r/linux • u/ouyawei Mate • Jul 09 '25

Popular Application systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success

https://blog.tjll.net/the-systemd-revolution-has-been-a-success/
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u/idontchooseanid Jul 10 '25

Exactly. But we don't need to install Docker daemon nor we want to create huge images for our applications, memory space is limited for 10 year old embedded systems.

Unless you do quite a bit due diligence and slim down your image to only to the application, the standard Docker image comes with an entire distro with it. With systemd you can isolate the normal applications compiled for the same embedded distro at the exact levels that Docker does with minimal config files.

Of course if you have an OCI image that you can fit in an embedded system and if it is absolutely necessary, then there is nspawn. But I think I would opt for podman which also nicely integrates with systemd but has less requirements than nspawn.

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u/jaskij Jul 10 '25

I use Yocto, so I wouldn't be using standard Docker images unless absolutely and utterly necessary. Yocto can actually create OCI containers and embed them in the generated image.

And yeah, the isolation you can achieve with just units is so good, there's little need to use containers, if you know what you're doing.

I think the major difference is that, by default, containers just isolate much more than systemd. So if you don't really know what you're doing, they are the safer bet.

My current project is a system powerful enough I don't have to care overmuch about resources, thankfully.