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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.
What is their purpose?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Un, no. Splashtop requires new hardware. He specifically wants to repurpose old hardware.
While that looks neat, there is no download for it.
"Splashtop is bundled with motherboards, desktops and notebooks by their manufacturers.
Currently, it is available with products from the following manufacturers:
Notebooks
ASUS
Motherboards
ASUS
Desktops"
So, unless you buy an ASUS machine, with this loaded, you look to be SOL.
What part of the questioner's desire to re-purpose old, existing, hardware did you not understand?
Linux + hibernate (swsusp, TuxOnIce) functionality.
No sig, sorry.
There's always BeOS, which prided itself on lightning-fast load times. Otherwise, a rather stripped down UNIX-alike would do you fine.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Dos may work well as well as windows 3.11 or windows 98.
A CF based disk will boot fast as well as a ssd.
Since Windows 98 IS nothing but DOS with a copy of Windows that autoloads once booted why not use it? You can even modify the initialization scripts to have it boot up with a DOS prompt and then type WIN to run Windows 98. Did it all the time back in the day.
More realistically, there is this interesting Linux distribution, Webconverger:
http://webconverger.com/
I've used it for a few web-only systems. Boots up fast enough. Use it as a starting point to tweak. Basically, firefox becomes your operating system and UI. Neat idea.
there is " damn small linux " http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ you could even install it in the /boot partition of fedora as a backup os
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
Reuse is good and and environmental and all, but: How much is your time worth? How many hours of your time to set up one of these older machines would buy a newer machine? And if energy costs are a concern (and why not): how much more efficient would the "right machine" for the task be, given the costs? I've never understood the tendency of companies to cheat on hardware costs - making someone jump through dozens of hours of hoops is far more costly than just buying the right hardware.
Depending on the intended use, a minimal install of OpenBSD might do the trick.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
DSL linux is really fast when installed on a Hdd.
Boot from a RAMdisk filesystem and make it as small as possible. Rip out all the startup scripts and write your own that just runs the one or two things you actually need running, runs ifconfig, route, etc. manually with hard-coded info (or starts dhclient/pump/dhcpcd). Compile the minimum number of possible drivers into the kernel and don't include any modules at all, nor tools to load modules. Include a bare-bones GUI layer like Nano-X and write your applications using pure Xlib if you can. Otherwise, use the most lightweight WM and GUI toolkit you can find (e.g. straight Tcl/Tk).
For permanent storage, mount a small (e.g. 300 MB) filesystem on a flash card so that the fsck takes just a couple of seconds even if forced. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Just to be clear: You intend to have old machines sitting around unpowered and then someone WALKS UP TO THEM and presses the power button. The user then waits for the OS to boot and does his thing. Correct?v
So what are these systems being used for? Kiosks? This is critical to determining what you need. For example, QNX boots very quickly but it's an embedded Unix system. But QNX probably won't run whatever app it is you want to run on these systems.
Basically, you said they are going to be application appliances. WHAT application?
You haven't said what exactly these machines are going to be doing, but I fail to see why the extra time that one OS takes over another is a factor to deal with.
If it takes an extra 90 seconds to boot an OS that is stable and reliable, how does shaving that 90 seconds save anything?
Optimizing for boot time over everything else seems very foolish to me.
Take a look at DSL and Puppy Linux. Both are tiny and would boot quickly from a CompactFlash. DSL is probably better for all-around appliance use; Puppy is intended for use as a desktop OS.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://www.puppylinux.org/
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
MenuetOS Its a bit hardcore though, and you would probably have a hard time getting 'normal' applications to work, but its tiny and quick, although sort of a beta still.
But if you know ASM, its could be a miracle cure or something...
MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License. It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications.
Menuet has no roots within UNIX or the POSIX standards, nor is it based on any operating system. The design goal has been to remove the extra layers between different parts of an OS, which normally complicate programming and create bugs.
Menuet's application structure is not specifically reserved for asm programming since the header can be produced with practically any other language. However, the overall application programming design is intended for easy 32/64 bit asm programming. Menuet's responsive GUI is easy to handle with assembly language.
Features:
- Pre-emptive multitasking with 1000hz scheduler, multithreading, ring-3 protection
- Responsive GUI with resolutions up to 1280x1024, 16 million colours
- Free-form, transparent and skinnable application windows, drag'n drop
- IDE: Editor/Assembler for applications
- USB 2.0 Hi-speed storage support
- TCP/IP stack with Loopback & Ethernet drivers
- Email/ftp/http/chess clients and ftp/mp3/http servers
- Hard real-time data fetch
- Fits on a single floppy
Happens to be a favorite of mine (not mine as in created), although probably not suited to your needs judging by the brief summary.
Any OS with hibernate should be quick enough. I doubt systems vary too much between them. Anything that uses minimal ram and hance has less to load on boot. Just go with whatever OS suits you best.
Splashtop requires a new motherboard. Motherboards aren't always expensive.
But doesn't a new motherboard for a years-old PC typically have new, incompatible CPU and RAM sockets, which require a new CPU and new RAM? At that point, you're practically building a new PC with an old case and drives.
BeOS really was pretty amazing in this respect, and some others. Multithreading was far ahead of anything else at the time, and probably since, as well. On some older machine (P3-ish; much slower HDD than nowadays) I clocked boot time at 15 seconds, OS/2 and Linux distros of the time were more like 1-1.5 minutes on the same hardware.
The way it booted so fast was largely by deferring a lot of the "initialization" stuff until the system was "booted". This is nothing like the awful way Windows (and to a lesser extent KDE/Gnome desktops) keep loading stuff for a good while, letting you see the desktop for a minute before you can really do anything. Under BeOS, said multithreading was well utilized to give you a responsive GUI right at that 15 seconds, but still do background loads of various background processes that you didn't *really* need immediately.
Of course, if you immediately launched something that *did* need the services of something loading in a background thread, you'd obviously have to wait a few more seconds. But even all that background loading was very efficient, and practically, by the time you could make a few clicks, it was loaded.
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You have a requirement for fast booting but you just blunder ahead and elimiate DOS from the running right from the start.
DOS can make a very capable platform if you don't need the support services of a more sophisticated OS. There is no question that it can be made to boot faster than most other off the shelf OS's. You don't mention what you need to run on these machines so it is hard to tell what will be suitable for you. You can run most *NIX shell apps under a DOS environment using DJGPP and its 32-bit extender. FreeDOS has a lot of drivers to handle more modern hardware. If you need something closer to a true *NIX system that boots fast, QNX is worth considering too.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I have to agree that this is a pointless discussion. As long as we don't know the purpose or application required, the OS discussion is pointless. The application will usually dictate the environment, not the other way around.
I think you misspelled EMACS
It is an optimized Linux stack according to the site and developers section. It should install on a HDD in theory.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Splashtop requires a new motherboard. Motherboards aren't always expensive.
Since you need very specific ones they probably are and as someone else mentioned they won't work with older hardware. That's not counting whatever driver hell you may have with any peripherals.
And Splashtop is open source. If you go to their website and contact them, they will release source according to their site.
So you wouldn't even need a new motherboard then. Just install the Splashtop OS on your existing hardware.
Which will give you absolutely nothing, do you think it boots instantly by magic or something? Why in god's name do you think it requires specific motherboards or did you simply not think at all? Do you think that maybe those motherboard have some extra special hardware that let's splashtop do it's magic?
To quote wikipedia "Splashtop seems to work with a 512MB flash memory embedded on the PC motherboard.[6] A proprietary core engine starts at the BIOS boot and loads a specialized Linux distribution called a "Virtual Appliance Environment" (VAE). While running this VAE, the user can launch "Virtual Appliances" (VA). Skype is a VA, for instance.[7]"
Use either DSL or puppy. I have used both on older hardware and installed on the HDD the boot is very fast. You could probably speed up the process even more if you compiled it for the specific hardware.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
... built off BeOS, I thinks ;)
It will be sitting powered off. Not much of a power drain there. At a certain point, the cost of new equipment will outweigh the power savings.
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
I don't know, how about the part where it's a stupid idea and he should just invest in a PC that isn't more than 10 years old?
Don't feed the trolls but...
There are those of us that like old cars, old planes, old trains, old things, for whatever reason. I myself enjoy having old rigs, there is nothing like launching Win 3.11 again to bring me straight back to middle school and my first computer. And when that software is running on the hardware of it's era it becomes so much sweeter. Or sometimes I like to overclock the old stuff, much trickier then it is now. Or sometimes I need a fan, or a case to mod as a rough draft... Yeah when you see something as irrelevant due to it's age and no other criteria you're really limiting yourself to that everything is disposable Wal-Mart style economy, and I pity you.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
How the hell can anyone make a sensible suggestion when we have no idea what the hardware is or what the applications are they're supposed to run?
A trimmed down Win2K that's hibernated can be surprisingly fast. In college I relied on a Pentium 200 with 32MB RAM and a 2 gig harddrive for my in class note taking and presentations, usually using Office 2000.
On a system with that little ram the default install will use very little memory from a fresh boot and a lot of stuff can still be turned off to get it smaller.
I kind of relied on it shutting down and starting up fast for back to back classes. The laptop was already old and didn't have a working battery so it was a full power down every class. $1200 a semester in books FTL.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Can you afford the extra electricity to power the old PC, and the extra air conditioning to get rid of the massive amounts of heat that old thing is going to put out?
The old things don't put off heat... Listen to yourself. I can't tell you how many Pentiums/K6/Cryix based systems I've seen with no fan but the one in the PSU. Oh and the PSU's, when's the last time you've opened an old computer and found anything higher then 250-300watts max? Can't say that I have, ever. In fact when I received 6 Pentium D's a few weeks ago from an office upgrading all there kit all they came equipped with mere 250w PSU, and those are somewhat modern systems based on an architecture that was known for reaching up to 115 W in 3.6-3.8 GHz Prescotts. So yeah I think your point is moot and your talking out your ass. But we'll never know :) He didn't specify the hardware.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
We already have that, but with FORTH, it's called OpenFirmware and I wish Intel would have adopted it instead of going with the slow to be adopted EFI.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It is an optimized Linux stack. It should boot from a HDD. It doesn't "require" a specific motherboard, so much as ASUS is the only company to currently integrate it in their motherboards. The integrate it by storing the Splashtop software stack on a flash chip.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Dude I've had it to here with old PCs as appliances. 250W PSU? Are you kidding me? Have you seen how much power a newish VIA mini-ITX board draws? Hint: it's in low single digits.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
You're doing something very wrong. We have XPe based thinterms that boot almost instantly from cold power up.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Can *we* afford the environmental cost of replacing a working system?
http://cafepress.com/spankymm - for the Masturbating Monkey in you!
Going with the assumption that you will have at least one of these, normally off, appliances on often enough to justify it: One fast computer with a large and fast hard-drive holding a number of these normally off images. All sorts of benefits - Images can be archived and moved to another computer if hardware starts to go. Numerous images can be maintained easily, and remotely. If one appliance becomes popular, it can be put on a dedicated machine easily. Then if thats not fast enough, any *NIX that does not load unneeded daemons, especially a GUI. Slackware tends to boot very fast for me
I think you misspelled EMACS
Hmm, nope:
(P)erfect (E)macs (R)e-writing (L)anguage
He got it right.
Like this sort of thing?
http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue153/105_Paradise_Accelerator.php
It's a card that does a hardware bitblt operation so the CPU doesn't.
Windows accelerators are 2-D graphics accelerators.
The problem there is that you don't recompile DSL (and I'm sure Puppy either since, iirc, it was initially based on DSL). To achieve such a small size the DSL team compiles all of the source, including the many patches that are probably required, and release each version as-is in binary format. Though it may be possible to speed up the boot process by tweaking the init scripts it probably wouldn't be worth it since all of the software involved has been compiled for size, not speed, and the DSL team has added lots of their own init scripts to handle the various boot methods it supports.
Along the lines of using a DSL like system though would be perhaps to use an older version of Debian, say Sarge or something.
"What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!" Doctorow
in theory, in theory, in theory.....
You say that a lot. He's not looking for something that works "in theory", but something that "actually works" in the real world.
I'm sure your suggestion is really, really awesome, "in theory". Unfortunately, there's a huge difference between the drawing board and actual application.
You do realize that simply having a PSU capable of supporting 250W is not the same thing as actually drawing 250W, right?
Or are you still learning?
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
confession:
I have a IBM PC with a flip top case.
It is just too cool to get rid of.
I have personally seen the kernel portion of a boot on an embedded board reduced to 186 milliseconds, using aggressive techniques such as Execute-in-Place.
For user space, customize your init scripts (actually, dump your init scripts in favor of one compiled /sbin/init binary).
In the x86 space, with legacy hardware, I think the thing that will give you the most problem is BIOS. I know of products with custom code that replaces BIOS, that load the kernel from ROM in under 150 milliseconds. But that's probably more effort than you are interested in. You may want to check out what options are available in your current (legacy) BIOS for skipping things like the POST test, etc.
Intel wanted to create their own new thing so that they could build in DRM and Treacherous Computing.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
http://www.menuetos.net/ Please check out the MenuetOS page, download a disk image, and see if it's something you can use. Can't hurt to try it on one of the old machines. The hardware requirements are modest for the 32-bit version, plus it's Open Source.
You could try an x86 build of OpenWRT and use CF rather than HDD. On router devices, OpenWRT boots up in about 10 seconds, but I'm sure the BIOS on a PC would add to the bootup time. I haven't tried it on a PC but I've seen that others have.
Then of course there always LFS, DSL, various Slack distros, etc. but you still get limited by the bios.
You may want to check over on the mp3car.com forums. I've seen a couple threads over there on getting machines to boot up quick, though I couldn't comment on the quality of the content.
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.
Why do good posts like this so often get modded badly, while FALSE posts like those contradicting it get modded insightful.
Read:
"Splashtop is preinstalled on the hard drive or in the on-board Flash memory of new PCs and motherboards by their manufacturers. Splashtop is a software-only solution that requires no additional hardware. A small component of Splashtop is embedded in the BIOS of the PC - that's the part that runs as soon as you press the power button."
This should make it obvious, along with the couple intelligent posters who noted that it can boot from an HD.
Maybe Slashdot needs to start restricting mod points to those who aren't idiots?
Yes, a great choice but do you know any good text editor that would run on it?
One of the fastest and smallest linux distroes around that also include every thing you want. Recently the main developer have focused a lot on boot time, releasing a special build for those that want fast boot (UniPup).
Read more about it in his blog(linkin to google cache since I don't think his blog can take a slashdot): http://google.com/search?q=cache:3oVbzBTFnpIJ:www.puppylinux.com/blog/+puppy+linux+blog&hl=no&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=no&client=firefox-a
The blog post on UniPup: http://google.com/search?q=cache:cC9Ah83omzkJ:www.puppylinux.com/blog/%3FviewDetailed%3D00194+puppy+linux+UniPup+blog&hl=no&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=no&client=firefox-a
Puppy home page: http://www.puppylinux.org/
This is a signature..
Windows 98 is okay but DOS is too old? Eh?
First, we have NO idea what you actually want. Are these going to be running dumb terminals, displays, "embedded device" roles, what? What sort of machines are we talking about? What sort of budget do you consider acceptable?
Seriously, if you want things to boot THAT quick, you're either going to have to spend money (LinuxBIOS, replacing with ARM or other embedded devices etc.) or you're going to have to compromise (DOS or some other really-cut-down OS). FreeDOS is used in these sorts of things all the time, even for networking appliances with appropriate drivers loaded. People have FreeDOS MP3 players in place of their CD-players in their car. Virtually-instant to boot.
Back in the day, you could get an old DOS machine to boot really quickly if you optimised everything and cut out all the cruft (BIOS boot times were actually a large part of it, unfortunately, what with memory-checks, floppy-checks etc.) . Guess what, you won't get that same machine to boot any quicker today without replacing parts.
If you have minimal actual software requirements (i.e. they ain't doing anything fancy and need to boot REALLY fast), then you're looking at DOS. Otherwise you're looking at Linux (if you want to keep licensing, support, compatibility costs down) unless you want to buy XP licenses for them all. Wouldn't like to think what Windows 98 would work like in this on/off scenario. I suspect that it would start crashing out, hitting filesystem checks, etc. eventually no matter what you tried. And Windows 98 is SLOW to boot. Incredibly so. For a start, it loads DOS first and then kicks itself in after that!
After you've sorted the OS, if you're still struggling then you can look at things like LinuxBIOS (sorry, but that's the only way you'll speed up the BIOS boot times on older PC's but the chances are that it's just not supported for your chipset).
To be honest, from a power-saving perspective, just bin the lot (see if you can get a few quid for them first) and then buy some Gumstix or similar embedded board, Mini-ITX etc. You can literally leave something like that on 24/7 and not pull anywhere near the power you would draw with an old PC in one hour. And you can have them boot extremely fast and minimally.
Re-using old hardware is great. Expecting it to perform brilliantly isn't. Booting reliably into a powerful, full-featured OS in a handful of seconds *is* performing brilliantly. We couldn't do it back in the days of DOS devices with standard PC's, you aren't going to manage it now without making some cutbacks on your expectations. And then for about £50 each, you can get tiny, powerful, power-saving, fan-free, embedded ARM units with Linux that'll do anything you want.
You have unrealistic expectations.
maybe try to WINE notepad?
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
As most people said: it entirely depends on your application, but Minix (www.minix3.org) boots darn fast. It has some serious downsides (such as limited software availability and lack of drivers), but if you get it to work it works like a charm. Also, the microkernel design is clearly superior to the monolithic kernel design many operating systems use these days :P
The problem there is that you don't recompile DSL (and I'm sure Puppy either since, iirc, it was initially based on DSL).
I'm guessing he meant recompile the kernel to match the specific hardware. There's no point waiting for the kernel to scan for every SCSI device ever made if you don't have any. Also you can build a non-modular kernel and avoid the need to run module update scripts and eliminate the initrd. You can generally save several seconds this way if you really know what you're doing.
I've never seen a PC draw more than 5W in S4 or S5. Come to think of it, I've never even seen more than 5W in S3. And I've got some crappy cheap inefficient PSUs here. 10W would have to include a monitor in standby. 75W? that's just unbelievable.
A switched-mode power supply (like those used in PCs for as long as I can remember - at least since the 386 days, anyway) shouldn't waste more than a watt or so of its excess capacity in heat - it generally only draws as much power as is needed (fluctuating dynamically with the load)
This is hard to find information. In most test pc are rated under load.
but Here
. I was shocked to discover just what an inefficient beast the desktop is: even when the computer and monitor are physically turned off, they continue to draw 31 watts from the wall (precisely what the laptop consumes when it is on and in use).
I was sure i read such values from a test on tomshardware, but i fail to locate it now.
I disagree.. he wants a complete OS/environment.
http://www.qnx.com/
you can get it's complete kit free nfor non commercial use. is INSANE FAST at booting if you do it right and is small.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
All well and good he wants to "save money" and re-use existing hardware, but changing an OS is going to mean a LOT of time, testing, and likely new software. The cost of this will FAR out shadow the costs of a new piece of compatible hardware...
Of course, before you can ask what OS to run, we might want to know what applications it's being used for... and why exactly would an application appliance be powered off? this obviously isn't a database that gets regular attention, or any kind of security device, backup system, or other management system. so...
I'm assuming we're talking about legacy apps here then. In that case, I'm CERTAIN you have idle space and CPU time on existing servers. Throw a VM in there, and use that. When idle (hibernate, wake on LAN) it should use no more energy that the host would be when idle by itself, and if that host is a machine that DOES have to be on 24/7, then you're effectively using 0 additional power. It will wake on LAN in 15-30 seconds, maybe faster, and can auto hibernate again when idle. Simple, clean, and as a bonus, you can move the old hardware to your DR or testing lab.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
*Points to MenuetOS.*
you can boot the entire OS direct from floppy. Programmed in x86/x64 assembler (Yea there are 32 and 64 bit versions) and it will fit your purpose for non-networked machines (getting the network to work requires a little assembler knowledge)
It also boots faster than anything else I've ever seen, next to a NES game.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Puppy's not based on DSL now and I don't think it ever was. Puppy is specifically designed to run well on old hardware. You could go on about various linux flavors, compiling & optimizing, but if the original poster wants something that works out of the box with minimal fuss, puppy ought to work just fine, as should DSL.
Dunno about using a hibernate in puppy since it's been a while since I last played with it, but the boot times ought to be great if you can do it - they're great on a straight boot from the HDD.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.