Changes in Ubuntu: Five Stages of Grief

While you weren't looking, the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution changed several features under the hood. Kyle Rankin, coauthor of The Official Ubuntu Server Book, points out the most distressing changes and explains why you need to suffer through them and ultimately come to acceptance.

Of all the things I love about Linux, I think I love its stability the most. I'm not talking about uptime here, even though it's great. What I mean is the sense you get from Linux that it's on a solid foundation. Concepts like "everything is a file," "small programs that do one thing well," and the overall file system layout are well-worn principles with all the major kinks worked out. I get the sense of a collected wisdom, accumulated in the system over the years, guiding Linux forward. Sure, Mozilla's browser will change its name every few years, and both GNOME and KDE have gone through their start-from-scratch phase, but /dev files, initrd, at, cron, and System V init—I can always count on these things being there.

Five Stages of Grief

1) Denial: System V Init

2) Anger: Upstart

3) Bargaining: Backward Compatibility

4) Depression: udev

5) Acceptance

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2 Responses

  1. I think this is going in the direction of Solaris SMF. IMHO Solaris SMF has been integrated because of virtualization (zones/containers) and multiple state changes are anticipated for some services. Any thoughts on if that’s why Ubuntu is going to UpStart to handle more than start/stop states?

  2. Nik says:

    These things do not matter to new ubuntu users, but still good to know.

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