I’m sure you’ve all by now read the announcement of systemd, and have probably come running to my blog to see what the reaction of Ubuntu and the Upstart author is!

As you know, improvements to the boot process has been something that Ubuntu have been working on for a few years now and this led to the development of Upstart.  We’re not the only ones working in this area, Intel have also been hard at work with different improvements of their own with the Moblin and MeeGo projects.

So it’s great to see some Fedora and OpenSuSE guys working on this too, and bringing some different ideas to the table!

I can’t say I disagree with some of Lennart’s observations about problems with Upstart, it’s certainly nowhere near perfect.  Now that the stable period leading up to the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is over, I’m looking forwards to getting back into the code and trying to address them.

It’s far too early to tell which approach is going to work out better in the end; but that’s one of the great things about Linux.  The different distributions are able to develop in different directions, and we’re able to try out many different things.

On a personal note, I’m particularly pleased that Lennart has continued the punny naming scheme I began with Upstart. System D is a French concept that embraces responding to challenges when they happen, thinking fast and on your feet and adapting and improvising to get the job done.