systemd 260 Released: mstack, SysV Service Scripts Removed & AI Agents Documentation
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.
Systemd 260 ships with many new changes and features including:
- Support for System V service scripts has been removed. This has long been deprecated and known to be coming down the pipe while now it's finally here. System V service scripts are no longer supported and now you must be relying on native systemd unit files.
- A new systemd-mstack command line tool has been added for dealing with the new mstack feature interactively. The new "mstack" feature allows for defining an OverlayFS by structuring the contents of a ".mstack/" directory following the specification. More details on systemd's mstack within the pull request for importd: add support for downloading OCI images for expanding systemd's containerization and sandboxing capabilities.
- The minimum Linux kernel version supported by systemd 260 is also bumped from Linux 5.4 to Linux 5.10 while recommending ideally at least Linux 5.14 or Linux 6.6 for full functionality.
- Systemd 260 introduces the new FANCY_NAME= field for os-release. The FANCY_NAME field is similar to the existing "PRETTY_NAME" but can contain ANSI sequences such as Unicode emojis. The FANCY_NAME in turn will be shown by the systemd manager, systemd-hostnamed, and hostnamectl.
- systemd-networkd now gains integration with ModemManager via the "simple connect" protocol.
- systemd-repart now supports basic integrity checks of encrypted volumes,
- systemd-portabled now runs as a user service with unprivileged users now being able to run portable services on recent versions of the Linux kernel.
- Continued the expandive use of Varlink use throughout systemd.
- systemctl gained a new "enqueue-marked" verb that calls the EnqueueMarkedJobs() D-Bus method.
- The CPUSchedulingPolicy= service now allows setting a value of "ext" for enabling the SCHED_EXT scheduler.
- A new MemoryTHP= service setting has been added to control per-service Transparent Huge Pages (THP) support.
- A new udev built-in "tpm2_id" is now available to extract vendor/model identification from connected TPM2 devices as they are probed.
- For systemd-networkd the .link files now support ScatterGather=, ScatterGatherFragmentList=, TCPECNSegmentationOffload=, TCPMangleIdSegmentationOffload=, GenericReceiveOffloadList=, GenericReceiveOffloadUDPForwarding= options for configuring Ethernet devices.
- systemd-networkd's Varlink and JSON interfaces will now report IP addresses as a human readable string in addition to the existing integer array reporting.
- systemd-vmspawn gained support for registering with systemd-machined in the user session. Systemd-vmspawn also now supports Ephemeral machines with the "--ephemeral" option.
- systemd-logind/systemd-udevd added support for the new "xaccess" concept for delegating access to specific devices to users with specially marked sessions.
- AI agents documentation is added to the systemd repository to help guide AI bots/scrapers in better understanding the systemd code, the coding style, contribution guidelines, etc. Systemd contributions do require AI disclosures like the "co-developed-by" tag on patches.
More details on the many systemd 260 changes via GitHub.
Systemd 260 ships with many new changes and features including:
- Support for System V service scripts has been removed. This has long been deprecated and known to be coming down the pipe while now it's finally here. System V service scripts are no longer supported and now you must be relying on native systemd unit files.
- A new systemd-mstack command line tool has been added for dealing with the new mstack feature interactively. The new "mstack" feature allows for defining an OverlayFS by structuring the contents of a ".mstack/" directory following the specification. More details on systemd's mstack within the pull request for importd: add support for downloading OCI images for expanding systemd's containerization and sandboxing capabilities.
- The minimum Linux kernel version supported by systemd 260 is also bumped from Linux 5.4 to Linux 5.10 while recommending ideally at least Linux 5.14 or Linux 6.6 for full functionality.
- Systemd 260 introduces the new FANCY_NAME= field for os-release. The FANCY_NAME field is similar to the existing "PRETTY_NAME" but can contain ANSI sequences such as Unicode emojis. The FANCY_NAME in turn will be shown by the systemd manager, systemd-hostnamed, and hostnamectl.
- systemd-networkd now gains integration with ModemManager via the "simple connect" protocol.
- systemd-repart now supports basic integrity checks of encrypted volumes,
- systemd-portabled now runs as a user service with unprivileged users now being able to run portable services on recent versions of the Linux kernel.
- Continued the expandive use of Varlink use throughout systemd.
- systemctl gained a new "enqueue-marked" verb that calls the EnqueueMarkedJobs() D-Bus method.
- The CPUSchedulingPolicy= service now allows setting a value of "ext" for enabling the SCHED_EXT scheduler.
- A new MemoryTHP= service setting has been added to control per-service Transparent Huge Pages (THP) support.
- A new udev built-in "tpm2_id" is now available to extract vendor/model identification from connected TPM2 devices as they are probed.
- For systemd-networkd the .link files now support ScatterGather=, ScatterGatherFragmentList=, TCPECNSegmentationOffload=, TCPMangleIdSegmentationOffload=, GenericReceiveOffloadList=, GenericReceiveOffloadUDPForwarding= options for configuring Ethernet devices.
- systemd-networkd's Varlink and JSON interfaces will now report IP addresses as a human readable string in addition to the existing integer array reporting.
- systemd-vmspawn gained support for registering with systemd-machined in the user session. Systemd-vmspawn also now supports Ephemeral machines with the "--ephemeral" option.
- systemd-logind/systemd-udevd added support for the new "xaccess" concept for delegating access to specific devices to users with specially marked sessions.
- AI agents documentation is added to the systemd repository to help guide AI bots/scrapers in better understanding the systemd code, the coding style, contribution guidelines, etc. Systemd contributions do require AI disclosures like the "co-developed-by" tag on patches.
More details on the many systemd 260 changes via GitHub.