Daniel Cordova

Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

Posted on: 2026-06-24
Modified on: 2026-06-24

Categories: Linux
Tags: Debian , ARM , Systemd , OpenRC

TL;DR

I'm not a fan of systemd but I'm not against its use either. AKA if it works for you then it's ok.

My case though is more of a mix between curiosity and discomfort. Curiosity of how init systems works and discomfort of how systemd integrates things or new features.I'm aware that it works well for most of its use cases (I've been using it since its early days) and also I agree that systemd breaks all KISS philosphy principles, but other projects do it as well, right?.

So why the discomfort?

Well it began a while ago, when I was reading some news of how the project started to grab more and more responsibilities that belongs to other projects and how some prod deployments failed so bad because of a breaking change that could've been prevented if that responsibility wasn't part of systemd. Nothing too worrying for me, in any case the first real kick of discomfort came when age verification law was cooking and my innocent thought was Ok, Windows and Mac will integrate it, but Linux and other OpenSource OSs and projects will fight against this ridiculous law!!.

Then my next thought was Wait what?, the law is not even approved on some states/countries and systemd already integrated it, why?, what happened with the usual "fight" against non-sense laws?.

I got pretty mad about it, I know, I'm not a contributor of that project and it's only an optional field but it didn't feel right at all. All the hate that the dev got wasn't right either.

Then the second kick of discomfort came while I was reading tech news and I found this one systemd integrates sys-install systemd integrates it's own "system installer" called 'systemd-sysinstall' among other things.

All right, one thing is to have tons of responsibilities for an init system. But another one is going from being PID 1 to being the sys installer too, and no matter how you want to sell that idea there's an ocean of difference on what you can call "Init system responsibilities" and "Systemd's weird responsibilities and wishes". So the curiosity entered the game and decided to try to install OpenRC on my Thinkpad X13s Snapdragon which I use for home hacking, testing stuff, etc. Laptop is running Debian BTW.

Installation

Installing OpenRC in Debian Testing is not hard but isn't a trivial operation either. I faced a few challenges and issues regarding to how apt-get and apt works with essential packages

Challenges

I faced two major challenges while trying to install OpenRC at the same time as uninstalling Systemd.

apt-get can't uninstall systemd at all and only errors out that is not possible
apt shows a better error of why it can't uninstall systemd

After digging a bit about it and reading a few pages on the internet, I learned that i need to pass an argument to apt thus it can uninstall an essential package. So for uninstalling it'll be something like this:

sudo apt purge --allow-remove-essential systemd

Don't copy and paste it yet.

Before deleting systemd, need to be sure that OpenRC will be installed, to so the command will be

sudo apt purge --allow-remove-essential systemd && sudo apt install openrc sysvinit-core

That command will uninstall systemd and install some dependencies that might not be needed in the future.

Issues

After installing OpenRC and uninstalling systemd, system didn't boot properly, so I had to go to recovery mode and hit Ctrl-D to allow me to fix the error.

Issue itself was that while uninstalling systemd somehow how OpenRC was removed too or not installed at all. So I went to recovery mode, then I connected to my wifi network and installed OpenRC again with apt install openrc sysvinit-core.

So far so good. But neither Battery Status nor Audio worked. I knew that battery status was due to the kernel's regression I faced while installing Debian Testing on the laptop. Thus I converted my systemd service to a script and put it in /etc/init.d/, thus OpenRC can start it or enable it. It worked. I think audio need a different service related to pipewire and wireplumber. I'll test it later on.

Systemd Service:

[Unit]
Description=Start Qualcomm remoteprocs (SLPI/ADSP/CDSP)
DefaultDependencies=no
After=initrd-root-fs.target local-fs.target
Before=sysinit.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo start > /sys/class/remoteproc/remoteproc0/state; echo start > /sys/class/remoteproc/remoteproc1/state; echo start > /sys/class/remoteproc/remoteproc2/state'

[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target

OpenRC Script

#!/bin/sh

echo start > /sys/class/remoteproc/remoteproc0/state;
echo start > /sys/class/remoteproc/remoteproc1/state;
echo start > /sys/class/remoteproc/remoteproc2/state;

I need to convert it into a proper OpenRC script

Future

Currently OpenRC does the work. I'm not sure if it'll be my default Init system for the comming ages, but I feel that my experiment was successful.

I'll continue testing OpenRC on my "Home Hacking Thinkpad" for the next days, maybe weeks, and if I feel comfortable enough I'll migrate my work Thinkpad (which runs Debian Testing too and has the same dotfiles in it) to OpenRC as well.

Even though changing Init System on a working Linux installation has its quirks and challenges and might not be the best idea, I'm happy with my current results.

If this works for you too, then I'll be happier to know that you're ditching systemd in favor of OpenRC as well, aside from jokes, in the end that's part of the unix philosophy to use whatever you want and whatever works for you.

Happy Hacking!!

Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

Installation

Challenges

Issues

Future

Links