Is it possible to make Fedora load faster?

Ziga Mahkovec ziga.mahkovec at klika.si
Sun Apr 3 16:02:39 UTC 2005


On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 17:00 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote: 
> On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 04:27:54PM +0200, Ziga Mahkovec wrote:
> > There are several reasons why desktop systems need rebooting, and
> > they're not specific to Ubuntu:
> > 
> > - running a laptop (and not being able to get software suspend to work)
> > - powering down the system over night (think ecology)
> > - sharing a room with the noisy machine
> 
> All tasks you perform 1-5 times a day at max. So cutting 10 seconds
> boot time saves you a minute per day?

If you followed the discussion on devel-list last year, you'll remember
that some of the savings were much more than 10 seconds (like cutting a
1:47 minute bootup in half).  But even so, it's a usability thing --
when it comes to response times, a single second can make a difference.
I think in this case it's about preventing the users from performing
other tasks while waiting for the system to boot up.

> Unless you need instanton technology (think Fedora Media Center) there
> is no urgent need to speed up boot process, or not?
> 
> I don't disagree with lowering boot time, but it isn't high priority.

Well, since most of the investigation was already done in this area, it
doesn't seem like a big investment.  David Zeuthen[1] outlined the
changes that need to be done -- start GDM early, improve the readahead
list, cache kmodule, etc.

Also, applying the techniques for improving the boot process can improve
the responsiveness of the desktop in general -- e.g. by making better
use of readahead, the startup times of Firefox, OpenOffice or Evolution
could be greatly improved.

Last, while not always a good argument, others have put lots of effort
into reducing boot times.  Ubuntu and Gentoo list it as one of the goals
for their next release.  Apple and Microsoft had done this long ago.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-November/msg01374.html
-- 
Ziga




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