sysvinit VS initng VS upstart VS launchd (Was: Future New Init for FC7?)

[Bernardo Innocenti]

Rudolf Kastl wrote:

> actually i am using und helping with development of initng since
> around a year now on my boxes and it wfm. i boot graphically into gdm
> in about 15 seconds with some basics and NetworkManager started.

My experience was similar: initng brings up the system so quickly that
I can't even *see* what's going on before X replaces the console.


> initng will also get an event plugin for event functionality and also
> has a nice modular design.

This is IMHO a "must have" for next generation's Linux init system.
It's not worth breaking a mature critical system such as SysVInit just
to save a few seconds of boot time.


> with the next release iteration there will also be a new init script
> system using posix compliant init scripts.

This is also important in my opinion: those .i files with their custom
syntax are the reason why I said initg looked a bit kludgy in my original
posting.


> yet i only saw upstart running in compat mode and upstart in compat
> mode has exactly 0 benefits towards systemV because it still uses the
> systemV init scripts without parallel execution plus it adds yet
> another useless sleeping process in that state.

What do you mean by compatibility mode?  I've only seen Upstart in
Ubuntu Feisty.  Booting was so fast that I assumed it was parallel
already.

The nice thing about Upstart is that it looks and feels familiar
to anybody who's used to sysvinit.  Except that /etc/inittab is
gone, but nobody will ever miss it ;-)


> launchd doesent build on linux for me yet. if anyone has patches it
> would be great if he could make em public.

Maybe the APL could be a problem for such a core component.

The design of launchd also appears less orthogonal to me than the
alternatives, altough I understand that crond and inetd should
somehow coordinate with the init system to get a number of corner
cases right.

Also, a radical approach such as launchd is less likely to become
mature enough to replace sysvinit in the short term.  You'd need
massive coordination between hundereds of package maintainers.

And by the way: the init system is not something I'd like to see
forked in every Linux distro.  Ubuntu adopted Upstart early and
Debian will most probably follow soon or later.

LSB had just finished standardizing the init scripts and now we're
going to break things again.  Users *are* going to complain.
Analysts *are* going to say Linux is fragmented.  Microsoft *is*
going to publish studies saying that Linux has higher TCO because
of multiple init systems ;-)

So maybe it would be wise if the remaining mainstream distros,
including Fedora and SuSE, followed their lead quietly instead
of starting a pointless init war.

This doesn't mean there should be a single codebase.  Multiple
systems could compete as long as they are 100% (or maybe just 99%)
compatible config files and user interface.

-- 
   // Bernardo Innocenti - Develer R&D dept.
 \X/  http://www.develer.com/