Something for everybody
According to the current issue (#93) of Linux Format, Ubuntu 7.04 (“Feisty Fawn”) is “…a dull release for Ubuntu, leaving Fedora to storm ahead…” (p. 23) whilst “shaping up to be one of the most innovative Linux distro releases of the year.” (p. 38)
Especially amusing for myself is that, with Upstart, they “seldom notice any difference in boot speed” (p. 42), yet “Ubuntu 7.04 boots up in record time, leaving other Linux distros in the dust.” (p. 22)
(As anyone who’s ever read anything about Upstart will know, Ubuntu still uses the SysV-rc scripts so there should be no difference in speed at this point. Funnily enough, they identified the reason Ubuntu boots fast in the same issue; “Changing the /bin/sh symlink to point to Dash instead of Bash can significantly shorten boot times” (p. 33) — unfortunately they simultaneously claim that Dash is only “almost POSIX compliant”, without explaining why they think it isn’t.)
In this modern world, the lack of any editorial direction or basic research into what’s being printed is quite refreshing.
I do very much appreciate the development done around upstart and try to follow it very closely.
Particularly your background post about the reasons to chose an event driven daemon instead of other solutions (like dependency based) was very convincing.
I do really hope that Upstart becomes the new init system for Linux in general – at least some people at Fedora look for alternatives as well (I am a Fedora packager and user, btw.).
Atm upstart does not play all the cards since it uses mostly the old scripts. But I’m looking forward to see a Ubuntu version where Upstart replaces a significant amount of scripts! I would love to try it on Fedora then as well.
So, keep up the good work
Does anyone actually read Linux Format? Most of these Linux magazines seem to be of the Dr Dobbs push-it-on-everyone quality. I guess it keeps the janitors in a job emptying the garbage cans.
Yes, I thought that was a bit bizarre.. Although, the two quotes “This is a dull release” and “one of the most innovative releases” were from 2 different people, the latter being from Paul who is a bit of a Ubuntu-disliker AFAIK.
I also find it amusing that everyone thinks that it’s Upstart that’s causing boot speed improvements in Ubuntu – it just goes to show they haven’t read much about the topic they’re talking about
@liquidat: Gutsy will most likely have native Upstart boot scripts (i’m not entirely certain about the plans there), and also Frugalware from 0.7pre2
Oops, I meant “the former”
I thought that Ubuntu was using upstart already. From what i understood, is that instead of shocking everybody and completely changing the system, upstart is being eased in by using the rc scripts to interface with upstart as an initial phase. Later on, more services will be moved to upstart and so the system meanwhile is getting tested in the wild and upstream developers can try to take advantage of the event-based model. At a later stage(mainly Gutsy), upstart would be used natively.
Please correct me if i’m wrong.
Some people were telling me that they didn’t notice any difference in bootup time. Upon further investigation, it turned out that there is a renegade service that is timing out(network related). According to my understanding, when upstart is used natively for the bootup, this sort of thing will no longer be an issue.
Yes, that’s correct. Upstart is currently the default init daemon in Ubuntu, but it doesn’t use any of it’s native features, just runs the sysv scripts.
And yes, network issues like that will be gone with Upstart since the networking stuff will be run in parallel with other services, and since most services won’t depend on a working internet connection, only the loopback device, things won’t unnecessarily wait.
The review is pretty positive, the part you quoted is from someone other than the reviewer giving a second opinion. In the review, they say that it boots very quickly.
RE: the other discrepancies – different parts of the magazine are going to be written by different people, trying to enforce a shared view on every issue is going to be difficult. Not to mention parts are written at different times – the “shaping up” quote is written by an external contributor, whose deadlines are probably a lot sooner in a print cycle than the rest of the magazine.
LXF is not aimed at the hardcore – they’d be able to get the information off of the net for free – so they’re probably not going to cover everything to the level of detail someone such as yourself would like, there’s just not enough room. I’m a LXF subscriber but I too was disappointed by the review (and am frequently disappointed at the quality of sub-editing) but they give a lot of credit to Ubuntu and to take some of those quotes out of context is a little mean. Mean as the things you accuse it of? I’ll leave that for you to decide
Disclaimer: I work for Linux Format.
Please bear in mind that the quotes referenced are from three different articles by three separate writers, so inevitably you’ll get different opinions and experiences. I think that’s better than us all mindlessly agreeing with one another and just having one line of opinion.
jldugger, if the magazine doesn’t appeal to you, fair enough. But don’t dismiss the ~25,000 readers simply because you want different coverage. We’re all long-time Linux geeks at the magazine, and we hope we’re spreading the word about Free Software and alternative OSes to many people. I know some talented coders who’ve switched to Linux and got involved with Free Software projects via reading the magazine.
Mike Saunders
New Media Editor
mike.saunders@futurenet.co.uk