inetd or not

Hi everybody, I used to use inetd to enable and disable lesser used protocols on some servers. I have recently upgraded from Suse 7.3 to 8.2. I notice now that inetd is no longer installed by default. Before installing it, I was wondering if there is now a newer (better?) way of doing things, and if not, why is inetd not installed? I'm not an expert on network technologies, so I would appreciate explanations that assumes I'm an idiot:-) Thanks Marius