Firing the Babysitter: Why Daemonless Moved On From s6

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 15:00:00 -0500

In April I wrote a whole post defending s6 as the init system for daemonless images. I called it the most efficient, C-based babysitter in the business, and ended with a challenge:

s6 is the right init system for FreeBSD containers.

If you disagree — different init system, cleaner pattern, something I missed — make your case on GitHub Discussions. I’m genuinely open to being convinced.

Seven months later, one app image in the fleet still runs on s6. Kubernetes made the case, and a test I had already run in that post made it worse.

Kubernetes on Michael Johnson

Firing the Babysitter: Why Daemonless Moved On From s6