* Sh is a terrible language to build any non-trivial functionality. * System initialization has become more complex. * Currently, managing daemons has a lot boi

* Sh is a terrible language to build any non-trivial functionality. * System initialization has become more complex. * Currently, managing daemons has a lot boilerplate code. * That code is sub-optimal and fragile. Personally, I don't want to know anything about the timing on which each device is available, to figure out manually the right order to start the services. That's the kind of job a program can and should do. I didn't like when I have to set IRQs manually too, or when X asked me about the data of the video chip that was connected to its bus. Back to the init scripts. How do those scripts know if a daemon is still running? One mechanism is to check the existence of a file with the daemon's pid! IMO the current system is an anti-aesthetic patch. Only inertia keeps it alive. This is what I would like to see in a linux system: * A common config language for the basic services. Something like the defunct [elektra initiative](http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Elektra/ http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Elektra/) * An automate mechanism to orderly start the system. * Something like Dan Berstein's daemontool to handle the daemons, plus the cron jobs. * For Ritchie's sake, keep logs as text files!