Init has a crucial role on any Unix or Linux computer: The init service, which is often referred to as a "daemon-starting daemon," handles the process of launching, managing, and terminating other services running on the system. Linux has depended on the venerable SysVinit for most of its history, but a few years ago, many Linux developers began to grow restless with System V. The basic argument was that SysVinit, which had served the community well for many years, was inefficient and out of step with contemporary hardware and programming practice.

A pair of competing alternatives eventually emerged: Upstart, which was backed by Canonical, and systemd, which began as a Red Hat project. The two new inits competed for market share and public awareness for a few years, but gradually, Linux distros began to express a preference for systemd. In 2014, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that even Ubuntu would migrate to systemd instead of Upstart, which left systemd as the last alternative to System V.

In recent years, most major Linux distros have adopted systemd as their init system, including Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, Arch, and Ubuntu. The discussion of whether to replace System V with systemd was particularly intense and polarizing at Debian. The Debian project, which is the largest community-driven Linux distribution, is particularly influential because it serves as a basis for several other Linux distros.

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