If you're not a Linux or Unix developer, you've never heard of systemd, the new Linux-specific system and service manager. In Linux developer circles, however, nothing else ticks off many programmers ...

Linux, the powerhouse behind countless servers and desktops worldwide, relies heavily on an initialization (init) system to bootstrap user space and manage system processes after booting.

It was an ugly fight at times. On one side you had Ubuntu favoring its Upstart program to replace the old Unix/Linux init daemon, which oversees the operating system's start-up and shutdown processes.

Supporting systemd required changes to the WSL architecture. As systemd requires PID 1, the WSL init process started within the Linux distribution becomes a child process of the systemd. Because the ...