Debuting today is systemd 262-rc1 as the first test release of this next major update to this Linux init system and service manager.

Systemd 262 is bringing a variety of improvements across the board to its many different components. In going through the systemd 262-rc1 changes some of the most interesting highlights include:

- The systemd manager now embeds a basic set of unit files and will rely on them if the files cannot be loaded from the disk or in cases of container uses without installing any unit files. These are basically in-memory fall-backs for the reboot and shutdown targets, systemd-poweroff service, and multi-user target.

- Systemd can now be built as a single statically linked PID 1/executor binary for very small containers.

- Systemd's NUMAPolicy= option now accepts preferred-map and weighted-interleave values.

- Service units now have the LUOSession= option to have systemd create [1]Live Update Orchestrator sessions. There is also other systemd integration improvements around the Live Update Orchestrator.

- The systemd-firstboot now supports systemd.firstboot=headless for suppressing all interactive prompts with non-interactive auto-configuration for handling unattended installations.

- systemd-coredump now supports the kernel coredump socket protocol introduced in Linux 6.17.

- New FSCRYPT-backed home directories with systemd-homed now default to FSCRYPT v2 policies.

- systemd-cryptenroll gained a first-boot enrollment wizard.

- systemd-vmspawn's "--coco=" option now supports Intel TDX in addition to previously supporting AMD SEV-SNP for confidential computing options.

- New dm-clone boot integration.

The lengthy list of all the systemd 262-rc1 changes in full can be found via [2]GitHub .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Live+Update+Orchestrator

[2] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/releases/tag/v262-rc1