Depends on whether you mean:

- Based on SysV standards - which GNU does for most commands, and which most Linux OSs did for initscripts.

- Based on Sys V code, which it obviously isn't.

I didn't mean that it was based off of the original UNIX code base, I know my UNIX history better than that. As nailer said, this can be taken two ways and I meant it in the latter. Linux has elements of SysV - it has run levels and the like, unlike BSD's.