46 Comments
- deadowl, on 10/12/2007, -6/+27*cough* try having a laptop *cough*
- mooninite, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23You miss the point of this... There is a need for a better startup system. It's been the same for too long. Our dual-core computers should be able to turn on instantly like your cell phone does... Why is it too far fetched to find a solution to it?
- stuffhappens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14@mooninite: "Our dual-core computers should be able to turn on instantly like your cell phone does.."
You obviously haven't seen a phone that runs Windows Mobile 5 - my HTC TyTN might be ready to use in about - oh - 40-50 seconds if switched on from full off. - 661p, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15What if I want to use Linux and Windows as dual boot on my PC
- mohaine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13@McTendo
1. Reboots sometimes fixes things, but if they do then your OS has a problem. The shouldn't be required.
2. Turning off computers doesn't necessarily extend their lifetimes. For many things electronic, stresses from startup can be much harder on the system the the steady state stresses.
3. As for people who don't know what they are doing, just remember that you are one them. - heathenx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11@McTendo
ha. you are obviously talking about windows users which i somewhat agree with you. however, linux pc's are the opposite. i have linux pc's at work and at home that have not been rebooted for months...and these are not dark room pc's...they get used heavily.
yes it would be nice for faster linux booting but a nicely configured linux server (or desktop) boots very quickly...in many cases faster than windows. unlike windows the boot time never gets slower over time. i have seen some misconfigured windows pc's that take a minute or two just to log off of a domain or hang sometimes when closing a service. - schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -10/+19There's a better solution to this: don't reboot. It is rarely required (unless the kernel is replaced) and there are modes for decreased eneregy consumption.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Linux boots for me faster with every new release of Ubuntu. I havent had any problems with slow booting since two years ago.
- JaYBrooks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I don't use linux on my laptop because of hibernation not working right... I hardly ever reboot. For some reason hibernation is broken on some systems. Maybe because of the systems being built around other operating systems?
- Shutter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6If everyone had the mindset that it's "fast enough", our PCs would be in a sad state. Just because Linux usually boots faster than Windows doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for faster ways to make our computers start.
I commend those who are working on these new init replacements; someday 30 seconds won't seem like a "fast" boot, and the speed increase won't solely be due to new processors. - dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"There's a better solution to this: don't reboot. It is rarely required (unless the kernel is replaced) and there are modes for decreased eneregy consumption."
That's not a solution, it's an alternative - Not rebooting shouldn't be a excuse for a slow boot-time, there's no reason they shouldn't try to make the boot up time as fast as possible. - geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4More often than not, proprietary video drivers are the problem. I know my ati drivers cause my system to lock up when trying to hibernate/suspend.
- AsadM, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Stopped reading after "One of the biggest complaints about Linux®, particularly from developers, is the speed with which Linux boots."
My friend has linux and it boots up insanely fast... - chil2c5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Green Dilemma
1 - Want to save electricity by turning off Ubuntu machines when they're not in use
2 - Hibernation doesn't work / always crashes
3 - Shutdown / Startup takes an inconvenient 2+ minutes
4 - Usually just leave computer on overnight, wasting electricity
Shutdown/startup time is only an issue because hibernation is broken. - metalhead3767, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4No, Ubuntu boots faster for you with every new release of Ubuntu.
- swordedge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Are your trips to the fridge why your waist line ain't what is used to be?
And too many here forget that laptops do need shut down. Better that then it shuts itself off due to no power. (I'd rather be in control when it shuts down, not have the battery cause it to happen for me.)
On a Windows laptop I have, a boot takes something like 7% of the battery. I do wonder if this faster booting would reduce that?
Oh, and the article is written like a typical IBM document. If it refers to other documents, then it's definitely IBM. - ssam, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6quite a few distros have a parallel boot process already (eg ubuntu).
- generalloy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Canonical/Ubuntu would have used launchd and extended it, but the license was incompatible. Apple then changed the license, but upstart had already been started and fit the purposes, so..
- Arainach, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Exactly. I remember reading about this for Gentoo even before I stopped using it, oh, 2 years ago. This isn't really revolutionary.
- generalloy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"You miss the point of this... There is a need for a better startup system. It's been the same for too long. Our dual-core computers should be able to turn on instantly like your cell phone does... Why is it too far fetched to find a solution to it?"
The BIOS is a big problem in modern PCs, they're non-standard and a lot of the operating system bootup is undoing changes the BIOS has done. If you have a computer with LinuxBIOS on it, however, it can boot in 6 seconds, straight out. Like the One Laptop Per Child computer... Current motherboards which support flashing LinuxBIOS: AMD , Gigabyte (google for specific models)
Now, Ubuntu's 'upstart' init replacement does allow for event-based, parallelized startup, so with both of these in place the startup time should be very minimal. The next version of Ubuntu (Feisty +1, or you will be able to download scripts to replace the current ones in Fesity) will also have new, improved, faster upstart-specific scripts. Right now I believe they're legacy init scripts. - hackmiester, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2arch 0.8 is out... sudo pacman -Syu
- bbear, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Our dual-core computers should be able to turn on instantly like your cell phone does..."
My cell phone takes 20 seconds to boot up running Windows Mobile 5. - modestmelody, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The best way to get Linux to boot faster is by compiling your kernel from scratch specifically with the ***** you need with your configuration ala Gentoo.
For the rest of us, just take a walk to the fridge and take out a snack and come back and that minute staring at the screen anxious to get going won't be such a big deal. - mobilehavoc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Not as big of a problem with Windows Vista anymore unless you're constantly installing crap day in and day out. Even with that, the lightning fast boot time makes it relatively painless.
- jooaakim, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Who cares if it takes 2 mins longer to boot linux than m$? Wih windows you have to boot and reboot over and over at least 10 times as much than linux so the overall boot time for linux is far superior to windows.
- AlexisMachine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1OS X 10.4 moved to launchd to parallelize the bootup process.....
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html
What does Ubuntu use? - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Upstart.
http://upstart.ubuntu.com - Xenogis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1*****. I just switched to ubuntu from gentoo and it sucks balls. Upstart isn't fast at all. Bootchart tells me 1:20 for the boot time. In gentoo it was 33 seconds.
- metalhead3767, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I use both and XP was always a lot faster than linux. Vista takes longer to boot then XP but Linux still takes the longest, unless I'm using upstart with ubuntu.
- aselvan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"One of the biggest complaints about Linux ®, particularly from developers...."
Who are these 'developers'?... probably windows programmers who don't know how to setup a Linux system!. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3"What if I want to use Linux and Windows as dual boot on my PC"
Virtualisation is rapidly moving to replace the need to "dual boot" (yeah, you're technically booting up another machine, but you're not shutting down the machine to do it). VT is less disruptive to work flow, it's easier to configure, and with hardware support it's just as fast as native booting. - Xenogis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I would post you the uptime of my server but I am too lazy to ssh in. It has been running at least a year without any reboots.
- smb3d, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1You've got some major issues with your system if windows takes 5 minutes to boot up. I'm running a three year old install of xp with close to a hundred apps installed and it boots up in 15 seconds or less. The little progress bar makes it about a quarter of the way across before it's done. I think the bios takes less time to post.
- Xenogis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1In the case of Linux, the only time to reboot is when you replace the kernel. I would say this is not a flaw though. The kernel is basically the OS
- mindlessxd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2$ uptime
16:44:41 up 23 days, 20:31, 3 users, load average: 0.16, 0.35, 0.34
...reboot? what's that? - sirmo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2"one of the biggest complaints"
If booting speed is one of the biggest complaints you have. You're either changing your kernel all the time or you think a Linux system needs to be rebooted as much as Windows one does. - jake3988, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0BURIED!!!
1) Linux RARELY requires reboot... so who cares?
2) Windows reboots, mine anyway, were in the range of 5 minutes. The only fast-booting windows machines were school machines that had almost /nothing/ installed.
3) Ubuntu 6.10, out of the box (and even now for me) takes all of 20 seconds to completely boot up. Ubuntu, being one of the biggest hog-wastes of space and installing the most unneeded programs should take the longest of them all (linuxes, that is) - Hayl, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4This is idiotic, a linux system will boot up in 30 seconds or a minute on modern hardware.
This is on a par with judging processor speed based on application load-times.
Computers DO NOT need to be turned off; this is why all modern OSes can be programmed to put hard disks to sleep or even the entire system, in which case(s) they use little or negligible power.
If they do need to be turned off to "fix" something then that is a fault with the OS or pure laziness on the part of support people who want a quick all-encompassing quick-fix. - Cbaar, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1I am soon going to try some of these SysV-init alternatives in my Arch 0.7.2.
- geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2"*cough* try having a laptop *cough*"
Suspend to RAM/Hard Disk/NAND? Yeah, it's pretty glitchy now, but the better our software gets, the less glitchy it will be in the future.
Oh, and for those who do actually need to restart (kernel upgrade, safe hardware installation): Upstart. Ubuntu's NIH-syndrome version of init that's so far one of the best I've seen (frankly, I think it's even better than Apple's Launchd, even though launchd is in better state of completion). The biggest problem is that so many scripts are going to have to be rewritten to support Upstart completely, and that (for now) it's proprietary to Ubuntu (though really, anyone could pick it up and run with it). - psylence, on 10/12/2007, -14/+3Wow, you're ***** retarded.
"Games suck on Linux" -- "Well, don't play games!" AWESOME
"My WiFi doesn't work" -- "Don't use WiFi" GENIUS - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+0If digg could put all these articles together and post it in a wiki, linux actually might finally have a decent support system.
Until then.........BURY - McTendo, on 10/12/2007, -19/+2Oh, God. I work as ISP tech support and I get that "I never turn off my computer" all the time. Then they wonder why either:
A) The internet/application is working again after a reboot
or
B) Why I have OEM them because their comp either refuses to shut done properly or won't boot back up at all afterwards.
People who know what they're doing tell other people who don't know what they're doing to not bother with it and then they wonder why they have to repalce their computer every single year.
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