> ...networking configuration is written into the init scripts themselves This statement may technically be true, but it is misleading about what component act

> ...networking configuration is written into the init scripts themselves This statement may technically be true, but it is misleading about what component actually does what. It depends on where you consider the init system to end and the distribution's networking scripts to begin. On Debian and Ubuntu, the ifupdown package provides traditional networking configuration, and network-manager the "desktop roaming" networking configuration. They integrate with the init system like other services (and arguably a bit tighter) but they are still separate components. So yes - as you say the networking configuration is written into the init scripts themselves, but the init scripts are provided by the distribution's networking components, not by the init system component. And indeed the systemd switch in 15.04 - a replacement of init system - has happened but the networking configuration mechanism (ifupdown) remains. Both before and after the init system triggers the networking to be configured, but the init system is not the component that does the work.