Fedora 9 is going to stop using the System V init and begin using Upstart. The hope is that this will be a good thing.

Ubuntu has been using it for awhile, and it's possible that other distributions might do the same.

Although current init scripts should start without errors, those of us who are used to editing /etc/inittab will find that Upstart ignores inittab. In Fedora, if I want to boot into text, rather than graphic mode, I've always edited /etc/inittab, changing the default init from 5 to 3. This will no longer work.

There is now a file called /etc/sysconfig/init. It has the line

GRAPHICAL=yes

Change it to read

GRAPHICAL=no

This will enable you to boot into text mode, runlevel 3.

Ubuntu has a getting started page that might be of use, including links to sample job definitions.