As stated above there is of course a time limit, and no limit at all to
the amount of stuff I'd like to teach. I have 15x45 minutes to cover
installation and configuration of Apache, including virtual hosts, SSL
certificates, support for PHP, perl_mod, etc. I wish I could teach them
all about init, but that's just not possible. I also do not want to
make my instructions so abstract they become meaningless. My lesson on
getting Apache to start from boot shouldn't be, "Learn how your distro
works. Configure it correctly." They don't need me to tell them that.

What I'll do is have them go through the motions of compiling and
installing a standard Apache distro, then they can choose if they want
to reinstall using their package manager or figure out their init
config. I will point them to the KSysV handbook, which contains a
short, principal explanation of init, and also to the HOWTO recommended
above (thanks!) for more in-depth information.

Thanks for the great feedback guys.