Gutsy speed

[Derek Broughton]

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

>> From: Bruce Marshall <bmarsh at bmarsh.com>
>> Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 15:40:26 -0500
> 
>> Stefano Menegazzi wrote:
>>> Hi all,
> 
>>> i was wondering about incresing ubuntu boot
>>> speed...  right now it takes much time to get
>>> ready, is there any trick to make it faster?
> 
>> Can I ask why you are booting so much that it
>> would really make a difference?
> 
> If one runs a dual boot system, rebooting many times
> a day is perfectly normal and expected activity,

I don't think so.  If you have that much need to switch, it's _well_ worth
the expense to either buy a non-OEM license for Windows, so that you can
run it in an Ubuntu VM, or buy VMWare for windows to run Ubuntu.

> yes, Ubuntu's very long boot with the user staring
> at a black screen is no sales tool for making Ubuntu
> more widely used.

???  Ubuntu never starts with a black screen unless it's broken or you've
already tampered with the boot process (and possibly both), because it uses
the boot splash by default.
> 
> I'm sure that the MS-Windows XP boot is even longer,
> but the user is handed control of the computer while
> lots of the startup process is still underway,
> reducing the _perceived_ wait considerably.

Not on my damn Vista box.

Since this problem appears to be more related to how long it actually takes
to get into your desktop from boot than actual boot times, I have to ask if
those with problems have considered just moving the gdm/kdm startup scripts
earlier in the process?  Back in the day, when I had an underpowered laptop
that couldn't hibernate, I moved /etc/rc2.d/S99kdm to somewhere about S30,
and it knocked ages off the startup times.  otoh, it maybe doesn't matter
to Gnome users, as it looks like gdm already starts there.
-- 
derek