[ijobs-ly]

In my biased opinion, once you have gotten over the learning curve, nothing beats daemontools for running services. It is a fantastic set of tools. Why some OS doesn't just embrace djbware I'll never understand. It compiles, smoothly, in seconds. (There's no need for distributing binaries.) And the chances of the author initiating lawsuits (as some Linux foundations are known to do), over something placed in the "public domain" are close to nil. He's got better things to do.

BSD's rc system is fine. Sometimes the scripts are too verbose. But the whole idea is the system is simple enough to understand that you can write your own scripts -- more concisely, if you wish. You don't need to read a book (e.g. Linux from Scratch), keep most things disabled by default and let the user turn stuff on as they need it.

I recently used Debian's live USB, the rescue version, for a little while and was amazed at how much stuff is turned on by default. I guess if you understand each and every choice that's been made for you it's OK. But if not, that approach is not very conducive to learning.

As for Apple, never mind all the XML fluff, good luck trying to understand what's going on behind the scenes with their computers anymore. They can't even manage to let you have an nsswitch.conf or equivalent.

[dredmorbius]

Debian (and other apt-based systems) are the Lego blocks systems of the Linux world. If you install a service, the assumption is that you want it to run (if you don't want it to run, you can either uninstall it or deactivate it). Bootable / live versions tend to have more comprehensive lists of installed packages to allow for greater utility/flexibility -- though some (Knoppix) actually allow you to install additional packages (yes, booted RAM-only) into the booted system.

The is not the case on BSD systems (generally an integrated whole, though they've got package management) or RPM (poorer package management leading very frequently to a "kitchen sink" installation paradigm).

Yeah. RHEL's even got a package you can install to enable/disable postfix vs ... oh, whatever the default MTA is, I can't keep track (smail still? I know they've moved off of sendmail, right? Right?).

[ciupicri]

> And the chances of the author initiating lawsuits (as some Linux foundations are known to do), over something placed in the "public domain" are close to nil.

Could you give some examples of those lawsuits?