I've switched from Ubuntu to Slackware since last month. Compared to Ubuntu, the boot time of Slackware seems to take more processes.

I turned on the boot text mode in Ubuntu and found that Ubuntu quickly loads into the kernel and eventually the GUI.

Slackware, however, starts with Loading Linux ... (followed by lots of dots) "BIOS Data Check successful", and finally boots into the kernel. Then it pauses at "mounting non-root partition" and "waiting for eth0". Ubuntu doesn't seem to need all this.

Is there a way to bring up the boot speed to that comparable to Ubuntu?

edit /etc/lilo.conf and uncomment the line that says "compact". that will speed up things a bit.

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If you have an SSD it will scream even more - my system is a bit older (3 years) , so it does not support SSD M.2 - so I couldn't even imagine how much faster it would be .

That's just one of the positive effects of using SystemD.

BUT, I strongly recommend you to avoid to comment about the SystemD technology in that Slackware forum.

Would be just like a Jehovah Witness going to preach in Mecca. If you are really lucky, you will be just beheaded (read: banned).

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Speaking of the thing that should not be named, I actually found that Ubuntu-Mate on my Toshiba Satellite is actually slow as balls when it comes to booting up, even though it has a hybrid ssd drive.

That's just a failing SATA link. Believe or not, an imperfect SATA cable, or even an dirty SATA slot, could make you to move the mouse, then smoke a cigar while drinking slowly a beer and finally you worth to look about the effect of your initial action...

1) switch from huge kernel to generic
2) play around with what is loaded in /etc/rc.d
3) dont start services you don't need.
4) Salix has a nice startup script that speeds up the boot, you can either use that or review it and modify to your liking
5) dont shut down unless necessary just resume from suspend
6) switch to openrc if desired
7) power on and go make some coffee, kiss wife, quick shag etc...

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There are several ways of improving the boot speed. Before going through them all we'd have to be sure it really is that important to you. How many times a day do you boot up, and how long does it take?

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Ahh thanks I do not know about the 'taboos' in the forum. Just being curious.
Don't ban me please. LOLOL

Is it also the case that LILO and GRUB makes a difference in booting as well?

I usually turns on the computer twice to three times a day, and it takes a little longer than 90 seconds.
An in fact, it is all fine. I have a friends who uses Linux Mint and commented that Slackware boots slow.

But it seems that Slackware could be customized on which services to be started.
So I was wondering if there is a way to play around with the boot settings.

in addition to what was posted earlier:
http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:beginners_guide

scroll down to:
Miscellaneous
Why does Slackware take so long to boot up?
http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:faq

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Benchmarks have SSDs performing 7 times faster than HDs.

I've been using Linux for a long time and I have only found 2 things that noticeably improve performance.

1. Switching from a DE to iceWM which I did a long time ago.
2. Switching from a HD to SSD.

The SSD makes the system boot faster and launch programs faster. I use 2 drives, SSD on / and a larger HD on /home.

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A couple years ago I switched to Slackware from Debian right around the time that shall not be named was invading Linux space. I wondered about the boot up time taking so long as well after having seen that shall not be named start my system in some ridiculously low time frame.

I quickly dismissed this issue after I saw how harmonious Slackware is for every day use.

Also, suspend to disk/RAM for the win.

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Slackware and Ubuntu use different boot systems. Ubuntu's tends to boot quite a bit faster due to its boot system. There are a few things you can do to speed up your system, most of which has already been mentioned, but it is unlikely you'll get it to the same speed that Ubuntu has without some serious modifications to the boot scripts. Simply put, Slackware doesn't push for extremely quick boot times. The BSD-style init scripts Slackware uses value simplicity over speed. The scripts are relatively easy to read and modify (if you're familiar with bash scripting).

Uncommenting compact in your lilo (like Daedra mentioned) will speed up your kernel booting. It works on pretty much all modern computers, but it may not work on older computers (but we're talking probably pre-2000 computers).

Another thing you can do is to make sure all non-needed services aren't running. You can go through /etc/rc.d/ and make sure any services you aren't using aren't executable.

Theoretically, switching to the generic kernel should speed up the boot time, but I'm not sure it'd be that noticeable. However, Pat recommends running the generic kernel either way.

Finally, as mralk3 suggested, if boot time is important to you, it might be worth looking into using suspending or hibernation. While rebooting will still take long, it would lead to quick resuming, which I imagine would be good enough.

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Define "comparable" first.

Ubuntu does a lot of things in parallel during init. Slackware doesn't.

Doing things in parallel can result in a huge speed-up as you've noticed. It can also (and I am not claiming that SystemD has this problem) result in some very difficult to track down bugs that exist on some systems but not on others.

How? If you don't express *all* the dependencies in the init order, you can end up with systems who are able to boot successfully simply because they do one of the boot services a little faster or slower than the systems that fail.

If you have a defined sequential boot order, you don't have *that* problem. You do have a slower boot.

Most of the time, a slower boot is not a big deal because you don't reboot that often. If you have a machine running a huge number of linux containers with a SLA requiring you to restart those puppies in 30 seconds, you care a lot about your boot times. If you launch docker instances on demand or something similar, you really want those things to come up right freaking now.

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