Linux From Scratch Drops SysVinit Support

Feb 10, 2026

LFS will no longer support SysVinit.

Linux From Scratch (LFS), along with its followup Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS), was one of the few projects that still offered SysVinit system support, but both are now abandoning SysVinit in favor of systemd.

In a recent post to a Linux From Scratch forum, Bruce Dubbs declared, "There are two reasons for this decision. The first reason is workload. No one working on LFS is paid. We rely completely on volunteers. In LFS, there are 88 packages. In BLFS, there are over 1,000. The volume of changes from upstream is overwhelming the editors." Dubbs continues, "In this release cycle that started on the 1st of September until now, there have been 70 commits to LFS and 1,155 commits to BLFS (and counting). When making package updates, many packages need to be checked for both System V and systemd. When preparing for release, all packages need to be checked for each init system."

In other words, there's just too much work involved to keep three different init packages for LFS.

Rightfully so, Dubbs also mentions that both KDE and Gnome are starting to build requirements that depend on features from systemd (such as the new Plasma login tool). 

In the future, the LFS/BLFS 12.4 System V books will continue to be available. For the most part, newer versions of packages in those books will be able to be built with the instructions from there, but will not be tested by the LFS editors.

Potentially, this could be the end of SysVinit for all independent distributions, until the developers of those distributions take the time to build SysVinit into their systems without the help of LFS. Since systemd has become the de facto standard for the overwhelming majority of distributions, this decision makes sense on paper. Of course, there will be those who claim LFS has made the wrong decision.
 
 

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