After spending years on Redhat/CentOS versions of Linux which use runlevel 3 for text mode and runlevel 5 for graphical mode, and then after spending several years with Ubuntu which is moving away from runlevels and using Upstart, I was somewhat surprised with Debian Lenny which uses runlevels 2-5 as the same runlevel. As a result I decided to review why Debian made this choice and if there are advantages to the runlevel changes.