alt Hacker News>And yet. You probably shouldn't use literal cron (or its more modern cousins) for scheduled tasks! In 2026 there are more modern options available
What are people on non-systemd distros like Guix System, Void, PCLinuxOS, and so on using for this? Is there still something better to use than cron?
Admittedly I never learned cron, I use a lot of `sleep` and `countdown` for relative delays instead. Just earlier today I set up a 12h countdown followed by opening a URL with xdg-open since I expect a release around then and don't want to forget. I also threw in a little notify-send command in case my browser isn't visible, I should see that pop up. Considered using espeak, but don't wanna scare myself and/or ruin my watching experience if I'm watching a video at that time.
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> What are people on non-systemd distros like Guix System, Void, PCLinuxOS, and so on using for this? Is there still something better to use than cron?
Instead of `sleep` you can use `at`. But for scheduling `cron` is still the best.
Package: at
at, batch, atq, atrm - queue, examine, or delete jobs for later execution
> What are people on non-systemd distros like Guix System, Void, PCLinuxOS, and so on using for this?
We have used and still use cron for decades. It does it's job and does it well.