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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?"
Un, no. Splashtop requires new hardware. He specifically wants to repurpose old hardware.
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.
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
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.
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?
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
Older machines are often built better than newer faster stuff. I have several of the white Dell Optiplex machines doing infrastructure stuff for me. Most have uptimes measured in the span between upgrades of my op system (OpenBSD).
It takes almost no more time to install on a 500MHz Dell than some 2.xGHz box. Yes, the disk may take longer to format--but how often are you going to be doing that?
Given the various quality problems with new systems, I'll stick with the older slower systems when I can, which is most of the time.
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.
Buy Text Processing in Python
I think you misspelled EMACS
That's silly. If MSDOS/Freedos will do the job, why the hell would it be too old to consider? It's far more stable than later MS OSes and will boot nearly instantaneously. Moreover, it is the only PC OS that is almost simple enough to understand. A fair variety of software is available that will run under MSDOS with a DOS extender to provide access to memory above 1MB.
Next choice would be Windows 95 with all two dozen service packs. Or OSR2. It will boot faster than Windows 98 (Less crap) and will support a suprising amount of Windows software. I'm not entirely sure why, but enabling MSDOS disk caching will speed up Windows 95 boot by 10% or so.
It may be necessary to spend time tuning the BIOS, and maybe even reconfiguring IDE hard drives and CDROM drives. Some older BIOSes can take a loooooooong time -- like 30 seconds plus -- dealing with pathological IDE configurations.
Or Linux. I don't know if Slackware still has SlackZIP, but it's specifically intended to boot from MSDOS/Windows 9 environments -- which means that you can set it up to run as desired while still having a functioning OS, then replace the bootloader to boot directly to Linux.
One caution. Unless the operation has a generous people budget and no hardware budget or is going to deploy dozens of identical boxes, it is almost always going to be more cost effective to buy a prebuilt appliance than to roll your own.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
What is their purpose?
Their purpose is to run a fast booting OS
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.
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
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
I think you misspelled EMACS
Hmm, nope:
(P)erfect (E)macs (R)e-writing (L)anguage
He got it right.
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.
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
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.
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?
maybe try to WINE notepad?
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
....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
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.