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What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:08 am
by volomike
I've got a brand new Acer Extensa laptop running Ubuntu 8.04, VirtualBox drivers, wireless driver, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. I counted the number of seconds it takes for me to get to the desktop as fast as possible, and for the application menu to be responsive. It came to a whopping 72 seconds. Not good. How about you?

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:44 pm
by arjan.top
fedora 10 with kde 4.1 65 seconds

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:53 pm
by matthijs
As soon as I turn off my machine I'll report. Maybe this weekend.

I never understand those startup times, why it takes so long. It's funny that now I have VMware running on my notebook, turning on XP within the virtual machine, in the state I left it, takes a few seconds. Why that isn't possible in a normal situation I don't understand. Closing all running programs and documents is annoying enough. Just saving the state and turning it on in a few seconds should be the default behavior of any OS

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 12:57 pm
by volomike
I suppose my life would be a lot better if I'd pony up for one of these new $400 (USD) 150GB solid state drives for laptops. I don't know if it'll fit in my laptop -- I guess I should look. They say these new ones are super fast and last 10 years before needing replacement. But, when you get them, your laptop can handle a good bit more shock than previously. I've even seen people dancing with their laptop in a funny video the other day (the one with Richard Stallman). Plus, your battery life last a lot longer and the fan doesn't need to run so much.

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 4:07 pm
by alex.barylski
Cold boot or warm boot?

Not including the POST it takes Windows about 24 seconds to fully come to life, and only 18 or so to become functional, that is the mouse can move around and icons can be dragged and clicked, but it's sluggish until everything is finished loading.

With the Google toolbar installed it takes IE about 30 seconds to load up the first instance, that is more troubling.

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 4:58 pm
by Burrito
I only ever turn my machine off for windows updates and those usually happen automatically whilst I sleep.

I can say, my machine takes about .9 seconds to come to life when I move my mouse though.

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:25 pm
by volomike
PCSpectra wrote:Cold boot or warm boot?

Not including the POST it takes Windows about 24 seconds to fully come to life, and only 18 or so to become functional, that is the mouse can move around and icons can be dragged and clicked, but it's sluggish until everything is finished loading.

With the Google toolbar installed it takes IE about 30 seconds to load up the first instance, that is more troubling.
Cold boot, in my case. And again, I'm loading Apache2, Postfix, PostgreSQL, MySQL, the Virtualbox drivers, and my wireless driver. The wireless might be part of the slowdown, but I can definitely say that the PostgreSQL daemon takes the longest to get online.

And are you loading Apache, MySQL, or PostgreSQL in that timeframe, or do you have those on a separate server? For me, I have everything on my laptop so that I can take it with me on the fly. Then, I back up stuff to my web space on the web using rsync or scp.

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:38 pm
by alex.barylski
Cold boot, in my case. And again, I'm loading Apache2, Postfix, PostgreSQL, MySQL, the Virtualbox drivers, and my wireless driver. The wireless might be part of the slowdown, but I can definitely say that the PostgreSQL daemon takes the longest to get online.
Yikes.
And are you loading Apache, MySQL, or PostgreSQL in that timeframe, or do you have those on a separate server? For me, I have everything on my laptop so that I can take it with me on the fly. Then, I back up stuff to my web space on the web using rsync or scp.
I do yes, but on different machines.

My Windows machine has very little on it, Virtual PC, IDE, WinSCP and a few other tools, not many services, other than SVNserve. No firewalls, etc.

My Linux machine on the other hand, loads LAMP, SpamAssassin, postfix and a myriad of other daemons. It' s not terribly slow though, probably about the same boot time as Windows.

Ubuntu is a hog...extremely sluggish and slow even when dual booted from my new machine. Abstraction is a killer :P

I ordered some CD's a while back, threw them into my desktop as a dual boot and the load time was probably 3-4 times WinXP Pro...even the interface was sluggish...moving the mouse felt slow...windows didn't respond as nicely or quickly...

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 7:09 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I've got a mac and it rarely gets shut down... I just close the lid and let it sleep. Like Burrito says, it takes a split second to come to life from that sleep :)

PS: Hi Burrito, how the **** are ya! :D

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 7:54 pm
by volomike
Sleep don't play nicely with Ubuntu 8.04 on an Acer Extensa 4420. It works some of the time, but not all the time. That's terribly frustrating. Another thing that happens is that I may come out of sleep, but then the sound driver is dead. Someone said to switch to the ALSA driver in the control panel, but that didn't help me.

Still, it's a pretty responsive, sturdy, yet small laptop, and very cheap, so I put up with it. Most of the time it remains powered on and connected to a large flat panel monitor. I only have a laptop for when I need to move the operation to the bed (when sick or just tired), or when I need to travel with my wife to another town and yet still need to work on a deadline.

Another problem I have is that the stupid keyboard has no backlighting, and there's no little light I can flip on, so I can't see the keys. Some may say -- well, you should just touch type -- but they don't realize that most of the time I'm using a separately attached USB keyboard, and, as well, it's the obscure keys that get me, such as needing to type the British Pound, or do an F5 completely in the dark. However, I have a solution. I found a place that sells glow-in-the-dark stickers for keyboard keys, and it includes the Euro and the Pound, which are important to me these days.

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:48 pm
by Burrito
Chris Corbyn wrote:PS: Hi Burrito, how the **** are ya! :D
heya d11...long time. I'm doing well. Been spending my time in the M$ world the past two years though (C#). I'm enjoying it, though PHP is my first true love :).

you still down under?

Re: What's Your Desktop Boot Time?

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 9:06 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Burrito wrote:you still down under?
I am indeed :)