Nitro is a tiny process supervisor that also can be used as pid 1 on Linux.
There are four main applications it is designed for:
- As init for a Linux machine for embedded, desktop or server purposes
- As init for a Linux initramfs
- As init for a Linux container (Docker/Podman/LXC/Kubernetes)
- As unprivileged supervision daemon on POSIX systems
Nitro is configured by a directory of scripts, defaulting to /etc/nitro (or the first command line argument).
Systemd doing everything at once breaks the “do ONE thing and do it well” philosophy of linux.
People keep on repeating that but “and do it well” was never part of the deal. Also, it used to be “and read my mail.”