Some of us here at FOSS Force don’t mind waiting for a computer to boot. It reminds us of the old days when, after turning on the TV, radio or record player, we had to wait for the tubes to warm up.
The Screening Room
At 2015’s Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Jan Altenberg, who works for Linutronix in Germany, explains how Linux can be optimized to boot in less than one second. Find out more in this fascinating video.
Personally, I don’t have time to wait an entire second for booting Linux. During the boot process, I usually go fix myself a sandwich, go out for a walk, or pay some household bills. Then, when I return, Linux has finished booting in a second and I can finally sit down to get some work done.
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Phil Shapiro
For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at [email protected]
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Excellent article.
The problem isn’t Linux (the kernel). On traditional PCs, the BIOS and even UEFI can take longer than the kernel. Then userspace starts, and even with a parallel startup like systemd it can take 20 seconds (or more). That only gets you to the login screen. With a fully automated desktop setup, it takes another minute before I can actually do work.
From power-on to ready to work, is about 3 minutes. Using a Chromebook with suspend and resume is not an answer. Network sessions (e.g., ssh) has to be reestablished, and there’s currently no automated way to do that.
Android has apps like SSH Persistent Tunnels (SPT), but terminal sessions are still manual.
I think it’s great that Linux can boot that fast, but really it’s already the fastest part of the process.
@Mace Moneta
> “even with a parallel startup like systemd”
Please don’t hold systemd up as a good example of fast startup. While that was one of its original goals it is no longer, and it has become far too large and complex to do so. Even poettering will admit that. Despite this, the blind faith rumor that systemd boots fast persists.
The truth is, systemd is SLOWER than even sequential startup via system V in many cases. Using a fast parallel startup via OpenRC, runit, or s6 is far faster and (and far more stable) than systemd.
Personally I’m not a speed freak. It doesn’t matter to me one bit that someone else’s machine fires up and starts faster than mine. I’m content with watching my boot screen splash…and don’t mind waiting at all. I have a ThinkPad with 16GB RAM and a 1TB HDD, so I’m not in a rush. I prefer a system that’s stable and slow than one that’s ridiculously fast and buggy. So for all the folks who insist that their machine NEEDS to be 0.000003 seconds faster than the molecules falling from space?….have fun keeping up with NO ONE. for the rest of us, relax, it doesn’t matter how fast your machine starts up, all that matters is that it DOES startup and that it DOES work…ALL the time! (or at least as long as your hard drive, and monitor stay alive and kicking!…LoL!