Upstart and VMWare.
Do those guys have a sane reason for dumping the SV init in version 9.x for something a lot more difficult to understand, then changing it substantially in 10.x so none of the on-line information worked any more?
Actually, yes. They wanted a desktop PC to start faster by running init scripts concurrently (with intelligent dependancy checking) instead of sequentially. I can tell you they've succeeded. A clean 10.04 install boots to a working desktop some three times faster than a clean 8.04 install. Shuts down faster, too.
The thing is called upstart and is configured by files in /etc/init. There are three scripts in there to run existing files in /etc/init.d/
I haven't tried VMWare on a Linux host; I used it on Windows XP and it felt a distinct step backwards from 1.x, though it ran without problems and I did useful work on it. On Linux, I recommend VirtualBox.
Wade.
