The sorry state of services in Ubuntu

Read the post How do I choose which way to enable/disable, start/stop, or check the status of a service?. Compare that with systemctl enable/disable/start/stop/status service and tell me, for a user, which is easier?

Yes, with juju charms individual services don’t matter as much. But some of us are not running clouds. We still use a handful of computers, physical and virtual. I would rather let my computer handle services for me. I’d rather not sit there trying to determine which command to use to perform a simple function.

Ubuntu has invested a lot in Upstart and has every right to stick with it. But is it too much to ask for Canonical/Ubuntu to move all services to Upstart? That way at least we don’t have SysV and Upstart running alongside each other and causing this mess. Even Fedora hasn’t moved a lot of services, especially xinetd-based, to systemd but they are still much farther along in a couple years than Ubuntu has been so far. Where’s the inclination of the Ubuntu community and Canonical to not leave things half done?

If Upstart is the future then be done with the migration so you can move on to some other aspect of the system. Add the simple features we all need. So far it appears Ubuntu and Canonical start something innovative and then leave it unfinished to chase something else. They need to fix this culture so that technical users can use a great distribution with fewer headaches.