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NVMe SSD Systems May Boot Slightly Quicker With Linux 5.7

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  • NVMe SSD Systems May Boot Slightly Quicker With Linux 5.7

    Phoronix: NVMe SSD Systems May Boot Slightly Quicker With Linux 5.7

    Systems making use of NVMe solid-state storage may see slightly faster boot times with the Linux 5.7 kernel this summer...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Good job.
    I always wondered why modern computers that have 8+ cpu cores running at 3.5+ GHz with RAM at 3200+ GHz and SSD with a transfer speed of 300-500+ MB/s boot so slow.
    I mean why so powerful computers cannot boot in less than 5 seconds ?

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    • #3
      Meh, on my desktop UEFI firmware takes 24s to start; getting into desktop takes 10 more, with ~5 for typing password.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Danny3 View Post
        Good job.
        I always wondered why modern computers that have 8+ cpu cores running at 3.5+ GHz with RAM at 3200+ GHz and SSD with a transfer speed of 300-500+ MB/s boot so slow.
        I mean why so powerful computers cannot boot in less than 5 seconds ?
        On my two main machines, systemd brings up the kernel/system in 3.7s (laptop with nvme drive) and 4.8s (workstation with nvme and a ton of dependencies at startup).

        That is in the same order of magnitude than the startup of efi+grub, if not higher. Grub is not even needed (low hanging fruit?).
        Last edited by mppix; 18 March 2020, 06:40 PM.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by mppix View Post
          That is in the same order of magnitude than the startup of efi+grub, if not higher. Grub is not even needed (low hanging fruit?).
          That is low hanging fruit on your part.
          Distributions are not going to decide to remove Grub for you. You can though.
          You can also set the timeout to 0 seconds.

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          • #6
            Every improvement is well accepted.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by markg85 View Post

              That is low hanging fruit on your part.
              Distributions are not going to decide to remove Grub for you. You can though.
              You can also set the timeout to 0 seconds.

              I would argue that it is a low hanging fruit for anyone that runs efi, i.e. all x86_64 hardware and some ARM systems. If one really needs a boot-manager beyond selecting different OS (efi can do that), there are slimmer/faster ones than grub.

              Distros will probably try to avoid that. Grub is just too convenient to provide compatibility with pretty much any hardware that you can think of.

              This obviously does not really matter to servers that take minutes to initialize HW.

              If interested here is a more complete discussion
              Most distributions install a additional boot loader on an UEFI system. UEFI itself is a boot loader, it offers a menu to select different operating systems or individual kernels. Furthermore, the U...

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              • #8
                Originally posted by mb_q View Post
                Meh, on my desktop UEFI firmware takes 24s to start; getting into desktop takes 10 more, with ~5 for typing password.
                I was thinking the same.
                It's so annoying how the UEFI got so slower as everything else got faster.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by mppix View Post


                  I would argue that it is a low hanging fruit for anyone that runs efi, i.e. all x86_64 hardware and some ARM systems. If one really needs a boot-manager beyond selecting different OS (efi can do that), there are slimmer/faster ones than grub.

                  Distros will probably try to avoid that. Grub is just too convenient to provide compatibility with pretty much any hardware that you can think of.

                  This obviously does not really matter to servers that take minutes to initialize HW.

                  If interested here is a more complete discussion
                  https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...-uefi-and-grub
                  Some UEFI implementations are not that stable (older laptops),... And, I had random issues booting with EFI, so legacy boot saved me.

                  Grub only slows my boot process, as I never pick any else option,... Well, in past (especially with Arch Linux, not once with Ubuntu) I had need to fix something, after upgrade.

                  EFI can provide what grub does, and legacy boot mode could be used for recovery (anyway, security is broken in recovery mode, no need for secure EFI boot).

                  And, other boot options are even needed,... For recovery, an external/install media could be used. I had recently recovered Windows 10 by inserting install USB key, and just launched repair (there were corrupted system files), and that was easy process,... Linux distributions oriented at desktop use, could get inspired by this approach.

                  Personally, I would rather be without grub,... Nowadays,...

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                  • #10
                    Uefi is the biggest issue and slowdown of current platforms. We really need a fast and simple replacement for most of it's functionalities. It would be nice if everybody could install something like linuxboot with just a simple update command.

                    But anyway, every improvement in the normal boot process is really welcome and it benefits the overall desktop and server experience quite a lot.

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