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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
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.
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.
Based on the copyright ("Copyright (c) 2009 Xandros Incorporated") I would venture to guess that Presto Linux comes out of Xandros Linux.
Speaking as someone who owns a relatively new PC, XP, Vista, and 7 boot faster than the 'flasghip' Ubuntu. Not that it matters really.
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.
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.