Why does my Ubuntu boot so quickly when I...
 

...press Ctrl + Alt + F1 at the beginning of the boot process?

I see:

Starting up....


Then I see a few lines of text, and after 5 seconds my GUI loads. If I let it boot the normal way, it takes more than 2 minutes. Is there something wrong with this way of booting? I haven't experienced any problems I know of yet.

This is only a guess but I would say that ctl-alt-F1 probably turns off some auto-detection routines that you apparently don't need anymore. Lucky you...

Seriously, my Ubuntu boots faster than my Windows now! I just want to know if they're any drawbacks to this method.

It shouldn't make any difference, ctl-f1 should just be showing messages that come up during the boot process. I'm not sure why it would be faster, but if it is going so much faster it shouldn't hurt anything.

The only drawback that comes to mind is if you add new hardware to the machine or if you add software that needs to auto-configure at boot. I'm going to try this trick sometime, myself.

I got an extra message today: /dev/hdb1 has been mounted 30 times without checking root file system. Checking forced.

It then took the usual time it takes to boot up.

So Ctrl Alt F1 bypasses the root file system checkup, and hence speeds up your computer.Is there any problem with this?

Are you using the ext2 filesystem? If you are you should let it check it every once in a while. If you're using reiserfs or ext3 it shouldn't need to be checked unless the computer lost power for some reason. Also, ext2 is usually set set to check itself every 30 mounts or so, that may be why you saw that message.

I don't know which file system I'm using. How do I find out? I just went with the default Ubuntu installation.

It will be ext3.

type 'mount' on the terminal and look in the first output line next to to the word 'type'.

You are correct. Does this mean I will be having no problem if I bypass the file system check?

What Do You Want For Nothing
 

Sure. I don't think it's bypassing the file system check that is speeding it up. The check is run every 30th time you boot, not every time. So it wasn't running anyway.

Ctrl-Alt-F1 isn't really bypassing anything. It is dutifully launching a new virtual terminal, complete with X, just like you asked it to. The boot process is probably still going on in the background.

That's what I thought, but it doesn't explain why my boot up speed increased tremendously.