runlevels are different states used by the init program. depending on the runlevel init either starts, reboots, halts your computer. you can also use runlevels to define which programs to start on system startup
besides runlevel 0, 1 and 6, the runlevels are not defined clearly and may differ between different distributions. for example debian (by default) does not really make a difference between 2, 3, 4, and 5 (which is imho the smartest thing to do ;), suse uses runlevel 3 as 'normal' runlevel starting a terminal login and runlevel 5 starts a graphical login manager...
Last edited by tokkee; 12-26-2003 at 03:46 PM.