Initng is a full replacement of the UNIX System V

UNIX System V

Unix System V, commonly abbreviated SysV , is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by American Telephone & Telegraph and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, termed Releases 1, 2, 3 and 4...

 init

Init

init is a program for Unix-based computer operating systems that spawns all other processes. It runs as a daemon and typically has PID 1. The boot loader starts the kernel and the kernel starts init...

, the first process spawned by the kernel in Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 computer operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s, which is responsible for the initialization of every other process. Initng's website calls initng "The next generation init system".

Purpose

Many implementations of init (including Sysvinit used in many Linux distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...

s) start processes in a pre-determined order, and only start a process once the previous process finishes its initialization. Initng starts a process as soon as all of its dependencies are met. It can start several processes in parallel. Initng is designed to significantly increase the speed of booting a Unix-compatible system by starting processes asynchronously. Initng's supporters claim that it also gives the user more statistics and control over the system.

Development

Initng is still beta. Despite that, it was chosen as the default init system for Pingwinek, Enlisy, Berry Linux

Berry Linux

Berry Linux is a Live CD Linux distribution that has English and Japanese support. Berry Linux is based on and is compatible with Fedora 15 packages. The distribution is primarily focused on use as a Live CD, but it can also be installed to a live USB drive...

 and Bee.

Also there are packages for many distributions such as Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

, Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

 and Fedora

Fedora (operating system)

Fedora is a RPM-based, general purpose collection of software, including an operating system based on the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat...

, as well as ebuild

Ebuild

An ebuild is a specialized bash script format created by the Gentoo Linux project for use in its Portage software management system, which automates compilation and installation procedures for software packages....

s for Gentoo

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...

 and spells for Source Mage.

Contrary to other similar projects, it features a portable and flexible code base, more suited for embedded usage, and has been already ported to other operating systems like Haiku

Haiku (operating system)

Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....

 and FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

.

Initng was created by Jimmy Wennlund. The current maintainer and project lead is Ismael Luceno.

See also

• einit
  EINIT
  eINIT is a replacement for sysvinit, an init system used on Unix-based operating systems. eINIT is designed with speed in mind. Many testers claim that their systems boot up in 30 seconds, whereas sysvinit takes around two minutes to boot....
  
  
• init
  Init
  init is a program for Unix-based computer operating systems that spawns all other processes. It runs as a daemon and typically has PID 1. The boot loader starts the kernel and the kernel starts init...
  
  
• Upstart
  Upstart
  Upstart is an event-based replacement for the traditional init daemon — the method by which several Unix-like computer operating systems perform tasks when the computer is started. It was written by Scott James Remnant, a former employee of Canonical Ltd....
  
  
• Launchd
  Launchd
  launchd is a unified, open-source service management framework for starting, stopping and managing daemons, applications, processes, and scripts...
  
  
• Service Management Facility
  Service Management Facility
  Service Management Facility is a feature of the Solaris operating system that creates a supported, unified model for services and service management on each Solaris system and replaces init.d scripts. SMF introduces:...