I decided to time my Windows/Linux startups and shutdowns.
I thought it might be interesting how long the booting/shutdown procedures take for each operating system. Let's assume a margin of error of 1 second.
First, power on: power on -> grub: 13.0 s And now Linux: grub -> gdm: 45.3 s gdm -> fluxbox: 3.3 s (nice!) fluxbox -> power off (cmd: sudo shutdown -h now): 15.4 s Let's see how my installation of Windows XP Professional fared. grub -> windows: 35.1 s windows -> power off: 25.6 s Thus, my initial conclusion is that neither operating system can claim to faster with their booting/shutdown procedures. Linux takes approximately 10 seconds more to boot and 10 seconds less to shutdown; whereas Windows takes 10 seconds less to boot but 10 seconds more to shutdown. Now, of whatever knowledge I may have of Linux, it doesn't comprise booting. There may be something I overlooked which may make it load slower. If you think that might be the case, tell me and I'll try fix it. I'll also give the statistics an update if it makes a difference. My hardware of relevance: 2.1 GHz Intel Celeron processor (32bit) 40 GB + 8 GB hard drives (Windows uses up about 40-50% of its partition; Linux uses up about 5-10%) Feel free to post your own startup/shutdown times, I suppose, if your desperately bored. |
You can boost Linux booting using an initrd. You can also parallelize some startup scripts (be careful). Recompiling the kernel boosts too.
I used to boot from lilo to xfce under 30s without using an initrd!!! Now i don't care about it because i boot generally once a day, and it leaves me the time to brush my teeth. The timing of windows means nothing as it depends of the installed programs. Do tests just after install, and do tests after installing nero, games, photoshop and all the numerous stuff that is included in all standard Linux distros: you'll be surprised. |
I already use an initrd; it is required in grub AFAIK. I will definitely get to recompiling my kernel though, it'll also give me a chance enable framebuffer support. All I need is a spare hour (maybe not if I compile with kpkg).
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In all of the Windows machines I've been around, it boots to the desktop fast, but you can't actually do anything for about a minute after and the applications won't be opened right away.
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Simply recompiling the kernel did nothing. Of course, I failed to realize that I could maybe, possibly remove some unnecessary features.... I don't feel very smart right now. I will try a recompile with only the modules I believe I need.
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You're actually timing your boots. You must be really bored. Thats almost like watching paint dry.
Anyway heres my stats. From the time I push the power button from a fully off state. Godawful slow. The 20 second post-time does'nt help either. Thank god I never have to restart anyway. 34 second Shutdown from KDE 2 minutes cold boot to Fedora Core 5 x64 KDE Oh and btw recompiling the kernel has little to no effect on boot time, unless ofcourse you change some options. You're probably more apt to slow things down if anything. And the whole putting everything into the initrd doesn't improve the situation much either. Since the OS still has to copy contents off the hard-drive and expand it into the ram anyway. It does'nt subtract from boot time in least bit. It is more likely that it was the parellelized scripts the one of the previous users mentioned that was actually cutting on boot time. Something initng offers. |
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As you know, the environment presented by any modern OS ... Linux or Windows ... is provided by a slew of "daemon" or "service" processes, all running at once. The time when the computer is starting up is actually one of its busiest times.
When you say, "time until the computer is 'fully booted up,'" you need to very carefully ask... just what does that mean to you? The point at which the GUI is up, and you are logged-in? Not all of the initialization may be complete at this point; in fact, it probably isn't. So, really, your measurements are not all that useful... their interpretation depends almost entirely upon the question and the criteria that you decided to use. |
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I have retracted my earlier edits, I found I have accidently removed some features that I needed. Since I'm most likely too inexperienced to determine what my system does and does not need, I will not attempt to change the settings again.
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