in the "old" windows days I routinely disabled starting up unnecessary startup files to speed up the boot up. How do I do this in Linux and how do I find out which files are needed and which are not? Thanks in advance

BootProcessSpeedup - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/BootProcessSpeedup

Booting Debian in 14 seconds - http://www.debian-administration.org..._in_14_seconds

Mine isnt quite that fast, around 30 seconds to lxde on my crappy desktop and between 20-25 seconds on my eee 701.

craigevil, Thank you

Thanks for your replies. Now, I can see all the processes running after installing . I just need to determine which ones I need, and if they affect system speed.

From looking at the /etc/init.d files list this may turn out to be a long term project. If anyone knows of any unneeded startup resource hogs, please let me know.

Thanks again

If you are using gdm and gnome or kde then switching to xdm and some other desktop (Xfce is nice) will not reduce the boot time but it will reduce the time from power up to having a usable desktop.

Regards which daemons (= services in Windows-speak) then which you need and which you don't is too dependent on what you are using the computer for for people to answer the question. Generally squeaking *n*x has less unnecessary daemons than Windows has unnecessary services.

Some of the things started during boot do not have to be completed before logon is permitted (although they might mean reduced functionality after logon -- OK if you know what they are and can live with it). You can shift those out of the serial boot scripts into a script that starts them up in the background, perhaps with a delay to reduce load during boot when the system is working at maximum capacity. NTP is one, for a not very good example (it doesn't add much load).