Boot faster & better
IBM developerWorks has cool article on faster booting using make.
What I find most interesting is the way that it uses an ancient tool
for a new purpose. This is enabled by the Unix philosophy: small
programs which do one thing very well. These small programs can be
tied together in a myriad of useful ways; in this case, ~make~’s
ability to calculate dependencies is utilised to start various
services, and its ability to run jobs in parallel is utilised so that
one need not wait for each to start before continuing.
Another example is the guy who uses lpd to play MP3s. lpd is the
line printer dæmon: its job is to spool files to a printer. But
because of the way Unix represents devices like printers, and because
of the flexibility of lpd, it can also be used to spool songs (not
just MP3s — again, because Unix is so cool, the fellow switches based
on whether the music is MP3, Ogg Vorbis or mod) to the speaker.
This is why we Unix users wear such smug looks all the time.