Why Google Has Lost Its Mojo and Why You Should Care
Google has gone from innovative upstart to fat-and-happy industry leader in what seems like record time. Put simply, the search…
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Upstart is an event-based replacement for the traditional init daemon — the method by which several Unix-like computer operating systems perform tasks when the computer is started. It was written by Scott James Remnant, a former employee of Canonical Ltd.
The traditional init process is strictly synchronous, blocking future tasks until the current one has completed. Its tasks must also be defined in advance, and they only run when the init daemon changes state (such as when the machine is powered on or off). This leaves it unable to handle various tasks on a modern desktop computer elegantly, including:
Upstart’s event-driven model allows it to respond to events asynchronously as they are generated.
Upstart operates asynchronously — as well as handling the starting of tasks and services during boot and stopping them during shutdown, it supervises them while the system is running.
Easy transition and perfect backwards compatibility with sysvinit were explicit design goals. As such,…
Google has gone from innovative upstart to fat-and-happy industry leader in what seems like record time. Put simply, the search…