Alternative Init System

[Vincent Trouilliez]

On Mon, 2006-02-27 at 17:36 +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> One thing to note: as a consultant I have a lot of clients running
> Windows machines, and I can't think of a single one of them who has not
> complained to me at some point about Windows being slow after a reboot
> or login.
> 
> That slowness comes down to XP and 2000 implementing pretty much what
> you are advocating here - booting enough to get the GUI up, and letting
> the rest of the system run in the background.
> 
> If you are lucky enough not to deal with this, that can be anything up
> to ten minutes on a relatively modern laptop, because the slow disks
> keep things moving slowly, and running all the code in parallel makes
> for a lot of seeking.
> 
> 
> Obviously this isn't a terribly scientific study of preferences, but I
> do feel that end users are not always entirely pleased with the
> performance implications of booting services under the GUI.
> 
> Daniel

I couldn't agree more (in case my voice counts ;-). 
One of the things I like in Linux/Ubunto so far, is its predictability:
it's slow to start/boot, but, as soon as Gnome as finished loading, I
know I can start using it at its full potential NOW. 
With XP, it's fast to start but once the GUI is loaded, I have to wait
at least 30 second before I can start programs, and even then, I can
still see disk activity for at least 2 minutes, for no apparent reason.
this makes me feel uncomfortable and wondering if the OS is really fully
listening to me, or if it's doing something in my back other than care
about serving my immediate desires. 

So really I would say, reducing boot is fine, but if it means that the
OS is not fully loaded by the time Gnome is loaded, then it's hugely
counter productive IMHO.

FWIW ;-)


--
Vince