Patrick Shanahan said the following on 04/12/2013 07:54 AM:
They have not *really* been "done away with", but have really changed considerably in ?definition?. Runlevel is/was a system state where certain capabilities are present such as (loosely) 5, the graphical state, and 3, multi-user/networking state. Now you have targets which have similar names and capabilities but are not numbered and represent a "dynamic" state where the deamons may not be active but will be called if necessary.
Indeed.
Realistically we only used runlevels 1, 3 and 5
That is: single use with networking turned off; multi-user with
networking tuned on; graphical mode.
We still have those, its just that we now have clearer names rather than
numbers.
These weren't 'levels' these were 'states. As Patrick says, each state
had certain capabilities present.
The sysvinit approach did some stupid things.
You can see in the old /etc/init.d/rc{1,3,5}/ there are S for start and
K for Kill scripts. Moving from one state to another could involve
killing and then restarting a deamon. That seems 'illogical' to me.
--
The Internet is not the greatest threat to information security;
stupidity is the greatest threat to information security.
- Will Spencer