Startup Time (Was: Re: What do you like best about Ubuntu?)

[Bryan Pizzuti]

Heh, two Bryans, two startup time requests, two Thinkpads, even if mine's on
backorder, and you don't spell your first name right. ;)

Anyway, I think the boot time thing probably mainly affects laptops more
than anything else...probably because laptops use suspend-to-disk more than
anything else...it's a GREAT way to speed up your power-up, and always
faster than booting the OS from scratch, be it Windows or what. And in a
portable, a faster boot up time, with less time loading whatever before you
get a logon prompt equals more work you can do before your battery runs out
(Not to mention suspend-to-disk is a PERFECT automatic reaction when your
battery is about to die...you don't lose any work that way). And since Linux
needs an ACTUAL reboot MUCH less than Windows, it makes sense for a desktop
distribution to leverage suspend-to-disk in order to A: decrease power-up
time, B: Increase efficiency on portable platforms, and C: Because it's much
cooler than halting the system and then going through full reboot when you
power back on. ;)

After all, with all those seconds everyone's counting, consider this count:
My current HP laptop takes all of about 10 seconds to come out of
suspend-to-disk mode (Admittedly, that's running Winblows). That's less time
than it took for most DOS systems to boot up from power off and be in a
ready state, and MUCH less time than it takes for me to start PCOMM and get
into a TSO session at work (Yes, I started on DOS and mainframes too, young
as I am).  If Linux, and specifically Ubuntu, can use suspend-to-disk
routines to get power-on to GDM logon screen down below 15 seconds...well,
can anyone say "party?"  With Linux's stability, you could do that for
MONTHS without having to go down for an actual full reboot. 

Personally, I hope suspend-to-disk makes it into some sort of patch for
Warty, since that's what's going on my Thinkpad when it arrives.

-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Brian Puccio
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 4:58 PM
To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: RE: Startup Time (Was: Re: What do you like best about Ubuntu?)

(This is not a personal attack, please don't take it as such)

On Fri, 2004-10-22 at 11:22 -0700, Hudson Delbert J Contr 61 CS/SCBN
wrote:
> who cares how many seconds it takes?
> this just shows how far we've come as IT pros, that we nitpick over a 
> few cycles here or there.

Who cares if totem can't play WMV?  It can play MPEG!

Who cares if RB can't play MP3s?  It can play FLAC!

Who cares if OOo can't open a Word doc?  It does SXW!

Who cares if Firefox refuses to display any web pages that don't validate
according to the doctype?  You get MathML and SVG and a more secure browser!

Etc etc.

If some people like a 30 second boot time and get it with windows and want
the same out of an operating system that many geeks tout as "better" than
it's not entirely unreasonable for them to expect linux to do the same, is
it?  A lot of people think "if I can do it on windows, why shouldn't I be
able to do it on linux".

Case in point, Evolution.  It talks to MS Exchange.  I'm sure a linux user
would rather they not have to connect to Exchange ever, however, if they
have to, it's nice to know the OSS community (or Novell, or whomever, I'm
not sure as I don't use that part) has made it possible to do so.  The more
OSS and linux can do in general, the better.  Even if you personally don't
see a need for the feature, that doesn't mean someone else doesn't.
Especially if the "other folks" provide such a feature in their software
already.

Personally, I'd be plenty happy once suspend to RAM works on my laptop,
maybe right now user error is preventing me from doing so, or maybe it's
because I have a thinkpad (IBM was mentioned before).

Anyhow, my point is, to some people, the 30 second vs 60 second or whatever
it is, really DOES matter.  It might not to you, but for whatever reason,
they want their hardware to do that.

Me?  It would be nice.  It's a pain to have 15 minutes between work and
class and spend more of that time than I'd like watching text fly by as it
boots, however, since I lack the intelligence to make it faster myself, I
make do.  It's not something that will prevent me from running Ubuntu (I've
converted 2 friends, one from Fedora, on from Debian), however, I don't find
it (a faster boot time) to be an unreasonable want or desire.

To each their own!  Cheers!


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