Thread: 10 second Windows Boot!

Malcom2073: what you are saying is that the OS itself is not limiting, rather your knowledge of how to use it. There are many thing in Linux that are easier than windows. But yeah, if you don't know how to do it, I can see some frustration. It's definitely an overcome-able obstacle though.

Machinehead: That's awesome that you tried it out! Ubuntu isn't known for it's fast boot speeds on a default install. At least 9.04 or older. 9.10 should be faster, but it's still in Alpha. Ubuntu's goal for boot on generic hardware is 10s with 10.04 which will be released next April. Many of the changes required for that will be in 9.10.

LinuxICE boots faster than stock Ubuntu because it doesn't start everything that ubuntu does. However, boot speed isn't a goal for LinuxICE right now and I've been busy making it stable and easy to use rather than tweaking boot stuff. When we rebase off of 9.10 or 10.04, we'll automatically inherit awesome boot times, so I'm not terribly concerned right now.

People usually mention ubuntu because it's easy to use for newcomers to Linux, which most people in this forum are.

Finally, when you compare boot times with windows, you need to make you take into account, Linux will load all your drivers automagically. A fresh windows install won't have many of your drivers loaded and thus won't load them.

I've attached my bootchart for LinuxICE2 in a VM. It says it's 30s, but I know it's faster on actual hardware. You'll see that disk i/o and CPU aren't utilized very well. I'll try to get an actual hardware representation sometime soon.

Take a look at DSL or one of the other "mini" distro's. You could also check out moblin2, it already boots fast. You'll have to add mono though because I don't think it comes default. In LinuxICE2, you'd just replace the line that launches nghost and icepanel with "mono openmobile.exe" and your in business.

Good call...ill take a look at DSL....I don't mind having to hack things up a bit but ubuntu seemed to never get any faster no matter how much crap I stripped out

Originally Posted by malcom2073

Edit: Just noticed how that came across. I am in no way trying to slam on justchat_1, or say he doesn't know his way around Linux. The above is my personal opinion on why "I" find Linux limiting, his may be different.

That came across fine-no worries.....and I think that actually sums it up pretty well

So I tried out dsl...and xubuntu...and a stripped down version of ubuntu. Not happy with any of it - they made vista look slim and fast.

DSL was small and lightweight but still too slow starting up and VERY unstable. So I switched gears and tried something else..... ReactOS, startup time <8 seconds on a vm. About 2-3 on real hardware. The only problem is its still not 100% ready to run mono.

ReactOS is also, unfortunately very unstable and very buggy. It also does not support very much in the way of drivers, so you're not likely to get much past simple media playback (if at all) on it. If it ever gets to the point of being a real OS, I think it could give windows a run for its money for a carpc, but they have a ways to go.

Originally Posted by malcom2073

ReactOS is also, unfortunately very unstable and very buggy. It also does not support very much in the way of drivers, so you're not likely to get much past simple media playback (if at all) on it. If it ever gets to the point of being a real OS, I think it could give windows a run for its money for a carpc, but they have a ways to go.

Well they use the windows driver model so any drivers that work on windows should work on reactOS. Of course, so far only usb device drivers work so yea they have a bit of work to do. But considering how stable it is in version 3 I would say this time next year it could be a windows killer. Of course i'm also hoping its stable enough to run mono by the end of next release but well see.