Some systemd alternatives of which I recently became aware: nosh: a daemontools-style init replacement, with Debian Wheezy packaging, BSD compatibility, and systemd conversion. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwares/nosh.html uselessd: a systemd fork that attempts to drop the more invasive features, such as the binary journal and incorporation of udev, mount, cron, ntp, dhcpcd... http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/