systemd News Archives

The stable release of systemd 261 is quickly approaching for being found in H2'2026 Linux distributions.

The first release candidate of systemd 261 is out today and it includes yet more features for this Linux init system and service manager.

Systemd 260 was just released as the newest stable version of this widely-used Linux init system and service manager. Systemd 260 brings yet more features to this critical open-source project and to be incorporated into H1'2026 Linux distributions.

The first release candidate of systemd 260 arrived in late February with the new mstack feature, dropping System V service scripts support, and other changes. A week after that systemd 260-rc2 released with a few more changes and now another week later is systemd 260-rc3.

Last week marked the release of systemd 260-rc1 with a new "mstack" feature, a new "FANCY_NAME" field for os-release, dropping System V service script support, and other changes. Out today is systemd 260-rc2 release with more changes in further working its way toward a stable release for empowering 2026 Linux distributions.

The first release candidate of systemd 260 is now available for testing. Systemd 260 finally does away with System V service scripts support. Also notable to systemd 260 is the work around the new "mstack" feature.

Systemd founder and lead developer Lennart Poettering announced the creation of a new company called Amutable. The Amutable company being led by Chris Kühl (CEO), Christian Brauner (CTO) and Lennart Poettering (Chief Engineer) will be focused on delivering determinism and verifiable integrity to Linux systems.

Systemd 259 is out as the newest feature release for this widely-used Linux init system and service manager. Yes, there are more features in tow for this systemd release to top off 2025.

Released a short time ago was systemd 259-rc1 as the first test release toward this next version of this dominant Linux init system and service manager.

Systemd today finally merged support for building against and using the musl libc library. This is a win for Linux distributions like postmarketOS, Alpine Linux, and others that use musl by default as their standard C library or offer it as an option.

ISD is an independent interactive systemd management tool with a nice text user interface "TUI" for dealing with systemd units and other systemd functionality. Out today is isd 0.6 with many fixes and other refinements to this helper for administering systemd-backed Linux systems.

Systemd 258 is out today as stable as the latest major feature release to this Linux init system and service manager.

As what might be its last test release before declaring the stable release, systemd 258-rc4 was released this week as the latest stepping stone for this dominant Linux init system and service manager.

Systemd 258 is nearing release with many big changes to this init system / service manager. Systemd 258-rc3 was released today with some last minute fixes while also now adding that the next release, systemd 259, will face increased Linux system requirements.

Released two weeks ago was systemd 258-rc1 with many changes throughout its massive codebase. Out today is a second release candidate of the forthcoming systemd 258.

Systemd 257 debuted last December and now finally systemd 258 is preparing to roll out... Systemd 258-rc1 was issued today as the first test release toward this next major release. It's a big one with more than 260 changes noted in the announcement, including multiple new tools and other additions.

A few weeks ago I wrote about ISD as a new open-source project for interactively managing systemd that aims to be more user intuitive especially for those that aren't veteran Linux server administrators. ISD has continued evolving and out today is ISD v0.5 with the latest enhancements for better managing systemd.

Systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering has been working on adding the ability to let systemd boot directly into a disk image downloaded via HTTP within the initial RAM disk (initrd) during the Linux boot process.

ISD is a new open-source project aiming to provide a more "Interactive SystemD" for simplifying management of Linux systems with systemd.

While systemd has been around for a decade and a half, it's showing no signs of slowing down for driving new innovations to Linux for this system and service manager.

Systemd had another busy year working on many new features from run0 as a sudo alternative to making systemd-homed more robust, increasing Varlink use, systemd-boot continuing to gain more traction, and more.

Coincidentally coming one day after the GNU Shepherd 1.0 service manager release, the systemd 257 release is now shipping as the newest feature release for this widely-used service manager / init system to Linux systems. Systemd 257 brings a number of new features and improvements for powering late 2024 and early 2025 Linux distributions.

Systemd 257 is nearing release as the next major feature release for this widely-used init system and software suite on Linux systems.

Released last week was systemd 257-rc1 while succeeding that already is systemd 257-rc2 and it comes with a new tool: systemd-keyutil.

Systemd 257-rc1 is out today as a big feature update for this release that brings many new features and other refinements to this key piece of the Linux operating system stack.

Open-source developer Zeeshan Ali Khan presented at last week's systemd "All Systems Go" developer conference on busd as a new D-Bus broker written in the Rust programming language.

Taking place this week in Berlin was systemd's annual "All Systems Go" developer conference. Among the interesting talks was Lennart Poettering talking about the ongoing challenges of D-Bus for inter-process communication (IPC) with systemd and how they are looking at Varlink for IPC needs moving forward.

In light of the CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage/disaster that has been wreaking havoc on corporate Windows systems around the world since Friday, systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering pointed out how such a situation on Linux systems could be averted by leveraging systemd's Automatic Boot Assessment functionality.

For those running the command "systemd-tmpfiles --purge" and think that this command just deletes your temporary files, think again and watch out. In reality it will delete all files and directories created by a tmpfiles.d entry... Including the /home that is created by systemd-tmpfiles' home.conf. With users being bitten in recent days by this behavior when they were just expecting tmp files to be removed, systemd 256.1 is now available and does have a change to avoid inadvertently deleting your all-important home directory.

Systemd 256 is out today as the latest major feature update to this integral component to modern Linux distributions.

It looks like systemd 256 will officially debut as stable in the near future with systemd 256-rc3 being released today and not tacking on any new features compared to the prior release candidates.

The first release candidate of systemd 256 came just under one month ago with new features like run0 as the new sudo alternative, a new "systemd-vpick" binary, importctl as another new tool, Zboot kernel support with systemd ukify, systemd-homed improvements, and much more. Systemd 256-rc2 is out this evening with a few more features and other fixes collected over the past several weeks.

Overnight systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering wrote on Mastodon around systemd's newest effort: run0 as a sudo-like command.

Systemd 256-rc1 is available this evening and it comes with many new features and improvements to existing features. It's a big one.

As part of our various year-end articles, here is a look back at the most popular systemd stories on Phoronix for the past year.

Ahead of the holidays systemd 255 has debuted as stable and comes with systemd-bsod as a "Blue Screen of Death" service capable of displaying full-screen error messages on Linux. There's also a new tool, systemd-vmspawn, that can be used for spawning virtual machines.

Systemd 255-rc1 is out this morning and it's packed with even more features for this dominant Linux init system and a growing list of other system utilities. Systemd 255 even is introducing systemd-bsod as a "Blue Screen of Death" for displaying important error messages during boot failure, systemd-vmspawn as a new tool to spawn virtual machines, and other new features.

Lennart Poettering has been working on a new systemd feature called systemd-storagetm that is inspired by the Apple macOS "Target Disk Mode" feature.

After a hiatus due to the pandemic, systemd's All Systems Go conference is returning next week to Berlin.

Systemd 254 is out today in time for appearing in the late-2023 Linux distribution releases.

Earlier this month brought the release of systemd 254-rc1 with a new soft-reboot mechanism, officially deprecating System V scripts, a new systemd-battery-check process that runs at boot to check any system battery level status, and various other changes. On Friday systemd 254-rc2 was released with a few more changes.

Out today is the first release candidate of systemd 254. This systemd update is another big feature release with new settings, new components, and many additions to existing systemd components. Plus there is some deprecations and breakage ahead for future releases.

After going through several release candidates the past few weeks, systemd 253 has officially shipped today as the newest version of this init system and service manager for Linux systems.

Systemd 253 is gearing up for release while out today is the third and possibly final release candidate.

Following last month's release of systemd 253-rc1 with many new features and changes in tow, out today is a second release candidate and is piling yet more features into this Linux system and service manager.

Systemd developers today released their first release candidate of the upcoming systemd 253 feature release, which introduces a new "ukify" tool and has many other changes for this dominant Linux init system.

With the end of the year upon us, it's interesting and fun running GitStats on various prominent open-source projects and looking at some of the key growth metrics over the past year. Here is a look at how systemd's Git activity has paced in 2022 compared to years prior.

Systemd developers are celebrating Halloween by releasing systemd 252.

Systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering has written a lengthy blog post entitled a "brave new trusted boot world" in which he outlines current issues with the Linux boot process and how there is a trajectory for providing the Linux boot experience with more robustness, simplicity, and trust.

Two weeks ago was the release of systemd 252-rc1 with introducing the new systemd-measure command, a "support-ended" taint flag for OS images detected past their end-of-support date, and a wide variety of other changes and feature additions. Systemd 252-rc2 is now available for additional testing with various fixes plus a few more additions.