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Fast-Booting OS for Usually-Off Appliance PCs?
An anonymous reader writes "I have some older computer equipment at work that I want to re-purpose as application appliances. The machines will sit, unpowered, until needed, then powered up. No way around the 'sitting powered off' — company directive. What is the quickest-booting OS I could use for them? I know about LinuxBIOS, but that would require new hardware, which does not go along which the re-purposing theme. Some of them do not need to be connected to a network, so an old version of Linux or Windows 98 are possible. DOS is too old to consider. So what are my options?"
Oh, keep the autoexec.bat small.
I think you misspelled EMACS
"Did it all the time back in the day.
That would be "back in the decade" now, by almost a month.
What is their purpose?
Their purpose is to run a fast booting OS
A bit later I bought a 1 GHz PIII HP Pavillion. After I replaced the 60 GB WD HDD with a 13 GB unit (big drives are for servers; clients get small drives) and replaced the trialware-laden WinME with Win98 boot times dropped from 35 seconds to 25. That's gotta be 6, 7 years ago by now... how old is your box?
I always found ME to boot much faster than 98/98SE, but that was the only improvement... Oh and defrag was quicker, it would usually finish before something crashed or locked up.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
It's a heck of alot faster than DialUp Linux.
I think you misspelled EMACS
Hmm, nope:
(P)erfect (E)macs (R)e-writing (L)anguage
He got it right.
And a newish VIA mini-ITX board costs how much?
Look, it seems most people here would just like to see the guy get a new computer, so why not chip in and send him a crisp twenty.
"What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!" Doctorow
Porn more than likely.
More to the point, what is their favourite colour, and what is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Unfortunately, Apple didn't go with Be and we'll never know what could have been.
Multiple threads of slashdotters nostalgically longing for the days of NeXTStep to return?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Porn more than likely.
Since he said this is for company computers, you'd think that for porn "fast power-off times" would be more important than "fast boot times". But that doesn't seem like as much of a challenge now, does it?
John
In that case, can't get much faster than Grub. People will tell you it's a bootloader, but it has cat, so it must be an OS!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
African or European?
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
I don't know. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yes, a great choice but do you know any good text editor that would run on it?
Yeah, but in *theory* theory and practise are the same, so we only need to think about the theoretical!
maybe try to WINE notepad?
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
In that case, can't get much faster than Grub. People will tell you it's a bootloader, but it has cat, so it must be an OS!
Well it *can* do pretty much everything DOS can (load stuff that actually does something), except it comes with a nicer editor and the bundled games are better.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
....you'd think that for porn "fast power-off times" would be more important than "fast boot times".
That and replacing the CD drive with a tissue dispenser.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Only AMIGA.. makes it possible. Sing with me.... ohhhonly AMIGAAAAA... maaaakes it....
cat
Sadly, perhaps the greatest legacy of BeOS is this little Zork spoof about writing a graphic driver.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You've gotta admit though, that game sounds awesome.
Since he said this is for company computers, you'd think that for porn "fast power-off times" would be more important than "fast boot times". But that doesn't seem like as much of a challenge now, does it?
The company could be a sperm bank.
Bullish Machine Tzar