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Ubuntu 9.04 Daily Build Boots In 21.4 Seconds
Pizzutz writes "Softpedia reports that Ubuntu 9.04 Boots in 21.4 Seconds using the current daily build and the newly supported EXT4 file system. From the article: 'There are only two days left until the third Alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) will be available
(for testing), and... we couldn't resist the temptation to take the current daily build for a test drive, before our usual screenshot tour, and taste the "sweetness" of that evolutionary EXT4 Linux filesystem. Announced on Christmas Eve, the EXT4 filesystem is now declared stable and it is distributed with version 2.6.28 of the Linux kernel and later. However, the good news is that the EXT4 filesystem was implemented in the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3 a couple of days ago and it will be available in the Ubuntu Installer, if you choose manual partitioning.' I guess it's finally time to reformat my /home partition..."
I agree totally. 21.4 seconds is incredibly slow, and that's only to get to the login screen... which is typically only half way. I know that it is possible to boot Linux in 5 seconds for some special cases. However, the boot time should be even quicker.
Maybe my math is wrong, but wouldn't that be 1 / (50 Hz) = 20ms?
* Ubuntu 8.10 with EXT3 filesystem boots in 31.8 seconds (on the AMD Sempron system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT3 filesystem boots in 28.3 seconds (on the AMD Sempron system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT4 filesystem boots in 23.1 seconds (on the AMD Sempron system).
* Ubuntu 8.10 with EXT3 filesystem boots in 26.8 seconds (on the Intel Core 2 Duo system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT3 filesystem boots in 24.5 seconds (on the Intel Core 2 Duo system);
* Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha (Build 20090112.1) with EXT4 filesystem boots in 21.4 seconds (on the Intel Core 2 Duo system)!
creation science book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4#Forward_compatibility
Mount ext3 as ext4.
For most users, no it will not work. One of the major features of ext4 is extents, which basically reserves space for a file to continue writing at a later date. This will decrease file fragmentation and improve performance.
If however, you disable extents, then yes you can mount it as ext3. And as you know, ext3 can be mounted as ext2 without the journaling.
I agree that the win32 ext2 drivers need updating. I would hate to lose access to ext partitions for dual boot systems.
Almost all of those issues are from third party software.
Nvidia is notorious for awful drivers, especially for dual display. The screensaver issue is also probably from bad Nvidia drivers.
Adobe Flash is unstable in Firefox, especially on 64 bit systems. Open Source alternatives are also very outdated and slow.
Third party plugins like Java and Flash can make Firefox have to wait. The Mozilla team needs to design much less dependency on plugins and more of a sandbox model, so that a crash or hang of a plugin will not freeze all of Firefox.
Programs become unresponsive due to a lot of disk activity for reasons of speed; DiskIO has more priority. This is a GUI design problem and it should be decidable/configurable easily on or after install.
The PCI spec also has required delays from power good to reset negated and then another required delay from reset negated to first configuration access. The second delay alone is about 1 sec (2^25 clock cycles).
The BIOS. The BIOS is pretty much the sole reason PCs take so long to boot.
Regarding Coreboot (was: LinuxBIOS):
It doesn't have to be slow.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Use your common sense.
"Boot time" obviously refers to the time that the user is waiting for the machine and not the other way round.
And "usable desktop" is obviously the point in time when the user can begin launching his applications without significant slowdowns from boot-tasks still grinding in the background.
This is obviously always an apples-to-oranges comparison but with just a tiny bit of common sense it can still be more meaningful than "OSX boots in 4 seconds".