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Quick Boot Linux Hopes To Win Over Windows Users
Al writes "A company called Presto hopes to exploit the painful amount of time it takes for Windows computers to start up by offering a streamlined version of Linux that boots in just seconds. Presto's distro comes with Firefox, Skype and other goodies pre-installed and the company has also created an app store so that users can install only what they really need. The software was demonstrated at this year's Demo conference in Palm Desert, CA. Interestingly, the company barely mentions the name Linux on its website. Is this a clever stealth-marketing ploy for converting Windows users to Linux?"
Who boots up anymore unless to fix/install something? Just hibernate. I know, I'm over generalising but still, I rarely reboot/boot my machine perhaps once a fortnight I just hibernate it. * Windows XP
I feel like this is too minor of a feature and too late to do any good. Windows 7 is apparently making huge strides toward reducing boot time, and I never hear anyone complain about boot time anyway. Including people who don't use the computer that much. Most of the people I know that aren't "computer people" leave their computer on or in standby/hibernate, so boot time is hardly an issue.
Whale
Just use suspend/resume. Even on my aging windows-XP notebook, it takes just a few seconds to resume from where I left.
I am fairly sure faster boot times wont cause most people to switch. For most people it comes down to being able to run their apps, and not the sometimes poor GNU replacements of their apps.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just a seconds?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Although I agree that a shorter boot time would be attractive, I doubt this will increase the number of people using Linux. A lot of the resistance to using Linux is tied up in the number of applications that don't port to the operating system, not the boot time. It doesn't matter how quickly the OS is available if you can't do anything once it turns on. If you could make it so that the majority of windows applications ran without resistance, I think that almost no boot time could make Linux revolutionary. Until then, I think you're wasting man hours on the wrong problem.
Wow!! Who would have thunk this would be the killer feature which is going to cause mass
migration to Linux. I have another idea - when Windows boots, the screen is in black &
while & rather dull looking. Maybe Presto could exploit this by offering a version of
Linux which prints boot messages in colour.
Based on the copyright ("Copyright (c) 2009 Xandros Incorporated") I would venture to guess that Presto Linux comes out of Xandros Linux.
The thing is overloaded with services/apps/processes that launch at startup. All stuff she doesn't need, but she's not smart enough to remove.
I've cleaned it up for her before, but it's a lost cause if she doesn't understand how to maintain it herself.
I'm sure once my mom learns about this Presto thing, she'll be all over it. Well... just as soon as she learns what an operating system is.
Actually, it doesn't appear to bother her like it does me and anyone else who tries to use it. She gets all defensive/protective of her pc when I point out how poorly it is performing. She just turns it on, walks away and makes some coffee, and by then it's ready to go.
Speaking as someone who owns a relatively new PC, XP, Vista, and 7 boot faster than the 'flasghip' Ubuntu. Not that it matters really.
Sweet! I could go for seconds right about now!
Bite my shiny metal ass!
One of the main reasons why modern operating systems take so long to boot is that they are very bulky: a huge amount of code needs to be read when a computer is first turned on. Consisting of far fewer lines of code than Windows, Presto needs just a few hundred megabytes of memory, says Jordan Smith, product marketing manager at Xandros. Microsoft's Vista operating system, in contrast, recommends at least 15 gigabytes of free disk space to install.
I don't think the reviewer really understands what's happening here. Recommended amount of hard drive space is not installed space (although I'm aware that Vista is a beast). And the reviewer has apparently compared RAM to HD space.
Several companies offer such functionality in their computer BIOSes. Sony's stupidly named XrossMediaBar that they install on everything from PS3s to televisions as well as some laptops being a prime example. These people are probably out of luck as if anybody actually wants this kind of feature, it will start to be provided in more and more BIOSes. Sure, the BIOS mini-OSes don't have the "app store" extensibility (although there's no reason why they couldn't), but, well good luck with that. And if (as I suspect) nobody is really interested because suspend/hibernate is plenty fast enough, then they're still buggered.
Oh no... it's the future.
If BIOS makers would do something trivial - simply allow the user to select a different drive from which to boot, then it would be trivial to offer a linux on a secondary drive (for desktops, or even laptops with an SD card).
It is a wonder that it is 2009 and this feature does not yet exist - almost like someone has colluded against it.
YES - to all of the obtuse slashdotters who will indicate that it is easy for them to switch their primary boot drive - I understand that it is easy for you and me. But it isn't so easy for Joe and Jane Six Pack. If they had a nice clean GUI that asked them to which system they'd like to boot, then Linux and other alternate OS would probably be a lot more popular - especially when Windows gets full of malware (most of these PCs are going in the garbage, now).
More
I realize your post wasn't about making it 'the year of the Linux desktop' but I'm going to use your post to illustrate a point.
This sort of little 'silly' crap is one of the problems with normal users adopting Linux. Normal users don't want to have to have a little ingenuity in order to use their computers, they just want them to do what they are told to do, fast, without crashing, and in a way they are used to.
Linux can be stable. Linux can be fast. However it is in most distros missing this sort of polishing touch that makes all the difference in the world. Ubuntu for example is pretty close to Windows as far as usability for a standard user who just browses the Internet and reads email. But its the tiny little polishes that are missing that are going to be required for the end user to pick up on it.
Well, that and it'll have to run Office well too. No OpenOffice doesn't count so don't say it. While the Linux desktop experience just needs some polishing off for end users, OpenOffice has several years of getting to grasp with how not to suck ass before users are going to want to use it over MS Office. That tripe is a collection of Office 'replacement' apps that don't even come close to replacing Office. Perhaps the word processor is fine, I haven't really used it enough (nor Word for that matter) to comment. The spreadsheet, database and drawing apps are a joke at best. They are barely useful, let alone anything that can be considered in the same catagory as what Office offers.
Again, not really directed at your post, and this is really off topic, just wanted to show a reason why its not the Year of the Linux desktop.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Odd that they're showing off this new feature on a MacBook Pro front and center on their website. OS X has always been the 'holy grail' of quick starts for me. With SmartSleep I can configure it to do what I want depending on battery level.
For those that haven't had the opportunity to use OS X, it does a 'dual path' of both sleep and hibernation most of the time. Say you close your lid and the machine goes to sleep with 40% battery left. You forget about your laptop for a week and come back to a completely dead battery. Since OS X does hibernate also, all of your stuff is exactly as you left it (once you find power).
Windows so intelligently will run the battery dead in sleep and then lose everything.
A few seconds is still few-1 seconds too many I want a machine that can "stand by" using static ram so I can have it on stand by as long as I want without worrying about the battery power trickling away and have it power on instantly(ish)
When did we start using the term "app store" for them?
...basically Xandros (with CNR) with a Wubi installer? (since it's windows only at the moment) Why not just ship them an Ubuntu disk, it's cheaper... :D
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
to a useable state.
That's the key part, I'm sure many people here remember back when windows would "start up" and pretend to be usable, but the start menu would randomly snap shut as programs and services continued to load in the background, and actually getting a program you wanted to use to start meant watching the hourglass for several minutes as windows finished getting ready.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Thats...the first thing I saw when I went to the "app store"...why? What did they do to the strict Linux user rights? oO"
This will only impress the type of douchebag who lists his RAM timings in his tweaker forum sig. People aren't using Windows because it boots fast, they use it because it came with their PC, and they can bootleg Office from work, and play Snood.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I had a fast boot time on Xandros. But the packages in the repositories weren't up to date and there were very few applications to install without breaking the system. Yes I enjoyed the fast boot times but what's the point of having fast boot times if your computer is completely useless. Installing Ubuntu was pretty easy and gave me access to some more up to date software but then then the Ubuntu repositories are barely up to date. The next netbook I get will be a windows one with a bigger hard disk so I can dual boot. I don't want to be limited by the OS I use.
Still about 15 seconds after installing Office and other applications.
I have an asus mobo with the quickboot environment, I can browse the web and use skype (though i have yet to actually USE it), however, what would be more interesting to me would be to have this environment be persistent while windows boots in the background, install a driver in windows that sends a message over to the preboot/quickboot environment that says "Finished booting, would you like to move this browsing session over to windows?" I'd click yes, enter my username/password to be passed as login credentials and it would load firefox in the background with all of my tabs (no cookies or sessions, safety first) and the preboot environment would go away until the next boot.
Of course I'd have 3 options at boot, preboot environment only, normal windows/linux boot, and the combo described above.
All of this technological innovation would save me rougly 2 minutes a day, maybe. Though now, the morning routine is to turn on the computer, grab a cup of coffee, and come back to a ready and waiting system.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
I don't have any issues with boot time in windows 7. It's up and running in about 20 seconds ... of course this is on an i7 proc w/ 6GB or ram and 15k Velocerapter drives
And how many applications are installed? Unless MS does something amazing, once you finish installing Office, windows boot times traditionally go out the window. And every application thereafter makes it worse. Also, keep in mind that what people are perceiving as boot time is from off to a useable state. For a server this means off->services running. For a user PC this means Off-> Fully Logged in and can launch applications.
Actually quite a few - I use it as my main work machine now with an XP laptop as backup. The full office suite, all of my remote admin tools, VMWare Client, Im, etc. using your definition of usable: fully logged in and can launch applications, my machine is usable in about 30-45 seconds from off and this includes the time it takes me to enter my username/password at 9am before i've finished my first cup o joe. I'm actualy working in about 3-5 mins from boot, outlook up, im up and possible a few ssh sessions and RDP sessions going, depending on what i need to check in the morning.
Which is why I reduced my WinXP install as much as possible. I have an older machine, (P4, 1GB DDR400), but it boots up pretty fast because only three icons come up in the systray: volume control, antivirus, and my wireless card. Although there are plenty of other apps that I start up on almost every boot, I don't have them come up by default in case I want to do something quickly.
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Linspire is now part of Xandros. This is them.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
how many people who arnt already aware of linux will read this article? Im sure its still so that the reason the majority of (non-commercial) users havent tried linux, let alone switched is because theyve never herd of it
This seems like a perfect base OS for either Boxee or MythTV, where you might not want the Media Box sucking power 24/7, but you still want to be able to watch Tv when you want to rather quickly. Can anyone think of a reason why either Boxee or MythTV would be especially difficult to install on Presto?
On an old Pentium 4 system I had, it took 18 seconds to reach fully-ready desktop from a cold boot. This was a five-year-old installation, in constant use as my main computer.
Anybody browsing this article probably has the technical competence and interest needed to maintain the OS so it never takes any longer than 30 seconds.
Unless you've got McAfee installed, of course, in which case it'll take a significant fraction of your lifespan...
Aside: PEBKAC is tongue in cheek for alliterative goodness. I know developers bear more of the blame owing to the fact that it's their fault anything needs to be done at all.
These various onboard and compact Linux installations targeting Windows users are okay in thought, but not in practice.
Eventually all of the software would be out of date. And then what? The skype client might not connect, the Firefox might be riddled with vulnerabilities (because yes, its been prone to get them), the kernel itself might get root exploits, etc. Are you going to require the user to perform software updates on a distro which is supposed to allow them to work instantly and without delay? It's hard enough getting them to update their Windows installations.
Worse yet, what happens when something goes wrong? How do they reinstall it? Would they even bother?
I know that these aren't definite issues, but they're things to take into consideration when you're trying to pass off a compact operating system environment to people who are used to powerful ones with plenty of storage available and everything.
Anyway, that aside, the article is a bit extreme about startup times. Booting your computer will not take anymore than 30 seconds or so if you don't have it packed down with a bunch of shit. And the fact they even mentioned those lawsuits of taking 30 minutes is ludicrous exaggeration of a non-issue. If you're so impatient that you can't wait less than a minute, then computers are definitely not for you in the first place.
The solution to instant-on computing is taking better advantage of standby mode. It's entirely possible to have instant-on right now. It just depends on what your definition of the term is. There's no reason why it can't mean the same Windows/Linux/Mac installations we already have.
Ok, you could probably somebody an operating system that boots in 2 seconds and does nothing. But, I guarantee you that within a month the vast majority of people will load up their computers with a bunch of crap such that they will still take a minute to boot.
This is my sig.
It's all the OTHER crap that has to get done before you can use your computer. If you have only windows, no net connection, no 'SlowestNotes', no 'Norton-Nork anitvirius' software etc in your startup folder windows starts pretty quickly.
The problems start when you have a net login script on a bloated server that holds you back, then SlowestNotes starts and takes a few minutes to log you in and open your inbox, even longer to show your first new email. Then Norton-Nork anti-virus takes another few minutes to initialize and spit up a half dozen popups. Why can't all this crappy group-underwear run in the background in SILENT and let you open an app as soon as the OS is ready?
Not to mention that being Windows you probably have a ton of Maulware, Spyware, Viri and other infectious crap running in the background that Nortin-Nork didn't find. You don't stand a chance!
Increasing boot times by 300% when the average OS boots in under 3 minutes is about as useful as the average driver discovering that his quarter-mile top speed increased to 115 from 105 when they bought a new car.
In other words, who gives a shit anymore? I've got 5-year old laptops still running XP that I never shut down and always hibernate them. Same goes for my new Macbook.
Want to give me something useful? How about a browser that starts up in 1 second or less. Now THAT is something that we all use every day, all day.
Really, for a long time it's been acknowledged that few non-geeks know that Linux exists, what it is, what an Operating System is, or that there are alternatives to Windows (other than Mac). Probably most people who use Windows do get annoyed with how slow it is to boot, and especially how unresponsive the interface is for the first few minutes upon logging in. But I don't know that many would see this as THE reason to switch to Linux. People care about using their apps and being able to open their files. They want it to be completely seamless. They want their computer to just work, not to have errors, and not to need to be told how to work in some arcane shell language. Being slow is not good, but on the whole most people have learned to live with and accept it. Being fast (lean + efficient) without sacrificing usability and interoperability should always be an important goal whenever a system is designed, though. As long as Linux can offer that to people, people will love it, even if they don't even realize what they're running.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Are you kidding? When is the last time you used OpenOffice.org? If the version number was earlier than 2.4.0, I might agree with you; but OOo is at 3.0.1 now and it's quite good and fully integrated as a replacement for all MS Office -- the only thing it doesn't do well are Excel macros, and that's for a reason: they're broken and easily replaced. As for database apps, with Office you have Access, which is fine for very small databases, but more than a few thousand records you need to look at SQL anyway, which if you recall is a standard array of functionality (designed on purpose), so MySQL can do the job pretty well as MS' SQL Server, and sometimes better.
...and drawing apps
What MS Office drawing app are you referring to? Would that be Paint? Paint is a POS, and even MS knows that (they really ought to replace it with Paint.NET)
I can replace all my Office apps with free alternatives:
MS Word = OpenOffice.org Writer
MS Excel = OpenOffice.org Calc
MS Access = OpenOffice.org Base
MS PowerPoint = OpenOffice.org Impress
MS Publisher = Scribus
MS Outlook = Evolution
MS Paint = GIMP or OpenOffice.org Draw
Adobe Illustrator = Inkscape
Adobe Acrobat = (practically any Linux application can create a PDF or PS file)
The list can go on, and others here can easily tell you more applications, I only wanted to harp in on a few that you might be interested in (or didn't even think about.) The days of MS Office being the be-all-end-all of office application suites is over and has been for a while now.
This sort of little 'silly' crap is one of the problems with normal users adopting Linux. Normal users don't want to have to have a little ingenuity in order to use their computers,
That's not really the point. ANYONE can think about the problem for a couple of
minutes and publish a solution for everyone else. It can be options in some "shiny
happy GUI" or it can be commandline options, or it could be a convoluted walkthrough,
or it could even be code.
Someone (like Ubuntu) just has to come along after and package it.
Infact, that's exactly what we're talking about right now.
All that GUI shiny happiness doesn't keep those Windows users that
don't want to think/work for themselves coming to us "geeks" for
answers to relatively simple things.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
and why do you shut down your browser? ;-)
ASRock does this in their newer boards.
http://www.asrock.com/feature/instantboot/
Unfortunately, I think it's only available in Windows, and it's only usable if you're in a single-user environment with no password required on login.
I'd love to see Linux implement it the way you just described though.
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My dad considered "Instant-On" to be a much more important feature on a TV than color, and I don't disagree with his reasoning. (Some of you kids might not remember, but it was pretty common to switch from a very good monochrome TV to a relatively crappy color TV.)
I had an 80286 Tandy once with DOS 3.3 in ROM. I loved it, but unfortunately, cheapish 80386 machines were already out so I didn't use that computer for very long.
These days I just use iMacs and Macbook Pro's (my workplace is a 100% OSX shop), and I rarely, if ever, boot anything since OSX does such a good job at sleeping.
Basically I switched from Linux to OSX; I haven't really used Windows much since about 1996. Didn't everybody already switch to Linux back then anyway?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
..he has a point on what is "too heavy". Laptops just a few years ago where twice as heavy and people put up with it. Now the big complaint is battery run time, which could be easily solved if we just had laptop weight parity with that same few years ago and the manufacturers actually put in a decent big battery. Take one of these 2.5 lb notebook marvels they have now, add a 2.5 lb battery, still 5 lbs, which is just not that heavy.
I already dualboot Windows and Linux. Will Presto totally fsck up grub and/or the MBR?
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
But doesn't that lose a lot of the value of a shutdown (i.e., getting back to a fresh state?)
I think it would be better to preform a memory dump after each real boot, and save that in a special file, then on each "shutdown to instant boot" you just move that saved fresh state into swap so on boot it does a resume into a fresh state instead of into a been-running-5-months state. But I have no idea whether this is practical.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
Do all hip companies have to begin with a Z sound these days?
Xandros
Scion
Xanax
Xynergy
Zuffa
My UID is prime. Hah!
by "windows systems" they mean XP and Vista. My P3 ME laptop boots in 12 seconds including login time.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
To reasonable people the difference between 10 seconds and 60 seconds isn't a big deal, but not everyone sees it that way. You also have to bundle in the fact that a lot of people running windows also have tons of services which load after they log in, easily seeing their computer really unusable for 2-5 minutes after turning it on.
The other problem too is that keeping your computer on (and not in suspend mode) 24/7 is just a bad waste of energy, which may not seem like much on your power bill but as far more people trying to be more green its not something that people are doing as much anymore. In fact as computers become more like appliances I think people will become more used to having it on only when in use as TV's, radios, and microwaves usually tend to be. Obviously this won't account for everyone, but in general it seems that will be the trend.
Any time I build a fresh PC from a Windows CD (not a recovery disk from a PC maker like Dell), Windows boots very quickly. When you start installing a bunch of apps that load on startup (especially on laptops), it starts taking longer and longer.
I reboot about once a week, and it's usually when I'm done working, not when I'm ready to start.
My most successful 'conversions' have never been with frills or features or marketing material. All five of the people I got switched to Ubuntu did so for ideological reasons.
Vista is stunning and beautiful and on recent laptops with updates it's turning out to be damned nice, but that's not because Microsoft is better, their developers are not gods because they are branded by the Microsoft Ranch.
That same beauty, reliability, anything can be done with freely available code that can be shared and improved and openly argued over.
Some people really do care about freedom, about human rights as applied to software. Those are the people I go after, and it works.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
You'll be happy to know we have managed to get moblin 2 boot in about 5 seconds on the acer aspire one, as well as other netbooks on the market. See our presentation on "5 second boot" on lwn.net for more information.
I could probably use this on my now very old laptop (Celeron 1.33Ghz with 256MB RAM). It's essentially just an e-mail machine which I also use to seed torrents and access the internet when I don't want to turn on my main PC. I'll have to wait and see if it's worth the $19.95 price tag though.
Being generous and deciding that by "power-up" you mean "bring the computer back from hibernation", I'd agree that yea it does take some time. But suspend brings the computer back up in seconds. Essentially your phone suspends itself when you don't use it, you can do the same with your laptop. So I don't get your point.
As far as the article, I have an instant Linux-based DVD player on my laptop and find it pretty handy. An instant Internet-oriented system is less useful since I'd have to configure wireless and similar, but I could see myself using it sometimes.
Power management in Windows works pretty well.
Unless I am doing maintenance - in Safe mode - I really don't much care how long the system takes to reboot because it is not something I have do every day.
-----
Apple and Microsoft won the battle on the ground - battles fought by users in the home and small business. The little guys - the Dilberts - who subverted the corporate hierarchy, the system administrator.
"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" are inverted in the Geek mind. It was OSX and Windows that were forged in the market place.
*NIX entered your world as the mandate from on high - and far too often still does.
The geek was never the rebel, the geek was the establishment.
The technocratic elite.
Is apt-get an app store then? What about synaptic (apt-get's visual cousin) ?
How does the community define "app store"
Evolution acts as a front end to Outlook Web Access, which is nowhere near as feature packed (ridden sometimes) as Outlook. Have you ever tried accessing someone else's calendar? checked meeting rooms, attendance, public folders, PST data files, etc?
I think it's very good what the Evolution developers have made, but to say it's a drop-in replacement for Outlook is stretching it more than a little
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
And here's how: 1) There will be some critical peripheral that the distro fails to recognize automatically. Linux generally fails at the device driver recognition problem solved well... adequately by Windows. 2) Users can't run their windows apps, and the web addled, Linux fanboys who make the distro won't preconfigure Wine and put it on the application menu, or auto-start it on launch with an easy switching system. They will once again fail to learn the lesson of IBM, which was successful not because its technology was superior, but because its technology was 100% compatible with existing, in-place technology, used by the majority of businesses (i.e. punch cards). Most people don't give a rat's patoot about Linux. They want stuff to work as reliably and thoughtlessly as a toaster or a macintosh.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
First: Who gives a shit if it's booting in half the time?
I press power once between standing up and breakfast (on). And once before going to bed (off).
It already boots faster than my brain. ^^
Second: This is very old news. This quick-boot "technique" (aka horrible hack). Exists for a long time now.
Besides: If I wanted to boot fast, I'd do it right, and use hibernation for the power button and long times of inactivity, and sleep for short times. With an optional real reboot (in case of kernel updates) between pressing the power button and going to hibernate (after being booted up again).
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
MMMV: My converts include two people who were sick of Vista.
They liked Ubuntu with the Compiz and AWN.
Most people just want their computer to work. As long as their computer works, they're happy period.
As I do not use Visio, I would normally answer "none," however I hear that Kivio is pretty good....
This is one of those times I have to say "give the developers a chance," it really is only a matter of time before they crack the Exchange code needed for full functionality. But, in the name of fairness, you can convert and import a PST to Evolution...it's just not as easy as with Outlook.
Newflash: Windows users don't care about the "painful" amount of time it takes for Windows to boot and they aren't going to switch to a faster alternative away from the OS they know for just one startup feature; it's absurd to think anybody would leave anything familiar for such an option. The main reason is Windows users are accustomed to it and don't see it as painful.
Many users find OpenOffice.org to be sufficient, but there are still many features that are only in Office. I consider them to be worth the cost.
The JET database engine used by Access supports SQL, as does Access itself. If you use Access, you're using SQL.
Don't confuse the Access application with the database engine it uses by default. Access can use external databases with the appropriate ODBC driver - including MySQL, if you're a masochist.
Oh, come on. There are open source relational database engines that are many times better than MySQL - like PostgreSQL.
But no RDBMS on its own is a replacement for Access, which is essentially an application development platform.
Visio?
OpenOffice.org Draw is a poor substitute. If I used it often enough, I'd get Visio.
There's no physical reason a modern OS can't boot under 5 seconds. If it takes considerably longer than that, it's due to redundancy and inefficiency. In short: bloat.
So yes, I can wait 30 seconds, but if see a system that boots in a rational (non-integer) amount of time I now it's very cruft-free. It wont hog my cpu needlessly, it won't spin my disk all the time. It was carefully designed, that's all.
And yes, I know that getting gimp as good as corel is more important to the success of linux than a fast boot time, but the thing is. It is hard. And boring. It requires new software, new research, et al. As for the boot time, it's just utilising right what you already have. Sure, a prefetcher may help, but choosing the right order of the daemons will impact more, and even more disabling needless ones.
I do turn off my computer at night. I don't think we have the luxury of wasting that energy anymore. And who cares, I know I'll take very much longer to wake than my pc will.
entropy happens
Seems to me that these folks are just creating a profitable product from free-as-in-beer components. No religion, no Linux evangelism, just capitalism at work.
The vast, vast majority of people don't give a frak about "intellectual freedom" and "revolution" -- what they want is an inexpensive tool that works.
All about me
All Windows OS's have poor startup times, compared with other distributions, and these times increase the longer the OS is installed on the hardware platform. Windows reboots are also required more frequently than most other platforms, most notably for the incremental updates that Windows Automatic Updates service insists are performed when patches are detected. While a short boot time after a Windows fresh install may be acceptable, over time the boot time can lengthen considerably and can become a nuisance. Without hacking the Windows Registry and performing manual maintenance, Windows must be re-installed to restore performance.
If you think that 30 seconds is fast just because it is a computer, then I think you have really low standards.
You're really emphasizing, by using <em> rather than <i>, eh?
Well... my hot redhead young WIFE takes 40 seconds to turn on completely!
(Oh wait, I don't have a wife...)
I'm sorry, but this isn't a clever ploy to get windows users to switch to linux. It's not very clever to think that something like boot times will makes someone switch their OS of choice.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OOo is at 3.0.1 now and it's quite good and fully integrated as a replacement for all MS Office -- the only thing it doesn't do well are Excel macros...
I've re-typed my resume entirely in OO.o 3.0.1, and I must say its "Export to Word 97/2000/XP" feature still requires improvement.
I am forced to continue using Microsoft Word to work on my resume.
....they still could re: aftermarket accessories. A full extended range battery pack that slapped and snapped on the bottom of the case and then just ran a powerplug to the input/charger jack. The same size, it just adds some depth to the whole laptop then. Or heck, make it just half additional battery action and an optical drive, for those notebooks that don't have one. I don't really know what modern laptop batteries weigh, but say it extended the range by 4 or 5x plus gave it an additional drive. They'd sell some I am sure. Sort of like a dock but better. Then folks would have a choice on what they wanted to tote that day without having to buy two full complete machines.
Basically, I just like any kind of hybrids or changeable things like that, dual or triple use. It could be three way, the basic machine is just a good smartphone that fits in your pocket, that could snap into a netbook chassis that gave you a bigger screen and keyboard and maybe some more storage, and then the netbook could have the add on range and drive extender that snaps on the bottom.
If "clever marketing" is avoiding mentioning the name of the brand, then something is wrong.
Table-ized A.I.
Why are you distributing your resume in Word? Why not PDF? OO.org exports nicely to PDF format. I've never run into a situation where someone asked for my CV and not been able to read the PDF version I send.
Every time there is a discussion about boot times, someone very much like yourself comes out with the old chestnut of "are you so important and impatient that you can't wait 30 seconds for a PC to boot". I assume you guys have a secret clubhouse somewhere where you meet to discuss your strategy for defending the indefensible, but anyway...
Could this logic not be applied to any situation? E.g. you double click on an icon to start a program and your computer needlessly pauses for 15-30 seconds - but don't get mad, after all your life isn't so full that you can't wait less than a minute, right?
I honestly don't know what the crap PCs are doing in that 30-40 seconds. If it's scanning for hardware changes, well, newsflash, most people don't change their hardware every time they boot. I do know this: I currently have a clean XPSP2 installation on a system based on an AMD Phenom II 940, and it boots to desktop in under 15 seconds. Yet my last PC (Athlon XP 3000+) somehow took 40 seconds to boot to desktop. There is something totally arbitrary and unneccessary happening on most Windows machines which makes them boot much more slowly than they need to.
Read Pynchon.
My first computer, a Commodore 64, had the entire Operating System on ROM and was quick to boot up. My second computer, a Commodore Amiga, had its Kernel stored in ROM, and was also quick to boot up.
Why isn't this sort of thing being done today? Not only would it be a quick boot, but malware would have a harder time corrupting the OS, as the important bits would be locked down in unchangable ROM.
Of course, doing this *would* require a change to today's "We'll fix it later when someone complains" software development model. It would have to be right the first time.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Funny you say that - I typed a document and brought it over to a friend's house to print, and Microsoft Word's own document wasn't compatible with itself. The entire thing was double spaced (and was convinced it was single) and had graphical errors throughout. So your pointless anecdote is nullified by my pointless anecdote.
why do I have to boot at all? Why not just make suspend to disk and resume faster? Why has suspend/resume to be so damned slow?
Booting looks like a totally archaic concept to me.
Finally, this kid will get decent performance from his computer!
It's been done- Damn Small Linux. Not as pretty but wicked fast.
Disclaimer: I'm Jordan Smith, Product Marketing Manager at Xandros. I launched Presto at Demo 09 (demo.com) last week. (And what a great experience that was!)
Presto is a simple Windows utility that downloads as an .exe and installs/uninstalls like any other Windows app in XP or Vista. It gives you the option on boot-up of choosing either Windows or Presto. Booting into Presto gives you quick (i.e. sub 10 seconds) access to Firefox, Pidgin and Skype, plus many other apps you can add through presto.cnr.com. In our experience, the aforementioned apps cover the vast majority of quick, online use cases e.g. updating Facebook, checking Gmail, etc. Shutdown is instant.
Presto is not meant to replace Windows. It's not even about Linux. It's about enabling people to quickly, easily and cheaply turn a dusty old computer into a fast, reliable, easy and secure browsing appliance. There's a strong market for this. I've even made a point about stripping out all the visible OS-like stuff because our users don't seem to want or need it. On the contrary: they appreciate the simplicity of Presto.
I'm very interested in getting your feedback on our beta, mainly to identify where we may have gaps in our hardware support. You can sign up for the beta at prestomypc.com. We'll have the beta up on downloads.com and tucows.com on Monday. It's under 500MB (including Open Office, a large chunk of that) and we're working on a way to make the DL less painful.
As always, I'm open to your constructive feedback at jordan.smith(at)xandros.com.
Thanks!
I really would not encourage a sneak attack, people need to know that Linux rocks and very hardcore like!
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
If they haven't "cracked" the protocol by now, they aren't going to.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
To be fair, I would certainly not call Visio a "drawing" application, unless you're willing to call PowerPoint, Word, etc. drawing applications too.
Visio is very specifically a diagramming program, and you'd want something like Umbrello to duplicate that functionality on Linux.
You are not forced to use Microsoft Word formats for your resume.
My resume is a LaTeX document with a Makefile to convert it to HTML, text, PostScript, and PDF.
Those formats should be sufficient for any purpose. If someone insists that you send them your resume in Microsoft Word format, refuse. They are are a recruiter who only wants your resume in Word format so that they can modify it, typically by removing your name and contact details so that they don't have to let the employer know who you are, which gives the recruiter a bit more leverage. You don't need or want that kind of recruiter.
" Is this a clever stealth-marketing ploy for converting Windows users to Linux?"
So what if it is?
As long as it helps to limit the market-share of Microsoft, and promotes open-source, and thus freedom from monopolistic marketing, then it is good, IMHO.
That last statement in the summary makes it sound like some draconian, covert Op.
That seems to add at least 30 seconds to the log-in process, more if there are lots of policies to apply. I'm running Vista on an old P4 and it boots much faster than that. And Outlook only takes me a few seconds to launch.
I suspect you have processes from anti-virus or other software that are killing your start up time.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
My friend is a professional graphics artist, and he recently switched from using Photoshop to using GIMP. He likes GIMP better than Photoshop because he finds that GIMP is more "tweakable".
My XP installation boots faster than the last few Ubuntu versions I've tried. A substantial portion of most uers' Windows boot time can be attributed to bloatware and/or anti-virus apps, neither of which I tolerate on my Windows installation.
Are you kidding? When is the last time you were in a corporate environment with an exchange server? Also, have you even seen Office 2007? Some people may not like it, but I find it very intuitive and much prefer it over older versions of office, let alone open office. It seems that you still can't do trendlines in open office calc... come on, that's basic functionality. Inkscape? Believe me, Illustrator does waayyy more. I've tried Inkscape, and while it could end up being good some day, it doesn't cut it for now. Paint is, admittedly, a joke, but Visio does all sorts of fancy things. Scribus and publisher are both a joke, though publisher is a bit more polished.
I will say that for any sort of scientific, mathematical or other academic writing, LaTeX totally kills all the competition. I still use word sometimes because of the nice integration with excel, but I much prefer to use LaTeX for lab reports, math papers and so forth.
fully integrated as a replacement for all MS Office -- the only thing it doesn't do well are Excel macros, and that's for a reason: they're broken and easily replaced.
So many things wrong with that statement:
1) Companies have entire collections of complex Excel Macros written that need replacing. Often difficult to interpret and often with the original developer long gone. It's not just macros. Even charting is very different and doesn't convert over.
2) OO doesn't do everything Office does. I wish it did. I'd switch myself.
3) Sometimes it totally destroys the formatting on existing docs. Other times the destruction is more subtle when you convert, which can actually be worse. Try converting documents with formulae embedded etc., just for fun.
4) Bugs. I thought Office bugs were bad until I ran into the bug in Open Office 3 that would take down the application if you clicked on the File menu.
5) You might also have some issues if you want to save to Office 2007 format
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=14253#p66736
What MS Office drawing app are you referring to?
Try Visio. You can use kludges to create a document in Impress based on existing documents with parts that you can copy and paste. It'll take you about 30 minutes to do what Visio will let you do in 5 but it can be done. It's just not practical.
At best I think you could claim that for your own purposes, Open Office works well. For other people that do other things - like open other people's office documents, use formulae regularly, make extensive use of charting and Macros etc and don't have time to replace everything, Open Office isn't a viable option without significant investment. Care to build a business case for it?
The list can go on, and others here can easily tell you more applications, I only wanted to harp in on a few that you might be interested in (or didn't even think about.) The days of MS Office being the be-all-end-all of office application suites is over and has been for a while now.
Only if you never used anything more than the most basic of basic functionality, and don't care if you can't open other people's stuff.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They are are a recruiter who only wants your resume in Word format so that they can modify it
Thank you for understanding! Yes, they're all job agencies. The actual hiring companies seldom advertise.
Most other jobs are grabbed up. Yet, positions that require Unix, Lotus Notes and V-VIP experience, are still re-listed repeatedly. It's an eye opener.
I'm currently unemployed and self-studying for a RHCT cert.
As Bryan Ischo said, the recruitment agencies all demand it. I think you're both right: I should use PDF.
But then, the individual companies are hardly advertising. With the agencies, at least I had several interviews.
"painful amount of time it takes for Windows computers to start up"
ahhh Slashdot is master in spreading FUD about Microsoft products
If you want to win over windows users:
Make ONE distro - Part of what make Windows so useful is that i know how to use every windows machine i see. They're all pretty damn similar. Instead of making a bunch of distros that can't compete, make ONE that can. All the flavors are confusing. Windows has 3 basic flavors, home, domain and server. Aim for that.
Make it run Halo, Planetside, MS Office and the games that don't work on consoles. FPS and RTS games just aren't the same with console controls. What this really means is: driver support for video cards. And NO, i don't want OO.o. i use it when i can, but it just isn't a competitor for MSO. So either get OO.o ready for prime time, or work with MS.
i'd love to not pay 100$ to 200$ for the OS, but i'd rather have a system that can DO THINGS. That can run my games and interact with the rest of the world.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I think this company is going down a path thats really irrelevant. Its not the time that it takes windows to start up that will make people want to use Linux. The windows users that have the most trouble with windows are the ones that will have trouble with any technology that is out there. I should know. I've done tech support for years. Things like having to install drivers, viruses, and ad-ware cause most of the grief on the windows platform. But also that windows isn't as easy to use as everyone may believe.
The biggest barrier to entry for Linux right now I believe is the fact that hardware companies don't support it as well as they should. Compatibility with new hardware is the biggest pet peeve and the tweeking it takes to make hardware work is what drives some users batty. This is not to detract from the massive progress on this front. The next biggest issue is to have the software work well. Too often you install a package that has been put out and it isn't very usable due to some little issue. This isn't the case in every package but it happens enough to keep novice users away. Case in point Scribus. If anyone has tried to use this on ubuntu lately they will know the print function doesn't work very well. Documents on some printers are just not printed properly. This is annoying considering this is a desktop publishing package.
Another thing is the developers of open source should be to really go after new innovative functionality. They really want to push forward a perception that new technology shows up on open source first before windows in fact. Right now most of the advancements are under the hood. But flashy features that catch users attention will do more to promote open source then any other advancement.
With the popularity of handheld devices / nifty cell phones, my tolerance for boot time has gone way down. Not so much for my desktop, but I would love to be able to flip open my laptop and pop off a new email then shut the laptop down completely to save battery in a very short amount of time (ideally quickly enough that using the larger keyboard I could do this + attach a file quicker than it would take me to type it out on a handheld device).
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Thanks for the info. It seems to belong to KDE Office Suite, which I haven't tried yet!
Choices include Dia, Kivio and Umbrello. See the other answers, too.
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