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Boot Windows Faster, Using Linux
BiOFH writes "TechNewsWorld is reporting that InterVideo has a solution for slow boot times runing Windows XP MCE. 'The new Linux-based InstantOn software -- designed to help Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs boot more quickly -- is aimed at taking advantage of the power of Intel's Pentium processors, not at fixing fragmented hard drives. The software integrates into the computer's BIOS and the operating system.'" According to this article, the software uses a small Linux partition on the user's hard drive. I wonder how BIOSes with hard-wired Microsoft-based DRM would cooperate with this scheme.
It doesn't make Windows boot faster. It's just a stripped-down version of Linux which of course is going to boot faster because it provides far less functionality. If you want to get to full Windows, you'll have to wait out the remainder of the boot process you interrupted.
Any CD-based Linux distro can achieve the a similar effect with far more functionality.
It boots Linux faster, offering a choice of several entertainment related programs, as well as the choice to boot windows, which takes as long as usual.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What About the old "Don't load programs you don't need to load at startup"? Prefetcher tweakage. (yay for bootvis) Killing ad / spyware, tweaking services? My XP boot fairly quick (if I *enter* out of my 30sec countdown from my Xp bootloader asking me if I want Linux Or windows today.) Who doesn't know that isn't very likely to install a seperate Linux partition just to boot quicker?
Sounds like they are using LinuxBIOS plus some apps for the quick boot option.
Now, the question is, will Joe User start asking himself "Why can't EVERYTHING run this quickly?", and will the companies start realizing that everything CAN, IF they port their stuff to Linux?
(NOTE: Obviously there is one company that is unlikely to take this action, but perhaps others might.)
Of course, there is always the option of embedding Windows into the system ROM as well.
(shudder)
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Which is what I thought when I read the writeup. It is actually a minimal media-distro designed to boot quickly. To do windows stuff, you still have to wait for windows start time.
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Windows Media Center is meant to be a TiVo clone. In order for it to record the shows you want, you need to leave it up at all time. This stripped-down Linux just isn't going to make the cut... the proper mode of operation is to simply avoid rebooting by leaving it always-up.
I thought Linux also re-did (or had the ability to re-do) pretty much everything the BIOS did, purely to fix up cretinous BIOSes that didn't do their stuff properly. I can see why that would scare you as a BIOS programmer (not knocking your personal ability, you understand) but surely the simple answer is for the BIOS industry to improve its standards so that OSes don't have to incorporate numerous workarounds.
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Linux is a kernel. It takes very little time to boot up (it's done when you see INIT: Version such-and-such booting). On a modern PC, Linux will boot in a few seconds or less. From there, everything is in userland, and boot speed thus depends on what your distro chooses to initialize at startup. So if you're unhappy with bootup times, use a distro that loads less stuff, or cut yours down. For the network thing, I would suspect a failed attempt to get a DHCP lease.
The solution to the long boot time problem isn't quicker boots, it's getting rid of the need to boot or reboot! Think about it, Handheld devices are designed so that they don't need regular reboots. Embedded devices are the same way. My Tivo takes forever to boot up, much longer than my laptop running Windows or Linux, but it doesn't bother me because the only time I reboot it is when it's moved! The solution to these issues is not faster on time, it's always on! This is where Linux has a big lead too, even though WinXP is much better than 9x in terms of stability it still can't beat Linux when measuring stability in weeks and months...
My recollection is that Windows boot times first started getting bad (WFW booted pretty fast comparatively) when publications like CNet were bending over backwards (or was it the other way) to show how much faster Office was than competing products. The benchmarking consisted of: (1) boot both systems, (2) start timers, (3) start application, (4) start benchmark series, (5) end application, (6) stop timers.
Lo, and behold, more and more initialization work for Office, and then IE, started showing up in the Windows boot sequence.
Merging applications into the OS is BAD DESIGN, but it won the poorly thought out benchmarks that many organizations used to select their "productivity" tools. Now Windows, and Windows users will pay the price. Serves them right.
Sure, leave your Windows machines running 24/7 to avoid the boot delay. Linux and OS X users have that option too, but for them it is truly an option, not something they NEED to do.
LinuxBIOS project has the right idea by ideally cutting out as much cruft from the system firmware as possible and leaving it up to the OS to perform initialization, but in reality some tasks are forced onto the firmware by design.
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If MS was to start producing BIOSes, which Im sure they could do, they would have to maintain compatability with the existing BIOSes of the world.
There are pleanty of things that are not MS OSs that use the BIOS. Ghost. PXE. DOS before Netware (do they still do this?). Recovery CDs. And of course the OSS OSs.
I have no idea how much the license for something like Phoenix BIOS costs. Less then a dollar per mobo, Im sure. Lets say that MS starts giving away their BIOS: How many PC hardware manufacturers are going to switch, to save pennies, at the risk of no longer making PC hardware? The hardware world has settled on using industry standards a long time ago. Not even MS can change that.
That is nothing new... with Linux I accelerated Windows to 9.8 m/s^2