$2,500 computer with slackware 64bit boots slow as my $800 laptop with windows vista
 

I'm not sure why this is happening but when I switch my computer with slackware on and laptop at the same time, I can get firefox on both at the same time. Of course things like anti-virus or other apps is loading in the background for a little while but I can browse fine with it. This shouldn't be happening because on the computer with slackware, I have intel i7 950 Quad-core processor, WD velociraptor 10,000 rpm and 12GB DDR3 RAM.

On my laptop, I have windows vista 64bit with intel core 2 Duo processor, 400GB HDD (5,400 rpm) and 4GB DDR2 SDRAM. This laptop is almost two years old.

I'm worried about this because I want to wipe off my windows vista off my laptop and put slackware 64bit on it. I'll be turning this laptop on and off often and if it's loading just as slow on my desktop computer, then I can't imagine how slow it'll be on this laptop.

I did a full install for slackware 64bit but I checked off the KDE and didn't install that (I'm mainly using fluxbox and xmonad. Speaking of xmonad, is it possible to use 12.2 slackbuild script for xmobar on slackware 13?).

But the great thing about Linux is that I can modify everything and I been reading this [howto] by ~sHyLoCk~. I'm not sure if doing this would improve it but I been hearing that it could improve speed and what not.

I heard arch can boot in 12 seconds (not by default) but am I correct that this doesn't have anything to do with distribution? I was thinking it was because they customized the kernel and achieved this speed which I could do the same for slackware.

First of all Slackware takes long time to boot by default. You need to chmod -x any daemons that you do not require. Not to mention the annoying BIOS check at startup, which also can be skipped using this. Secondly, compiling a newer kernel won't improve this process much, atleast I've not experienced any such speed boost.
Bottomline: Slack takes quite some time to boot up, but once it starts up, you can be assured of a healthy computing experience.

Arch: It boots for me in 10-12 seconds only. Its fast, lightweight and can be tweaked inside out and customized according to your requirements. It depends a lot on the user from start of the setup process, whereas slackware gives you a working system by default. Of all the distros I have tried , arch boots the fastest for me.

Why don't you install bootchart and see if you find a bottleneck during the boot process?

i agree that the default kernel takes time to boot. but a modified kernel, fully optimized can do wonders. Slack takes 25seconds to boot of my 1TB WD Caviar. My problem with high CPU usage while file transfers was also gone. Instead of lilo [which i find annoying] why dont u use GRUB.

btw..[off topic]
killer rig man..am guessing ur a gamer?..which GPU do u have?

Booting is very disk intensive also. The bottleneck in any system will be the hard drive, when there is a lot of disk activity.

Thank you for the reply.

I see. Maybe I'll just keep slackware on this desktop (it never needs to get rebooted anyway, extremely stable) and may try arch on the laptop since it's very light.

Thank you, I'll try that out too.

I was reading the slackbook but I read that GRUB isn't mature yet and LILO is the proven choice so I hesitated on installing GRUB.

My uncle gave me this computer and I used to be a gamer but I eventually stopped playing and started learning linux in all my spare time.

My Arch setup is quick ... except for when X initializes, it hangs for about 5-10 sec. It easily goes from grub to prompt under 10 seconds though. I never really like the bloat of the default Slackware setup or any Canonical based distro. Try a different distro, like Arch or Gentoo, if you want speed, and a highly configurable system IMHO.

I Personally Guarantee that u wont regret installing grub. try it out at-least.

I use grub2 and it works great, faster startup time than Grub ;P

I understand that boot time is important to you, but due to your thread title, I think you may be placing too much importance on boot time. Therefore, I'd like to throw in my 2 cents (30 won):

* Some of your brand new hardware (which may or may not be substandard in how it was designed, regardless of price point) may not work well with Linux initially due to not being on the market long. Just FYI....

* You can suspend or hibernate the machine and receive a faster startup/shutdown. It will also wear out your had drives slower, I hear. Why don't you do that instead?

* The concept behind unix/linux was not necessarily fast boot times, especially not a unix-like Linux distribution like Slackware. You can tweak it to get it to boot faster, sure, but I doubt that was their #1 goal.

* Comparing Linux to Vista is not always a fair or equal comparison. They're different. I know that's not a surprise to any of us, but I felt it was worth noting.

Much less take boot time over the lifespan of the installed operating system. I've never seen Linux boot painfully slow due to being installed for longer than one year. I've seen Windows XP do that, and some people I've met do complain of Vista doing the same.

Definitely take the time to try tweaking the system, but I wonder if (again, due to your thread title) you might be placing too much importance on it.

Thank you, I'll defiantly try out GRUB2.

I agree with you, boot time isn't important and it wasn't the main purpose of unix/linux. I'll tweak it around though (which is what I love about linux, I can tweak it and make it however I like it to be). Your advice has been noted and I will keep it in mind.

I just bootchartd my Arch setup... And even with my xauth delay... I'm getting a 16 sec boot.

And I have a OC'd core2 with 4gigs of RAM. Its about a 8 month old system. Running the recent zen-stable kernel from zen-sources.org

My CLFS box, is much faster, using TWM

Okay, I must say that everyone saying that Slackware is slow to boot anyways, idk, my PC boots in like, twenty seconds or less from press the power button to the desktop, I don't have an i7 though do have a Solid State Drive, but I also had it on a 10,000RPM hard drive like the original poster had and it still ran fine. Really the only explanation that seems to make sense is the one that the hardware is not designed to work with Linux yet.

There's nothing wrong with comparing Linux to Windows. I have a dual-boot setup with Windows Vista, and I think my Slackware disk boots up faster. It's about the same time getting to the login screen, but once I login Slackware is ready to go in 7-10 seconds. Vista takes quite a while after you login to stop churning the hard drive and have a usable system--probably more like 2-5 minutes. This is with a system that only has a few games on it and some antivirus software. IMHO, Vista just postpones everything they should be doing during the boot sequence to after you login, so the boot time is actually slower.

Maybe this thread will have some other optimizations for you: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...cripts-525364/

BTW, I noticed a significant speed-up compiling my own kernel--there are a lot less dots on the "Loading Linux" message (the kernel is smaller since it's not loading every driver into memory like hugesmp). My custom kernel is 2.7M, whereas huge is 4.8M.

I've also heard that Arch is faster booting than Slackware, but I was turned off by how bleeding edge everything is. I prefer a more stable distro to one where updates can cause problems or the software hasn't been tested thoroughly.

You can also use the lilo 'compact' option to speed up booting, that way you don't have to try installing 32-bit grub.