[nylug-talk] ubuntu looking to replace init

[Michael B Allen]

On Fri, 8 Sep 2006 19:00:31 -0400
Ruben Safir <ruben at mrbrklyn.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 02:23:10PM -0700, Peter C. Norton wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 04:31:51PM -0400, Michael Werneke wrote:
> > > 
> > > Why is Ubuntu the only distro doing this?  What does Fedora use?
> > > 
> > 
> > Because, excuse my french, fedora and redhat are lame. They're too
> > busy trying to sell cookie-cutter installs and avoid fixing existing
> > bugs for clients to do anything this useful in a reasonable
> > timeframe. They mainly copy other people.
> > 
> > That said, fedora is reported as being interesting.
> > 
> 
> 
> I don't have a lot of time to get into this, but as it is described, I'm not
> a fan of replacing init with something 'reactive to events'.  I certainly don't
> agree that making this core part of the OS more complex in its design
> or behavior is necessarily a good thing.

I agree. As it is init / runlevels are too complex. If the replacement
was 500 lines of code and very simple and elegant then I'm still not
interested because I know what will happen. Everyone and their brother
is going to put their design hat on and go round and round turning
the whole thing into much more than what it was originally intended to
replace. People will rationalize away any sanity and then it will fail
because no one will want it.

Designing and implementing something like this is not difficult. The
problem is in the delivery. The only way I see something like this
working is if Linus himself just declared one day that it would be
so. UNIX deperately needs a benevolent dictator.

Mike

-- 
Michael B Allen
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