At the time they made the switch, there was not much documentation or support for upstart. All documentation on the internet was (is?) for init scripts and runlevels.

For example, I wanted to take some old hardware and set it up as a server. Easy - just change init to runlevel 3 (no display) and boom, there you are, headless linux.

If I wanted to do that in ubuntu, I still wouldn't know how, to be honest. I guess I'd have to reinstall it with ubuntu server? Do we even have single-user mode any more?

(I learned sysadmin from "the armadillo book" [1]. I feel like most of the concepts are identical, but the tools are so different now. all I want to do is run a new script on boot. why do i want upstart??)

[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596003432.do

10 years old now (and that's the 3rd edition), but still a good tome: Essential System Administration from ORA http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596003432.do