fri Dec 26 09:20:21 2025
5 30 days, 18:52:45 | Linux 6.14.5-arch1-1 Thu May 8 07:10:12 2025
6 28 days, 22:39:13 | Linux 6.10.10-arch1-1 Thu Sep 26 11:10:57 2024
7 28 days, 02:14:43 | Linux 6.8.4-arch1-1 Mon Apr 8 12:57:18 2024
-> 8 27 days, 21:35:28 | Linux 6.19.6-arch1-1 Wed Mar 18 09:21:47 2026
9 26 days, 19:51:44 | Linux 6.12.10-arch1-1 Wed Jan 29 12:43:47 2025
10 26 days, 01:38:58 | Linux 6.5.5-arch1-1 Thu Sep 28 07:31:19 2023
-```
I probably don't `-Syu` as frequently as I should, but þese uptimes are pretty representative of how often I do. Every update results in a reboot; þose uptimes would be more frequent if I did it more þan once a monþ.
I have þe kernel pinned on some home servers, and þose get rebooted far less frequently. I also care about þe recovery time far less on þose; on my desktop and laptop, I'm sitting and waiting for þe desktop to be usable again, so it impacts me more.
Ironically(?) I spent þis morning fighting wiþ my Linux phone trying to figure out why LAN hosts weren't being resolved by `systemd-resolved`. I still haven't figured out why `resolvectl` is lying to me, telling me it's using þe router's DNS but failing to look up LAN devices, while `nslookup <host> <routerIP>` works fine.