That's a nice discussion, I couldn't help joining it.
If you wanna compare things, you have to come up with a set of criteria. For example:

- Different partitions on the same hdd have different reading speeds. So, you can't compare boot times out of the box, even in the same hardware. During boot there's a lot of hdd reading.

- When the system finishes booting, there's a bunch of software loaded. But, how can you measure what software was loaded? A minimal desktop or a bloated one? What services are running?
One cannot say "I'll disable dhcp address grabbing, and the system boots faster." This comparision is unfair. My point is, you can't just compare it raw. Some valuating and ranking of the solutions available must be taken into account.
I'm aware that this comparision may prove extremely difficult if not impossible, but at least some approximation must be done.

I remember the first time I could put a debian system to run and I went "Damn!". I was running suse 9.1 and it was like an increase of 30 to 50% speed. That difference made me switch. Notice that I had no problem with suse - which I still believe is a great system, (and more free, today) - and I own it the fact that I managed to switch from ms definately.
But Debian's speed and package management really grabbed me.

Its comes from the freedom of free software, that there are several versions of every piece of code out there. This can't be helped, and, in fact is the beauty of all this. Most things that happens on a linux system are not kernel-related, but something else. Usually poor configuration.

I also believe that linux users may give excuses sometimes. And I would have no problem at all if the result of such benchmark was linux booting slower. But I feel like this comparision needs more method, in order to produce such diagnostic.

Hi, I also couldn't help joining.

- Itś true that different partitions have different speed readings, but i think that the slower partitions are the first ones and most of the people install Windows on those...
- SuSE may be bloated, but if so, then Windows also. Stripping down the kernel isn't fair for this type of comparison, because you can't do the same with Windows. I mean: Windows is able to run in the same hardware than SuSE.
- OpenOffice is slow, but it makes no sense to compare it Ms Office. At least, you have to compare it with OpenOffice running on Windows.

I think that if Linux is slower, it is due to stability and freedom. The first one is a price that most of us are really happy to pay: the only reason I reboot for, it's to save some electricity. I can't do the same thing in Windows. Freedom is also something I love. I just can't configure Windows at the level Linux allows me. Every time I boot Windows (I do it only for gaming) I just feel my hand tied. But freedom is something you can play with. explorer.exe does not provide the same functionality that KDE and in the same way, fluxbox does not provide the same that explorer.exe. But at least with Linux we can choose what we like the most. In particularl, we can make our machine to boot a lot faster than Windows if we personalize our kernels and boot services.

Regards

It's slow on Windows too. It doesn't appear slow because it preloads itself into the tray on start-up. Which is the same trick MS Office pulls, only it doesn't tell you by putting itself in the tray (but just check the Programs/Startup menu and you'll see).

The first partitions are the fastest. The "start" of a disc is the outer edge, which has faster tranfer rates than the inner edge.

My mistake then. I though it was like in CDs...

I agree that OO may be slow, but the question is: Is it slower in Linux than Windows? I think that you can preload some libraries in Linux also...

For CD's, the concern was that the outer edge is more likely to get damaged than the inner edge. Also, having the disc "start" at the inner edge makes it simpler to support small CD form factors.

For hard drives, the concern was purely about speed. Most operating systems start using disk space at the "start" and only use blocks at the "end" when the disk is nearly full.

The outer edges of both cd and hdd are faster, doesn´t matter where the reading starts. But the location isn´t the only factor, there´s the seek time (time the reader head takes to find the data) which can be a problem, if you wanna compare things.

The point is: one can´t just say "Ok, the system is loaded" and measure time. Some weigthing must be given to the functionality loaded in the running software.

Indeed, stability and freedom can be the reason why linux is slower.

I found that Suse was very slow as well, which is why now I am using Knoppix which is faster.

It doesn't as far as I know....not the v2 betas. THe 1.1.4 version has a tray applet that works similar to the one in Windows...that MIGHT preload some of it, I'm not sure. But why use that one when the 2.0 betas are so much better?

BTW you can speed up Open Office by changing the memory settings, I am away from home at the moment, so I can not remember exactly how. If no one posts by Sunday I will try and post it.

Not sure if this was mentioned yet but if you want to boot up the init scripts in parallel add (or modify) this line to /etc/conf.d/rc:

I've only tried this in Gentoo, not sure about other distros.

Also, by adding an '&' to the end of several commands such as hotplug causing them to run in the background I've heard many people say they've improved their boot times.

As for linux booting slower than XP I'd say yes...if it was a fresh XP install but after a year, or sometimes even less, Windows can become so bogged down that boot time becomes terrible, but that's just my experience. However, I would say my Jackass! install of Gentoo is much faster at launching programs and such than my XP install on the same computer.

Couldn't have said it better myself

As here mentioned, your Windows' at the start of the disk, and your Linux is at the end.
Try to install like that:
I promise your Windows will be loading slower, and Linux will be loading faster.
Try using Slackware/Debian/Gentoo. They're much faster than RH-like distros (and not difficult at all).
Use "prelink", switch to XFCE.

~~~What I've done just right now~~~
I've installed xp he (no sp) to /dev/hda7.
1) it has no drivers for video - awful effect when moving windows (and eyes are burning cuz of 60Hz);
2) it occupies (with drvs) 1.40G;
3) it loads until idle 47seconds (not at all idle: after 2 minutes it asks for registration);
And I've installed Slackware10.1 to /dev/hda7.
1) it has drivers for video - no awful effect (and 85Hz);
2) it occupies 953M (with something I've chosen which purpose I don't know);
3) it loads until idle 43seconds! And that's full idle (KDE3.3, 2.4.29-STANDARD).

So????

My working Slackware10.1 loads 1 minute.

BTW, 2 days ago I've begun converting all my mp3s to oggs. It took 2 days. It was my uptime. There were no mistakes. Of course, the PC was a bit slower, but I was doing all like always. And I myself know that after a few hours of playing games Windows becomes unstable and very slow. Here - 2 days of constant work and no mistakes.
That's an Open Source

Thanks.

Elliot - not sure if you're still reading the thread, but you may want to check out Enlightenment. The current "stable" version is 16 and the current test version is 17 (although many people run it and say it's stable) It has the eye-candy of KDE and seems to run faster on my computer. Also check out fluxbox, blackbox, hackedbox, etc

I am still reading the thread! I have made some changes and now I am installing Debian. I really like the package management system, and the documentation is superb! I really think this is going to work out. I think I am going to use Fluxbox, but I am having trouble getting X Windows to start. I have installed gnome with apt get and it took care of all the dependencies, but it wont boot into the Desktop Environment, just as with Fluxbox. I'll keep everyone updates, but I am starting to understand the negativity towards SuSe.