Systemd provides a standard process for controlling what programs run when a Linux system boots up. While systemd is compatible with SysV and Linux Standard Base (LSB) init scripts, systemd is meant to be a drop-in replacement for these older ways of getting a Linux system running.
Systemd 246 has a lot of new functionality in time for making it into at least some of the autumn 2020 Linux distributions.
Systemd 246 Major Changes
- Systemd-journald now supports Zstd compression of journal files. Similarly, coredumps collected by systemd-coredump can now make use of Zstd compression.
- Tmpfs mounts automatically created by systemd such as for /tmp and /run whill now have a limit. 50% of RAM for /tmp and /dev/sdm while 10% of RAM for other mounts.
- The systemd-homed LUKS back-end can now automatically discard empty system blocks when a user logs out.
- Systemd-homed also now better protects against potential double data encryption scenarios. Systemd-homed can also support unlocking home directories using FIOD2 security tokens.
- Systemd-cryptsetup can now activate Microsoft BitLocker volumes during boot.
- The system hostname can now be set at boot time with the systemd.hostname= kernel option. There are also other new kernel command line options like systemd.swap= for toggling if SWAP is enabled
Detailed information for all changes can be found here.
