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Fastbooting Linux For Dummies?
Linux First timer writes "I wonder whether the Linux Gurus of Slashdot could help me with some advice on setting up a Linux system for my wife. She is not at all computer literate, but likes to get on the net for a few minutes every morning to read news etc. She is always bitching that our XP desktop takes way too long to boot 'just to get on the net for a few minutes.' I was thinking that I could take an old laptop we have, do a little first time test drive installing and using Linux, and possibly solve her problem in one go. The requirements for the system are simple: fast as possible boot/load Firefox, easy for a computer dummy to get onto the net, hard to break through random incompetence, and comes with Open Office.org or similar for occasional use. Wouldn't be used for much else. Any useful advice for us two poor Linux newbies? For example, is Ubuntu the best choice for this, or is there a better Linux flavour for the purpose? Any useful tweaks a novice can handle to make it work better for these simple tasks only?"
If you put your system in hibernation mode, the wake up process is much faster then a cold boot... My windows desktop wakes up in less than 5 secs. It boots in more the 3 min...
Just leave it up all night. I boot our XP system once a week if that.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
The decision of a Linux distro for old hardware is somewhat dependent on the age of the old hardware. I've been pretty successful at using PuppyLinux (and MacPup isn't too bad) on a very old Toshiba laptop with 192mb RAM. However, I have found that the "random incompetence" factor is an issue with it, as well as some laptop quirks (X refuses to come back if you close the laptop lid, and you then have to power it off, X doesn't start up on boot, and you have to type "startx" at the command line and chose xmesa or xorg...).
Xubuntu is actually not too bad from the resources side... I tried it on an old 256mb ram/celeron computer. It was pretty slow, though.
gOS also isn't too bad. It's geared towards getting online and using Google stuff... gmail, google docs, etc. It booted faster and the liveCD was faster than Xubuntu, for me.
Another one that I haven't used a whole lot but looked pretty good was TinyME (based on PCLinuxOS I think).
I haven't messed around with this much myself... but instead of making her morning routine specific to an older, outdated laptop you have lying around, what about installing Linux on a USB drive for boot. Usually you can set Bios to detect USB first and installing something small and lightweight would be preferable. If you set up a Bash script to start Firefox I'd recommend Puppy Linux because it's quick and small, but if you want her to be able to mess around with the OS GUI and not "break" anything I think a better idea would be xubuntu instead. Still smaller and rather lightweight, but much more user friendly. The beauty of the USB drive boot though is you can use that old laptop as well as your main home computer without uprooting an existing OS and you'll still have access to all of those files if she wants to do work in OpenOffice or something similar.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Go check here for a list of minimalistic Linux distro's:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros
Slackware with a XFCE and Firefox/OpenOffice is very, very fast on even older hardware.
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...boots very fast from a CDROM. It would be much faster from a hard disk or SSD.
link
http://michaelsmith.id.au
According to the website, around 3 seconds. Now, some embedded systems have Flash cards large enough to take a mini distro. The Arcom card I used a while back could do this. This is unlikely to be the case for the laptop as-is, but I can't see why you couldn't ultimately have a memory image placed into Flash which is booted into via coreboot.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Don't mind tinkering with it for a few hours, don't want to be pulling my hair out for a few days. Never installed Linux before and I'm not stupid, but not a computer super-geek either. Hardware is a couple years old (a tablet, probably)
http://www.prestomypc.com/ says it boots in eight seconds.
I have a Wii. I try loading Slashdot in Internet Channel, and it freezes for 30 seconds while something runs. I suspect it's JavaScript or reflow related to Slashdot's tag system, the same thing that freezes Firefox on my desktop for a couple seconds. Besides, Internet Channel has no tabs, no Java (if the wife visits sites that use it), and no Flash Player 8 or 9 (if the wife visits sites that use it).
I have noticed in the BIOS before, that there is an option to have the computer turn on at a specific time. This would be handy if you set it for a time that would be a few minutes before you ordinarily need to use it.
DSL linux boots insanely fast. On my pentium 2, 300Mhz machine it takes 28 seconds to cold boot off of a CD. And part of that is the delay at the grub prompt! Plus it fires up the applications like a mail client nearly instantly.
main difference is the graphics and dialog boxes are not as sexy as ubuntu
I note that one possible reason linux or windows boots slowly or wakes from hinernation slowly on an older machine can be it's memory starved. For example ubuntu boots on that machine in about ten minutes(!). the machine only has 396MB of memory so it's a miracle ubuntu even boots at all.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This is the standard of a Linux Newbie (from TFS)?? Recompiling the kernel, modifying startup scripts and understanding SSEx instruction sets?
It's too much. I'm quitting the Linux stuff and going back to Windows. I'm going to download Test King papers, memorize the answers, and get my MSCE certification. Experience and knowledge be damned!
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You write well. Hope you can be a regular contributor with us.
My older Dell laptop with Ubuntu 8.10 wakes up from sleep in just a few seconds. When I leave Firefox open, it opens also with all of the tabs. I didn't have to fiddle with anything to get this working. I just set the power button to enter 'sleep' mode to make it easy to start and stop.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Why is everyone rebooting? Just leave it on and reboot once a week if it is XP and about 45-60 days if it is Linux. Always on rules!
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