Boot times - does puppy need to keep up?

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Aitch · #1 Post by **Aitch** » Wed 14 Oct 2009, 01:23

Linux boots in 2.97 seconds
Japanese embedded Linux house Lineo has announced a quick-start technology that it claims can boot Linux in 2.97 seconds on a low-powered system. The technology appears similar to but much faster than Linux's existing "suspend-to-disk" capability.

Meanwhile, two Intel engineers recently demonstrated a five-second boot of a Fedora Linux distribution on the Asus Eee PC netbook -- some nine times faster than a typical Fedora boot. And, Linux's ability to boot rapidly could result in Linux outshipping Windows on notebooks next year, according to one pundit. Embedded Linux vendors such as Lineo have played a role in at least one Linux fast-boot scheme for Windows laptops, with MontaVista supplying its stack to Dell for the Latitude ON technology shipped in some recent Dell Latitude notebooks. And, near-instant boots have long been important to solar-powered remote-sensing applications, where the boot process represents the bulk of the power budget, and some boards are claimed to boot Linux in under a second.

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News ... 7-seconds/

Can anything else be done to Puppy to speed up boot-up???

Aitch

sunburnt · #2 Post by **sunburnt** » Wed 14 Oct 2009, 02:54

I`ve suggested several ways to speed up any Linux`s boot time.
But it would require a complete over haul of how Linux works.
Also I`ve suggested several other mods to Linux to improve it.

In general it`s my opinion that Linux needs a "good cleaning out".
It`s a really great main frame OS, but it lacks as a desktop OS.

DaveS · #3 Post by **DaveS** » Wed 14 Oct 2009, 06:19

Dont forget shutdown speed. Puppy shuts down in about 5 secs on my laptop. I can go away and make a coffee waiting for my wifes works win machine to shut off!

thane · #4 Post by **thane** » Wed 14 Oct 2009, 07:13

I mainly use Tiny Core Linux rather than Puppy nowadays, but the boot time issue's come up over there too. The latest upgrade does more thorough error checking at the expense of a somewhat longer boot.

To me that seems like a reasonable tradeoff. I generally only boot (and shutdown) once a day. If it takes a few extra seconds then to get more reliability and performance the rest of the time I don't mind.

Edit: Re-reading what Aitch said, I can see how it would be more of an issue for notebooks and some specialized apps. For the desktop not so much (imho).

puppyiso · #5 Post by **puppyiso** » Wed 14 Oct 2009, 07:20

One day, I wanted to show GnomePuppy to some friends.

It took nearly 3 min just to boot. I felt really terrible.

May be Puppy need total overhaul in booting.

Ah,.. the Gnomwpuppy can be seen at;

http://applepienglish.com/korean_gnome_puppylinux.html

John

Puppy now is far behind in booting time compared to others.

panzerpuppy · #6 Post by **panzerpuppy** » Wed 14 Oct 2009, 20:22

Try the brand new Turbopup Xtreme:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=40477

James C · #7 Post by **James C** » Sun 18 Oct 2009, 08:34

I just checked boot time on my P3 733 mhz w/ 256 mb ram test box and a full install of 4.31 final. From the time I select 4.31 in the grub menu to a fully functional desktop took well under 30 seconds.

And to echo DaveS, it shuts down even faster.

Bligh · #8 Post by **Bligh** » Sun 18 Oct 2009, 09:25

Don't know what the boot time is, don't care. one user's opinion.
Cheers

issarad · #9 Post by **issarad** » Mon 19 Oct 2009, 00:28

I'm with Bligh on this one. Puppy boots fast enough that it's not an inconvenience and same with shutdown. But then again, even on my Windows machine, I'm not terribly worried about boot times since I tend to strip out all the unnecessary driver loads that usually kill boot times.

James186282 · #10 Post by **James186282** » Sat 24 Oct 2009, 03:16

I think start up time and shut down time are the best features of this system. I use a 750Mhz Pent III laptop and with a pared down version of Win2K this box took over 10 minutes to start. Swearing?! You've never heard so much of it from the guy I worked for waiting for this "sled" to get rolling. With Puppy out of the box it takes a minute. 10x is a worthy improvement! Shut down time is 6 or 7 seconds which to me is such a relief. Some of my windows boxes took so long that I just had to pull the cord and put up with possible serious problems on start up.

I spoke to a friend who never used any form of Linux but he suggested I try it when I was on a curse a thon about this issue. he said "all the reasons you hated Xenix are now its best feature" When we all had 286 computers Microsoft sold a version of Unix called Xenix that took like 14 minutes to start. And required 4 megabytes of ram (If I can remember this far back) and was the first system I had ever seen that you had to shut down the software before turning off the power.

I "thought" this laptop was useless and a piece of "scrap" now its once again become my main machine! I think focusing energy on making it even faster is VERY worthy of your time. Its great to see SOMEONE care about this type of thing. *I still wish OFF was just OFF... And I do think being asked "do you really mean to shut down or do you want to restart or not do anything is damn annoying. Imagine a car where you put on the brakes and a voice says "ARE YOUR SURE YOU WANT TO STOP?"

SHEESH..... I clicked it YES!

DemostiX · #11 Post by **DemostiX** » Sun 01 Nov 2009, 22:06

Those here who believe shutdown time for Puppy is quick should consider 1) the time it takes to write the save file to a pen-drive 2)why it really is important that the user have more control of what goes into it; and 3)that developers consider how to give him/her some of that control. The recommended default save file is now 512mb. I may need to shut down just after an automated backup of the save file has begun, in which case, without control over shutdown, I may be waiting for almost as long as it takes for Puppy process and to write a full gig to the USB pendrive.

Please, developers, take seriously the concern of users who wish to keep the save file small, and especially free of disposable cache files from browsers.

Instant start-up would be nice. It would be made faster by inclusion of options to let the user/ 'puter bypass certain checks, such as which save file to load and which devices to seach for save files. My brother and I were delighted that his family could get back to work and play, recovering from a crashed HDD with XP on it. That was thanks to Puppy booting flawlessly from CD. But, once I had a save file and a backup on a USB pendrive, we had to endure Puppy diligently but needlessly searching a huge failed hdd for other save files every time we rebooted.(IIRC, the bios did not permit an obvious way of rendering the hdd invisible.)

mikeb · #12 Post by **mikeb** » Mon 02 Nov 2009, 00:01

700mhz machine...

frugal puppies ~ 25secs up 7 down
full ~ 15secs up 5 down
win 2000 ~ 25 secs up 10 down
XP ~ 25 secs up 10 down
NT4 ~ 15 secs up 5 down
nimblex ~ 45 secs up 15 down
slitaz ~ 10 secs up 5 down

I wonder what ubuntu does?

But all pretty reasonable and once on stays on....

mike

James186282 · #13 Post by **James186282** » Mon 02 Nov 2009, 03:23

Mine is a 750 MHz Pent III and its a shade over a minute up and 6 or 7 seconds down. I would like to get it faster! Not sure how to go about that however...

- James

The machine is a Compaq Armada M700 for what its worth.

mikeb · #14 Post by **mikeb** » Mon 02 Nov 2009, 13:18

If you are running from cd it should have copied the pup_4xx.sfs file to hard drive...usually speeds it up a bit.
Either way copying that file to ram takes time...running with the pfix=noram parameter might help...that only applies if your ram is large enough ~256MB I believe to have pup_4xx loaded to ram.
If from usb flash then slow is enevitable .
The other point worth checking is that the bios is set to quick boot

mike

James186282 · #15 Post by **James186282** » Mon 02 Nov 2009, 16:15

I ended up doing a full install. I still have to scratch my head that puppy works (and well) from the CD. Its just "odd" to me. The boot from a USB really tickles me to death. Amazing... I guess I'm easily amused but...

I'm gushing now, but this is really an amazing system. I've been beaten to death with every version of windows (since the first) and each one annoys me more then the previous. Its like a landfill.

I loved smaller systems like the Amiga and (don't laugh) Atari. Macintosh (pre Linix) was interesting but they had some of the same thinking about software (I think) as MS in that it was never very simple or straightforward.

Anyway, I started with 8080 computers in the WAY back days and this stuff is the first time in many years that I've been excited about computers again...

Imagine a place where people care about speeding things up? Or making better code? Or even letting anyone SEE it?!?!?!?

COOL!

steevieb · #16 Post by **steevieb** » Mon 02 Nov 2009, 23:16

James186282
"I still wish OFF was just OFF"
There was a version, I think one of the 2 series, that had a 'shutdown' button down by the 'show desktop'/'quick launch' buttons. It did not 'nag' you, but it was easy to hit by mistake.

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