Time for a new Linux

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> I happen to like run levels but that is because I cut my Unix teeth on 
> Interactive Unix, not because of any strong religious beliefs about it. 
> What is better about BSD style init?

It does feel a bit more "unixy" by virtue of running as scripts; the
"SysV way" is vaguely more "mainframe-like."  That being said, I prefer
the present use of the SysV approach.

Mind you, the notion of "runlevels" is a lot less useful than it used to
be.  It's sensible enough to have a "single user mode" for really
oddball setup issues, but the differences between levels 2, 3, 4, and 5
are pretty irrelevant save on big multiuser boxes, and in those cases,
you don't change runlevels much because you'd get tarred and feathered
by the users.

What I would like to see is something more along the lines of a
"makefile-based Init," where you define what services depend on what
other services, and can basically run "make" to get everything started
up in suitable order.

The cool "next step" would be to run "make -j 20" which (with GNU Make)
would spawn as many as 20 services concurrently, which should speed up
system startup a fair bit over the present approach which serializes the
startup.

That would be more like something of a conglomeration of BSD and SysV
init approaches...
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