ats:
"upstart is a replacement for the init daemon, the process spawned by the kernel that is responsible for starting, supervising and stopping all other processes on the system."
i.e. Ubuntu are writing their own /sbin/init, comparable to initng, Sun's service management stuff, Apple's launchd, etc.
It looks like a pretty sane design, and I'll have to have a play with it on my GARstow system at some point.
I am slightly concerned that Ubuntu is going to end up as a very non-standard Linux in the same way that Red Hat/Fedora has, though...
Particular things I like about it:
- the config files aren't XML -- which is an instant win over initng and SMF for me
- the basic design and user interface are essentially that of daemontools, which does seem to work pretty well (albeit without dependency management)
- the control program talks to the daemon via a Unix socket; there's no dependency on DBus or anything silly like that
Things I don't like:
- it's written in C -- which means it's going to have at least one major security hole in the first year
- they don't seem to have solved the getty problem (which is where you want several services that are the same, like the six gettys you'd normally have on your virtual consoles, but the system forces you to specify each individually rather than saying "I want six of these")
... but, you know, all the other init systems have those problems too.
ats:
Notable for a really stupid neologism:
"CMR - Committed Megahertz Rate is the minimum guaranteed amount of processing power, burstable to 100% of the host's CPU."
ats: Here's another 80s-machine remake: this one's a somewhat upgraded C64.
It's designed so that you can reload the FPGAs and add a second processor, which should make it possible to turn it into various machines...
... which suggests another approach for the every-80s-computer-in-a-box project: have a low-powered controller CPU that just loads appropriate firmware into a couple of big FPGAs, and one of each processor that you're likely to need.
(Which isn't very many -- Z80 covers 8080, 65C816 covers 6502 and 65C02, 6809, maybe a 68020 and 80286...)
It does seem a bit odd that the expansion connector the C-One uses is the Amiga 1200 clock port -- which even back when the A1200 was popular was considered nearly completely useless!
I think someone did eventually make a clock card to fit it, but I don't recall ever seeing one; my A1200 had a parallel-attached clock, and Peter's had a clock on the trapdoor accelerator board...
Of course, the even easier solution is just to put a mini-ITX board in the box and run emulators, but that strikes me as too easy.