That newfangled Journal thing

That newfangled Journal thing

I certainly don't see a need for more than two runlevels.

Speak for yourself. I used to have a setup where the difference between runlevel 2 and runlevel 3 was that runlevel 3 enabled the fax-modem getty on the serial interface that my modem was connected to, in order to handle incoming calls. There are obviously lots of other ways to do this, but since a big part of SysV init's business is dealing with serial interfaces, anyway, it was the most convenient method.

It is important to note that the customary arrangement of runlevels in use with most Linux distributions is exactly that – a convention. Since few people now operate standalone systems with serial ttys, runlevel 2 in the customary arrangement is rarely used these days, and most people will pick either runlevel 3 or 5 as their standard. However, this does not mean that the runlevel system cannot be employed profitably for other things, or that the runlevels must always mean exactly what they mean in the customary arrangement. (Which is essentially why Debian does not subscribe to the customary arrangement – it mostly doesn't make a great deal of sense, but that doesn't mean runlevels as such are useless.)