Booting With Mandriva's Speedboot

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Booting With Mandriva's Speedboot

Being worked on as part of Mandriva's next Linux distribution update is a technology they are referring to as Speedboot. Speedboot will be officially introduced with Mandriva Linux 2009.1, and compared to the normal boot process, it begins initializing some processes early on while it postpones other tasks until after the graphical display manager has shown. In essence, the user is logging into their Linux desktop even before the system is fully booted. We have some timed results of Mandriva's Speedboot along with videos showing the differences.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13517

[Vadi]

This is definitely nice. I wonder what's the speed on a normal hd though.

[tball]

Is this something we are able to install on Ubuntu? :P

[MartjeB]

I doubt I'll every use that. This reminds me of Windows where serveral apps have not yet loaded when the desktop has already loaded.

[d2kx]

Yeah, Mandriva is a nice distribution and they got some popularity problems at the moment so they try to be innovative where they can but this is nothing I look forward to.

[LinuxAffenMann]

Wow, optimizing the time needed to show GDM... very helpful. That's so wrong and as already stated bringing "good old" Windows feeling to Linux. Why not just let the user put in the login data at GRUB and discard GDM? *head-shaking*

Same thing's happening in Ubuntu (likely less radical):

* debian/initscripts:
- etc/init.d/bootlogs.sh: separate out things from bootmisc.sh that aren't urgent to do before gdm.

My definition of boot time: The period of time it takes from pushing the power button to a usable desktop (by usable I mean at most 5% CPU load). Optimize that and I'm impressed.

[tuxdriver]

My definition of boot time: The period of time it takes from pushing the power button to a usable desktop (by usable I mean at most 5% CPU load). Optimize that and I'm impressed.

Try Puppy Linux and you'll be amazed.

[Stedevil]

Wow, optimizing the time needed to show GDM... very helpful.

It is. Of course one can do it the stupid way like Windows, but if you do it smart its actually an advantage. Eg, how likely are you to print a document before GDM is even started? Doesnt it make absolutely no sense at all to start cups before GDM on a desktop? Surely that can be done at a later time after login, possibly even as a background event limited to max 5% of CPU time (unless deliberately requested by the user by eg trying to print something).

[mibo]

Sorry, but I think this test is really only useful for netbook users.

The annoying part of a long boot time comes from the fact that your common workstation is waiting for devices and services being initialized. A speedup should be seen when the initialization is reordered or run in parallel on your dual and quad core cpus.

Using the slowest available cpu and a ssd which is optimized for linear reads/writes instead of good random access performance is exactly not the way to do.

Just my two cents
mibo

[WSmart]

Some people don't like change. :P

I like the idea of getting the data input out of the way ASAP. The sooner that's done, the sooner I can switch to something else. I wish we had this with OS installs where all user data is entered at the start of the process. Makes more sense. It's not so much the boot time, but the wait time. Once you log in, you can go get cup of java or if you're already had your coffee....

The time difference is likely more significant with a regular hard drive. I was thinking today how much I love the sound of hard drive chatter. Back with the 5400rpm drives and 384MB of RAM, seemed like the hard drive was always under load. Solid state is ok, but I just think the modern hard drive is cool as s-h-information technology. And it just keeps getting better.

Thanks for the post. Thanks all!

Be real, be sober.