Ubuntu 11.10 Down To 12-Second Boot

deadeyefred writes "Even though it's still only in alpha, it appears as though the forthcoming version of Ubuntu, version 11.10, will be much faster than earlier versions, according to this story. Quoting: 'After installing the OS onto a PC with an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 at 3.00 GHz and a hard disk drive, we stop-watched boot-up time at 12 seconds — more than three seconds faster than the previous best time we’ve measured.' It looks as if the switch from GDM to LightDM will have a significant impact as Ubuntu gets closer to 'instant on' status."

Comments

HDD -- SSD

[NFN_NLN]

I wonder what the boot time would be with SSDs?

Re:HDD -- SSD

[zonky]

I have a HP Probook 5320m with SSD, with Full Disk Encryption (dmcrypt) running 11.04 x64. After entering my FDE keyphrase, i am at login window in around 3-4 seconds.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[spblat]

My wife's 2010 MacBook Air running Lion provides a login prompt 16 seconds after you touch the power button.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[krray]

You'll spend more time in the POST than you will booting the OS up...

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Murdoch5]

Well my boot time is maybe 4 seconds from Grub to Desktop with 11.04. I could only imagine the new boot time.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

>After you touch the power button

To take it out of sleep mode, you mean? That's how they achieve their so called "instant on".

Re:HDD -- SSD

[hairyfeet]

Hell I think that is SOP with all OSes these days. Windows 7 optimizes files for boot performance, although rankly hybrid sleep has gotten so good I tell customers don't even bother with shutdown unless prompted for a reboot for some reason, just put her to sleep, Apple has always had excellent sleep from what I've been told, and now Ubuntu has 12 second boots.

But to me the problem with Linux was never boot or resource usage, both were usually great, but the drivers being borked all the time. When is Canonical gonna make some sort of universal driver repo that you can just click a "find drivers" button and it'll download and compile or configure the drivers FOR you, so you don't need forum hunts? Hell at least have a driver rollback button like Windows has had since Win2K so if an upgrade borks a driver you can rollback. The whole thing reminds me of this classic XKCD.

But if any Canonical devs are reading this? Congrats. You guys already have a nice OS, plenty of features, several DEs to choose from, lots of software, if y'all would fix the driver breakage problem my shelves would have plenty of Ubuntu boxes next to the Windows ones. Good luck guys and congrats again!

Re:HDD -- SSD

[imbaczek]

FYI: already the case in 11.04

Re:HDD -- SSD

[slinches]

It'll go from 4 seconds to ~3.2 seconds assuming boot is limited only by read speed. The bulk of the time will still be in POST, unfortunately. Anybody hear of new motherboards that have reduced POST times?

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Murdoch5]

I have to be honest, I'm so blown away by the boot time I really don't even care if it gets faster. SSD Is now the only drive type I buy, there so much faster that it's hard to go back to normal disks. Anyone who made the move will know what I mean, if you haven't don't because the speed change is to awesome.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

> When is Canonical gonna make some sort of universal driver repo that you can just click a "find drivers" button and it'll download and compile or configure the drivers FOR you, so you don't need forum hunts?

There is no need whatsoever to do this for any system based on Intel graphics or ATI graphics, as these open source drivers are distributed with (and updated with) the Linux distribution.

This means that these days a machine based on nVidia must really be considered as not suitable for running Linux. If you want to run Linux well, don't attempt to do it on a machine with nVidia graphics. Linux and nVidia graphics are simply not designed for each other (compared to Intel or ATI/AMD graphics).

If you run a Linux on a machine with Intel graphics or AMD/ATI graphics, you will enjoy a better experience (in terms of drivers) than you would with Windows.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[guruevi]

After sleep mode the average Mac (SSD or not) takes 1 sec to come out of sleep, about 1s out of hibernation. IF (does anyone still turn off their laptop?) you turn off or reboot you get to a login prompt in about 16s. Even on non-SSD machines this is about similar, Snow Leopard and Lion use compressed directories to store much of the system and let the (ultrafast) memory and CPU handle the uncompressing while using less (ultraslow) hard disk bandwidth and seek time. I guess if you can get a compressed EXT4 or ZFS to boot Ubuntu off it would be at least 30-50% faster.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Well, I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 on an SSD. The boot time is subdivided as follows:

1) ~10 seconds for the BIOS to load and start grub
2) ~10 seconds for Ubuntu to get to the login screen
2.5) Optional 2 hour wait if Ubuntu decides to fsck all partitions again
3) Upon login, ~30 second wait while the Nvidia driver try to configure the HDMI video.

Overall, I can just about live with it. Unfortunately though, hibernate and suspend no longer work, so things could be a lot better.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

When is Canonical gonna make some sort of universal driver repo that you can just click a "find drivers" button and it'll download and compile or configure the drivers FOR you, so you don't need forum hunts?

Download the lastest Ubuntu, search for Driver in the Unity menu, click on 'Alternative Drivers' or something like that, smile, ???, profit.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[WillKemp]

2.5) Optional 2 hour wait if Ubuntu decides to fsck all partitions again

It's not "ubuntu" that decides, it's the file system. You can stop it happening by setting the number of times the file system can be mounted before checking to 0 with tune2fs. For example:

tune2fs -c 0 /dev/sda1

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell I think that is SOP with all OSes these days. Windows 7 optimizes files for boot performance, although rankly hybrid sleep has gotten so good I tell customers don't even bother with shutdown unless prompted for a reboot for some reason, just put her to sleep, Apple has always had excellent sleep from what I've been told, and now Ubuntu has 12 second boots.

But to me the problem with Linux was never boot or resource usage, both were usually great, but the drivers being borked all the time. When is Canonical gonna make some sort of universal driver repo that you can just click a "find drivers" button and it'll download and compile or configure the drivers FOR you, so you don't need forum hunts? Hell at least have a driver rollback button like Windows has had since Win2K so if an upgrade borks a driver you can rollback. The whole thing reminds me of this classic XKCD.

But if any Canonical devs are reading this? Congrats. You guys already have a nice OS, plenty of features, several DEs to choose from, lots of software, if y'all would fix the driver breakage problem my shelves would have plenty of Ubuntu boxes next to the Windows ones. Good luck guys and congrats again!

Exact opposite here: Hibernate in Windows 7 is a nightmare that takes me 20 minutes to recover from. I use it for business, so I am constantly switching networks, running 20 apps at once, so shutting down is not an option often. Hibernate and sleep are awful with my laptop. Linux hibernate works perfectly fine, and if you buy known-working hardware, the drivers are in the kernel, pal.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[DragonWriter]

There is no need whatsoever to do this for any system based on Intel graphics or ATI graphics, as these open source drivers are distributed with (and updated with) the Linux distribution.

Well, except that with many intel graphics systems, you have to choose between different sets of drivers that are broken in different ways (both open source and closed), so, yeah, the exact problem referred to upthread is particularly likely.

This means that these days a machine based on nVidia must really be considered as not suitable for running Linux. If you want to run Linux well, don't attempt to do it on a machine with nVidia graphics. Linux and nVidia graphics are simply not designed for each other (compared to Intel or ATI/AMD graphics).

IME, nVidia graphics work a lot better than Intel graphics on Linux. "Open source drivers are included with most distributions" is not the same thing as "drivers which work well are included with most distributions".

Re:HDD -- SSD

[slinches]

I agree completely. It takes me longer to type in my password than it does to load the OS. I was just trying to point out that the time from boot loader to usable system is no longer the long pole and it might make sense to focus more on the hardware initialization side. I also think there's still room for HDDs where large amounts of storage space is needed, but I won't build another computer without a SSD to put the OS on, at least until something better comes along.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[rhook]

That time has been beaten by a ThinkPad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FdRtzGyk9o

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

They have. Its called the 'hardware drivers' thingie the control panel. Used to be called 'restricted drivers' I think. Distro-independent drivers are supplied by the linux kernel: in other words, linux comes with the drivers.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[shish]

I installed ubuntu on my nvidia ion-based laptop; as soon as I got to the desktop I didn't even need to click "find drivers", it actually prompted me saying "you're currently using the free drivers; if you want 3D acceleration, click here to use the proprietary ones". I did want 3D acceleration, so I clicked yes, and everything has worked flawlessly ever since. Not sure how that counts as unsuitable...

Also, pray tell, what magic do Intel and ATI do so that using their graphics cards causes your wifi to work?

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Runaway1956]

Sorry, I gotta argue that one. The proprietary drivers always work better than the open source Xorg drivers. I've not experienced a single case in which the Xorg drivers actually equalled the proprietary drivers. They often come close, these days, which is a huge improvement over what we had 5 years ago. But, they are still not up to snuff.

That said - it's simply not that big a deal to go to nVidia or to ATI/AMD to find the driver. I disagree with Hairy Feet when he makes it into a big deal.

Hell, with Windows, you have to search around for all the basic software anyway. So, in that respect, it's a tradeoff - with Linux, you go find your driver, with Windows, you have to go search for Flash, Java, Acrobat, etc ad nauseum. Even with finding my video driver at nVidia, a complete setup of Ubuntu takes far less than half the time that a complete setup of Windows takes. Everything is available in a trusted repository, there is no need to remember who makes Firefox, or Spybot, or any other required software.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Runaway1956]

There was work being done on bios's that were actually Linux boot loaders. They had times of ~5 seconds from start to a linux prompt, at which point the operating system took over. I lost track of things, really, but so summarize, it was only good on certain boards, and the focus of the project got muddied by a few things, funds are short, and basically they appear to have stopped development. In fact, they changed names at least once, maybe twice. There was a real lack of focus, it seems to me.

http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Thing 1]

Not to affront the gods of XKCD, but: every time I see John Stuart, he's smooth. (Typo is a reference to an old episode where he got a book signed with his typoed name; Jon Stewart, Daily Show, for search engines and posterity/fart jokes.)

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Murdoch5]

Totally agreed!!!

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Nursie]

Bullshit!

The nVidia drivers work just fine. If you're only doing 2d then there's nouveau. Otherwise the binary nVidia drivers with your distro of choice, or direct from nVidia, work perfectly well.

Not only is X happy but steam and (quite a few) games run nicely under wine too.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Then use a UEFI MB. There are already a few of them for the desktop and they all boot fairly fast.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[tagno25]

On a desktop I would get a 8GB to 32GB SSD for the OS/boot partition and a large, 500GB+, HDD for the programs and everything else.
On a laptop a setup similar to above would be nice, but is not practical on most machines.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you care?

Operating System has always booted in Ubuntu under 2-3 seconds. The problem is not the/in operating system but in other system software by being bloated or configured so badly that they are slow. Ubuntu is one of the most terrible distributions when it comes to speed and actual workable computer.

On my computer (with year old SSD on 6 year old computer) full blown software system boots to display manager (KDM) under 5 seconds and to desktop 9-10 (KDE Plasma Desktop) and installation is now over 2 years old (HDD > SSD swap with DD).

Somethings are just great but Canonical seems to ruin everything.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[ace123]

That's mostly true -- however, my MSI motherboard seems to spend 5 seconds in each of the AHCI controllers, with the annoying "Press Alt-F2 for RAID setup" message (and switching to IDE emulation makes ubuntu's Disk I/O roughly 25% slower in terms of boot time). Aside from that, I can hardly see my BIOS boot logo--it flashes and goes to GRUB.

Unfortunately Ubuntu seems to have poor support for UEFI at the moment... not too long ago, apt-get dist-upgrade was forcing me to remove grub-efi-amd64 in exchange for grub-pc, and I had to do some nasty dpkg hold to avoid that.

I find this number pretty surprising--my 11.04 boot isn't anywhere near 12 seconds, even with UEFI. Even if you leave out the time to start the ubuntuone and nepomuk I/O heavy processes, my system spends roughly 10 seconds before anything prints out (ureadahead and kernel modules).

LightDM should help a fair amount, so I'm happy about that... but I'm worried that's just offloading the gnome libraries to later in the boot process, so I don't think this will help much for time to a usable desktop...that is, unless you use strictly Unity WM and no kde/gnome apps whatsoever. I guess this might not be for me.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[ace123]

Make sure you're using EXT4 for your filesystem... it's really simple to upgrade, and you can basically change /etc/fstab, and optionally run some tune2fs parameters to enable extents if you are happy with making it permanent.

Just changing fstab to say "ext4" instead of "ext3" alone cuts fsck time by about a factor of 10 (but make sure your version of grub supports ext4 before turning on extents). My 900GB ext4 raid partition will fsck in roughly the same amount of time as my 20GB ext3 root partition

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Homburg]

I've not experienced a single case in which the Xorg drivers actually equalled the proprietary drivers.

I assume you haven't used the ATI drivers, then. IME, the open source drivers are much more stable and easy to get working than fglrx.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[EsbenMoseHansen]

What drivers are people downloading? Running either (K)ubuntu or debian, I never hunt for a driver... at worst, I install it with aptitude or some other apt frontend.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[jawtheshark]

For some cards there aren't even any proprietary drivers. I have a laptop with an ATI X1100 chipset, and it never came up with the proprietary drivers notification, so I must assume I use the Open Source drivers. They work perfectly fine and do Compiz.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[metacell]

It's the distributor's responsibility to decide what the defaults should be...

Re:HDD -- SSD

[hairyfeet]

Notice I dared to point out the truth and got labeled flamebait? But I have proof, proof NOBODY here can deny. Ready? If the current driver model isn't shit, why does the third largest OEM on the planet have to waste money and resources keeping their own badly out of date repos? Because if they don't, even though they offer Linux only on a teeny tiny portion of their systems the drivers die hard.

So don't blame the messenger if he points out your boss is kinda nekked, demand change. If you don't like a hardware ABI, something BTW that BSD, OSX, Solaris, Windows AND OS/2 ALL have in common? Then find another way. Hell I don't care if you have to sacrifice Linus to Cthulu if that is what it takes. Just trying to find a functional Linux in my little shop, testing on bog standard off lease office equipment, I have seen Linux drivers shit themselves over, in no particular order...ATI, Broadcom, Via, SiS, Realtek, Nvidia, Ali, Intel. hell out of all the machines I've tested on so far the ONLY MACHINE I've seen survive more than a single upgrade with ZERO driver failures or errors was a circa 1999 P3 700Mhz Intel box. Needless to say there really isn't any call for those IRL and that one ended up sent to the dump.

Whether you believe it or not (the /. current Linux loonie Alex thinks I'm a "sekret M$ Ninja!" sent to kill his precious) I would like to see this problem fixed and see Linux thrive, I really really would. I don't like paying for MS Licenses and most of what Joe average does can easily be done on Linux. but I can't have an OS where I'm gonna have to give away lifetime support because every 6 months the drivers shit themselves and die hard. And before anyone says "LTS!" that currently has less than a year and a half of support left and LTS is a codeword for "really old software" since many packages are tied to which kernel you are running.

So please fix this Linux community, have a fit at Linus or fork it away from him or whatever, because I can provide link after link after link of retailers trying and then giving up on your product and it ALWAYS comes down to support costs. Joe average isn't gonna do the forum dance or learn how to tweak lists of Bash commands so they can have working sound or Wifi every 6 months. I have 4 1.6Ghz PCs that are gonna end up in the dump right now because the costs of Windows licenses are more than they are worth and I HATE throwing away working gear. But until I can just install a Linux distro and not have to spend hours trawling forums just to make it work after 6 months? Well then I simply have no other choice.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Murdoch5]

Oh ya, my set up is a 32GB SSD for Linux a 60GB SSD for Windows and then I have 4 TB of WD Black's for my NAS which stores everything else. Combine that with a nice gigabit switch / router and it's literally so fast I can't complain. What surprises me so much is the SSD for Windows takes at least a full minute to boot but once booted it's full speed. Just the boot time is horrible.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[jgagnon]

I was wondering why you got marked flame bait. I agree with you, for the most part.

The Linux community, especially the people working on driver technology, need to come to some common ground so the hardware folks don't have such a hard time supporting Linux. I'm rooting for Linux in the long run, but I don't see how they will hit any significant desktop numbers without some serious standardization on the driver front (like an ABI).

Re:HDD -- SSD

[hairyfeet]

Haven't used Windows since XP huh? You don't do the driver search anymore, they are automated into Windows Update for all but the most funky. My last Windows 7 install it even detected the funky USB capture card and installed the drivers before the first boot. It ALL "just worked" which sadly trying various flavors of Linux (Ubuntu/Mint, Mepis, PCLOS) I haven't seen be the case. I've had sound fail, wireless and wired networking die, blackscreen o' death after an upgrade (boy THAT was fun) and in ALL cases there isn't even a simple "rollback driver" button so you can return to a working state without doing the forum dance.

It is a real shame because IMHO this one is really holding Linux back. I can tell you that besides myself every other mom&pop shop owner I've talked to avoids Linux and in EVERY case it is the incredibly expensive support costs due to the broken driver model. Home users simply are not gonna learn to do the forum dance, nor will they ever "Open up Bash and type" as they see it is what it is, a 70s era terminal that frankly doesn't belong on a consumer desktop. Servers yes, desktops no. But no retailer, especially the small shops, like paying for Windows. But until we can hand a PC to a customer and know with 100% certainty that the drivers will still be 100% functional in a year without user intervention? We just can't carry your product.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Runaway1956]

Sadly, ATI/AMD only offers support for newer kernels, AND newer cards. In order to get drivers for older cards, you have to use older kernels. There is no proprietary driver for 2.6.39 kernel and an old AGP video card. But, in that case, you still have the Xorg driver to fall back on. And, let's face it - people who demand the best video performance aren't going to be running a six year old card anyway.

I was an avid supporter of ATI, until they started discontinuing support for those older cards. My last three new video cards have been nVidia, simply because their support is better. Every nVidia card that I possess (mostly discarded by people who wanted upgrades) has support, right now, on the newest kernel, or any older kernel I might wish to isntall.

I suppose I might run into trouble if I tested some of the really old AGP cards, but I don't have any that old!

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

> The proprietary drivers always work better than the open source Xorg drivers. I've not experienced a single case in which the Xorg drivers actually equalled the proprietary drivers. They often come close, these days, which is a huge improvement over what we had 5 years ago. But, they are still not up to snuff.

Sorry, I gotta argue that one. The open source drivers currently work well enough, but they are still yet to be tuned for performance. For example, latest test indicate that performance of Xorg open source ATI drivers has reached about 60% to 70% of fglrx AMD/ATI proprietary drivers.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_hd6000_open&num=1

Current performance is fine for, say, composited desktop use, but it is not yet suitable for demanding 3d graphics gaming. If you had asked about the performance a couple of months ago, it would have been only about 30%, and hence marginal even for composited desktop use. In a couple of months time performance won't be an issue, the main issue left will be with fglrx, that it will still be proprietary.

In other news, the open source Xorg Gallium3D driver for ATI/AMD has gained initial support for the VDPAU API

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTY2OQ

and next up VP8 Gallium3D Support In Mesa Is Being Worked On

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTY3Mg

together these state trackers will soon bring VP8 and H264 video playback acceleration in hardware via the AMD/ATI GPU 3d-graphics capabilities of the hardware. This video decode acceleration is not done via dedicated hardware, it is done via the shaders, and so any GPU models with 3d graphics capability will get video decode acceleration, for both H264 and VP8, using existing GPUs.

This capability is not available with proprietary graphics drivers for any GPU, even for Windows.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Runaway1956]

I think you sorta misinterpreted my post. Windows is very efficient with driver installation. They are the BEST, because every vendor in the world wants to be Windows certified.

It's all the OTHER stuff, after installation is finished, that I was referring to. You've got to find all the installation disks for your favorite programs, you've got to get Adobe's stuff, whichever flavor of Java you prefer (almost always Sun Java, on Windows) along with your favorite antivirus, software firewall, anti-malware, browser, and the list goes on. It takes a lot of time to set up a really customized Windows - I know, from experience.

But, you're right - the drivers are the LEAST of my worries!

Re:HDD -- SSD

[jon3k]

Must be a first gen air? I've got a second generation macbook air (core2duo) and I'm at a full loaded desktop in 9 seconds. But I haven't turned it off except for an update in probably 4 months. With 30 days of standby time I treat it like an iPad. It just stays on all the time and when I want to use it I open it up. Every couple of weeks I'll charge it for an hour.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[jawtheshark]

Up until last weekend, I had a GeForce 440MX running in my mothers Ubuntu desktop. I replaced the motherboard (because it was an old socket 754 motherboard and I had a socket 939 motherboard with dual core CPU lying around, and why not give her a free upgrade?). That 440MX worked perfectly fine (including Compiz and the whole shebang). How old is that card? It was with the proprietary drivers, though.

The new motherboard has ATI onboard graphics, I think a HD4200 or somesuch. Works fine too.

So, I can assert the binary drivers of NVidia work well and have long support cycles, but my main point was that the old ATI worked very well too while using the OSS drivers.

I'm a dumpster diver. I might have some TNT2 lying around, but frankly, with GeForce 6600GT and above being commonly thrown away, why bother? Okay, in some sense, I prefer the older cards because they have passive cooling. (GeForce2 MX has been a very popular card, compiz runs fine on it last time I tested... I have stacks of them) Passive cooling is one thing less to break, one reason less to call me.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[renoX]

>> 2.5) Optional 2 hour wait if Ubuntu decides to fsck all partitions again
>
> It's not "ubuntu" that decides, it's the file system.

Ubuntu devs chose which filesystem to use and how to configure it..

IMHO fsck should be done periodically in the background with a low priority process, rather than at startup.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[columbus]

2.5) Optional 2 hour wait if Ubuntu decides to fsck all partitions again

I've had good results with XFS for a data partition. No FSCK on boot up. Online defragging. I stuck this in the crontab & it seems to do the trick

1 1 * * 1 root xfs_fsr /dev/sda3

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't thank you enough for this was driving me mad having to skip it every time ubuntu decided to rescan my 4.5tb raid array

Re:HDD -- SSD

[hairyfeet]

Oh, I'm sorry I misread. In that case...no you don't AGAIN, as you must not have heard of a little gift of love from the heavens above called Ninite or as we PC fixit guys say "instant happy"! It has ALL the software most users will want, and if there is any you don't see you'd like? Tell them, they are happy to listen to you. The Klite codec pack on there? That was me asking nicely. Oh and NO TOOLBARS or any of the other crap some like Java try to pack in, just the most used defaults, like the CCleaner defaults have the ccleaner right click on the recycle bin setting chosen.

So just remember that name...Ninite and your Windows installs will be easy and happy and...well just really pleasant.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[hairyfeet]

You want to know the sad part, the part that will have me modded to hell for daring to speak against their "chosen one" even though it is his own words I'm gonna link to? Linus Torvalds thinks its a big fucking joke and his attitude is Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!

Now of course this attitude was fine in 1993, when Linux was a hobby project being passed around on IRC, but it ain't 1993 anymore. If you want Linux on the literally hundred of millions of PCs that are gonna be EOLed by MSFT in Apr 2014 the driver problem needs fixed NOW and it needs done ASAP.

Because in the end there is gonna be literally tons of hardware sitting in front of fixit guys like me, hardware which COULD easily run Linux for years thus saving it from the dump, cutting down on eWaste, and making thrid and fourth PCs easily and cheaply available for all those grandmas out there. But as I said with these 4 1.6Ghz I'm looking at the Windows CAL will cost more than the box is worth and Linux simply won't continue running past the first 6 month update without taking a big steaming dump on the drivers. Does the community REALLY believe grandma is gonna learn how to do the forum dance, or how to tweak Bash (because you ALWAYS have to tweak, the commands listed are always for hardware c rev b and you have hardware f rev h) commands so the forum CLI gunk will work? Really?

Windows doesn't stomp Linux in adoption because of some secret sauce, nor killer app, it is because it is trivial for guys like me to setup with a good AV and basic software like Firefox or Dragon browser and just hand it to grandma and 3 years from now it is still surfing the web and letting her print her recipes. That's all. Most of what grandma does could easily be done on Linux if the driver sitch wasn't such a giant mess. Fix this and I'll be happy to carry your product. Hell I even wrote an article for Linux Insider pointing out what I needed to help sell Linux. If I didn't care or wanted MSFT to win would I have gone to the trouble to write it?

Re:HDD -- SSD

[WillKemp]

It's the distributor's responsibility to decide what the defaults should be...

No it's not. And they don't set the defaults. When an ext3/ext4 filesystem is created the max mount count is set to a random number. It's a legacy thing from the days of ext2 and is unnecessary with the journalling versions of the filesystem (ext3 & ext4). Implying that users shouldn't change the defaults is like saying you shouldn't change your desktop background.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[WillKemp]

Ubuntu devs chose which filesystem to use and how to configure it..

They choose the filesystem, yes, but they don't set the max mount counts parameter. That's set to a random number by mkfs. That's really a legacy setting and it's totally unnecessary with the journalling versions of the file system (i.e., ext3 and ext4). I've been running Linux systems with the automatic checking disabled ever since very soon after i switched from ext2 to ext3 and it's never caused any problems. The file system is rock solid these days and that check is pointless. It's time the default was changed in mkfs.ext3 and mkfs.ex4.

IMHO fsck should be done periodically in the background with a low priority process, rather than at startup.

You can't check a file system while it's being used. It has to be done at boot time with the filesystem mounted read-only.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[lennier]

Yes I'm certainly going to install a "free" executable third-party installer from a company I've never heard of before which has no source code and which has no obvious cashflow. That will certainly help my system be very secure!

Re:HDD -- SSD

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...dude? All it is is automated installers for most of the popular software, kept updated. you could do so yourself if you wanted to waste the time, or if you pay a whole 430 they'll give you the ability to set up your own offline repos that auto sync with theirs.

But frankly your "argument" could be used as is against the Linux repos. After all you are ultimately trusting a third party who may/may not have your interests at heart. look at the Quake infected Linux install the repos loaded up last year. At least with Ninite they are simply downloading the packages from the developers themselves and making automated installers for them.

Oh and there isn't any "installer". It is a simple file that sends an argument to their servers with a list of chosen software, similar to a bash script. As for cash flow? They sell automation systems for SMBs, so they can have their own repos with the software they use most based on the free version but with their devs integrating whatever softare your company needs. I wouldn't doubt they are doing very well with this as it is an underserved market as far as I can tell..

Re:HDD -- SSD

[metacell]

You should change *from* the defaults as much as you like, but it's the distributor's responsibility to set the defaults to sensible values in the first place. That's part of the point with having a distribution.

Re:HDD -- SSD

[renoX]

> yes, but they don't set the max mount counts parameter. That's set to a random number by mkfs

Look, Ubuntu devs ship the code, they can change the defaults as they wish.

>> IMHO fsck should be done periodically in the background with a low priority process, rather than at startup.
>
> You can't check a file system while it's being used. It has to be done at boot time with the filesystem mounted read-only.

No, that's a FS limitation, not something always true: for example ZFS can do those kind of checks:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1405/zfs-how-to-fsck-or-check-filesystem-integrity-with-scrub/

Re:HDD -- SSD

[Compaqt]

1. Wha? There's no upgrade program you have to run? You just call a partition "ext4", and it'll be treated as such? Doesn't ext4 have different info stored in directories? The limits are certainly different.

2. What about that problem with config files going missing that was a big topic of discussion on Slashdot a year or so ago?

I.e., where the filesystem deletes a file before it writes the new version of it?

Re:HDD -- SSD

[ace123]

1. Yep, just run tune2fs and enable the ext4-specific features (google for 'upgrade ext 3 ext4') Then, make sure to edit your /etc/fstab. -O extents is the magic that makes them incompatible, but you don't need to use extents to get the benefits of ext4.

2. The rename issue was about bad assumeptions made by some gnome/kde programs about when to call fsync(), and those have long been fixed. I think it was that ext3 used low time to sync, so it was almost impossible to run into this, and ext4 set the *default* sync delay much higher--it is easy to change this in /etc/fstab, so google about this if you want.

I've been using ext4 since before it was supported in most distributions (soon after the announcement that it was marked stable in linux) and I've had no such issues (or I've never noticed). My /home partition has survived crashes due to the faulty seagate drives of 2.5 years ago (on RAID 1) and survived an abnormally high number of daily motherboard/psu-related crashes with no data loss (of stuff synced to disk).

bootloader

[phrostie]

does this include the bootloader?

Grub?
Lilo?

Re:bootloader

[Dyinobal]

No one really uses Lilo any more really. Grub is a much more robust system and versatile. I don't see any mention of if it was from pressing the start button or from the boot loader loading up. I'm willing to believe that it's from pressing the on button rather than from the boot loader loading.

Re:bootloader

[mrclisdue]

So, you're saying that no one really uses Slackware?

Really?

I must be no one.

cheers,

Re:bootloader

[The Dawn Of Time]

In the grand scheme of things, yes, you're no one. You can always find one or two people doing some weird one-off. The world little notes nor long remembers. That's just how it goes.

Re:bootloader

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have to be specially selected hardware to be from power-on -- of my last 5 computers, only one got through the POST, BIOSes, and into the bootloader in less than 15 seconds, much less boot fully.

On second thought, maybe I'm projecting my high-end hardware experience on others -- since 4 of the 5 machines had SCSI, SATA, or SAS add-in cards, including the quick one -- it had an ancient SCSI card with no BIOS (so you have to have your bootloader and kernel on an old IDE drive, but your root fs can be on SCSI.) Probably most "normal" people buy machines with only onboard storage, and one less BIOS to load and bus to scan does make a difference... but I still think most are over 12 seconds.

Re:bootloader

[ace123]

Saying Slackware doesn't support GRUB is like saying Dell doesn't support Linux. It's a bootloader, and aside from installing it, it's completely unrelated to the OS. They probably kept LILO as the default since it's works easily out of the box.

Just grab a copy of grub2, make, make install, install it to the bootloader, and set up a linux64 menu.lst to load into your OS. Unlike LILO, you can actually type in commands at the boot prompt and tab complete to get a list of OS's, so it's kind of hard to mess up if you have the documentation handy.

That said, there's not much point in changing something that works--unless you're intent on booting on new hardware that uses EFI or something.

Re:bootloader

[mrclisdue]

Did someone say that Slackware didn't support grub? Where?

Rather, someone suggested that "no one really uses lilo." This is far from the truth.

Let's make up something else:
No one in this thread is lacking reading comprehension.

cheers,

Re:bootloader

[hxnwix]

Did someone say that Slackware didn't support grub? Where?

Rather, someone suggested that "no one really uses lilo." This is far from the truth.

Let's make up something else:
No one in this thread is lacking reading comprehension.

cheers,

Someone else: nobody uses lilo
You: I use slackware, therefore I use lilo!
Someone else: Slackware does not require lilo.
You: Who said that it does, idiot? You're so dumb.

Before you respond with yet more misinterpretation, know that nobody cares.

Re:bootloader

[mrclisdue]

You: I don't care, so I'll post here to prove it
Me: ?

cheers,

Re:bootloader

[lennier]

I must be no one.

(Checks Who's Who, Burke's Peerage, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Fox News, The Oprah Channel)

Nope, not anywhere here - you're no one.

Come back here you technie riff-raff, that's proper people's oxygen you're using without a permit that is!

Boot times?

[White Flame]

How many people actually reboot their Linux systems? I guess if you're on a laptop you might sometimes, but I just use Sleep functionality instead of cycles.

Still, a good (even if by now esoteric) achievement.

Re:Boot times?

[tepples]

How many people actually reboot their Linux systems?

Anybody who applies a kernel update, now that Oracle has acquired Ksplice.

I guess if you're on a laptop you might sometimes, but I just use Sleep functionality instead of cycles.

My Dell Mini 10 runs Ubuntu 11.04. Leaving it in sleep for a couple days will fully drain the battery. So if I know I'm not going to be near a charger for several hours, I shut it down.

Re:Boot times?

[SilverHatHacker]

You must be a GNOME guy.

Re:Boot times?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is still kexec, which doesn't depend on ksplice.

Also note - nothing prevents many kernel updates from being done online.

Things like drivers and filesystems (non boot disk that is) can be updated and reloaded. Video drivers can be, but there are some limits there, most such "drivers" are actually part of the X server.

Re:Boot times?

[grumling]

I never used to, opting for sleep mode instead of shutdown. Now that I have SSDs I am able to use hibernate and get it to power back about as fast as sleep mode. Hibernate is basically shutdown with a ram image stored on the drive.

Re:Boot times?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have different distros installed at different partitions and reboot to switch. I also shutdown when done with the computer or when a storm is coming.

Re:Boot times?

[perryizgr8]

i get a 'restart your computer' message every other update.

Re:Boot times?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Anybody who applies a kernel update, now that Oracle has acquired Ksplice.

Because no one can fork an open source project....

Re:Boot times?

[cuby]

I shutdown my laptops a lot.
Hibernate takes forever to recover (I don't run only firefox...), so I don't use it.
Slep is Ok but for 2 or 3 times I forgot a laptop for several days and the battery got completely dead. Needless to say that its charge capacity is now around +-20%. Li-ion batteries should no be completely discharged.
Now I think twice before using sleep.
(I use Ubuntu)

Re:Boot times?

[andydread]

oooh noooos. Oracle acquired Ksplice? Oh well look for Oracle to sue the pants of anyone for implementing any such open source version of that feature in Linux within the next 20 years :-(

Re:Boot times?

[flibby]

It may not be relevant to you, but most people I know use laptops.

Re:Boot times?

[growse]

Post to undo mistaken mod. Doh.

Re:Boot times?

[Nethead]

That's honorable! I usually just leave them wondering about the mod.

Re:Boot times?

[interkin3tic]

How many people actually reboot their Linux systems?

Probably at least a few more when this rolls out and sleep instead of shutdown only saves 12 seconds.

Re:Boot times?

[cdh]

I do on my laptop because at work I use a docking station and things get wonky if I try to undock. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it's basically just easier to shutdown.

Re:Boot times?

[DarwinSurvivor]

Just log out/in.

Re:Boot times?

[DarwinSurvivor]

Still not a shutdown since you don't need to re-open your documents, restart any services, unmount drives, etc. Hibernate is a LOT closer to suspend than shutdown.

Re:Boot times?

[DarwinSurvivor]

My laptop gets rebooted quite frequently due to dual-boot (games), but my server has been up for 153 days now (about 5 months). They both run arch.

I can't believe ubuntu still takes that long. My laptop automatically starts apache, mysql, and a bunch of other services (I do web development on it) at startup and I'd be surprised if it took 10 seconds (not counting POST and grub timeouts).

Re:Boot times?

[White Flame]

That 12 seconds does not include restarting all your applications, typing in ssh agent passwords, and all the other foo required to resume your normal working environment.

Re:Boot times?

[oursland]

That's not true. Because the boot time is 12 seconds doesn't mean that all my applications are loaded and opened to the same files, websites, etc. as when I was using the laptop. Sleep does that, shutting down does not.

Re:Boot times?

[rec9140]

>How many people actually reboot their Linux systems?

Desktop and servers hardly ever...

>I guess if you're on a laptop you might sometimes, but I just use >Sleep functionality

Laptop is powered off every time I am done with using it...I never use sleep, hibernate, its buggy and prone to lossing work if you don't save it every 1 uS... never had it work on Linux or any other OS *reliabably* meaning 100% operation 100% of the time, no OOOPPS! I've deceived I don't want to come back on and have to pull the battery to get the thing to even boot... and loose anything or totaly meltdown of file systems etc... pass no thanks....

Power on, do my thing, power off, pack up and move on...

Re:Boot times?

[Runaway1956]

I wasn't aware that Oracle had bought up Ksplice. That bites . . .

Re:Boot times?

[Thing 1]

Hi, I've found that in most menuing systems (Windows XP primarily, although I use Ubuntu exclusively at home and it works similarly), if you left-click the "menu button" to open the menu, and then left-click and drag on the menu, you'll end up choosing a menu item much more often than if you left-click to open the menu, then move the mouse, then left-click again.

I've found that often (30%?) when I do the latter, I'll end up clicking outside of the menu, and possibly causing a side-effect. Whereas, if I left-click and drag on the menu, if I happen to release "off-menu" it won't count it as a click; the menu just disappears, and I merely need to start the gesture over. Which is much better than clicking something unexpected, which might delete things... This behavior has provided me with reduced swearing at the computer; YMMV.

Re:Boot times?

[Beelzebud]

My Linux machine is used as a home desktop machine, so when I go to bed, I turn it off. So for me, I boot Linux once a day. I'd care about Uptime if I were serving something, but I don't.

Re:Boot times?

[growse]

But I like swearing at my computer!

"a PC"?!?

[tlambert]

...a PC with an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 at 3.00 GHz and a hard disk drive...

Well, that's a specific Intel CPU, and we know it has an unspecified hard drive.

What actual hardware did they use, so that we can reproduce their results?

Thanks,
-- Terry

define "boot up"

[whtmarker]

I have always been confused when I see ubuntu boot-up times. Does this mean boot to the login screen or boot to a usable desktop via 'autologin'?

when did you start the timer?

[datapharmer]

When the heck did you start that timer? Bios on many computers takes 5 to 15 seconds. Starting after post I can (and do) boot XP on a 1.6 Ghz single core celeron with 1Gb ram in 20 seconds. By the same yardstick I would hardly call that "instant".

Re:when did you start the timer?

[sourcerror]

I have dual boot machine and only use Windows when I have to, Xp boots 40s for me (after boot screen). Although I have quite a lot programs installed (Virtuawin,Avast,uTorrent). On the other hand on Ubuntu I don't need antivirus, has multiple desktops by default and qtorrent loads pretty fast.
Also, it seems that as the number of intsalled buy not daemon programs can slow down Windows by the high amount of registry entries. On Linux it doesn't matter how many programs you install.

How long

[Threni]

does it take to get flash and java working in the browser on a 64 bit system though?

Re:How long

[mhh91]

I can have both working in less than 15 minutes, the choice of the distribution doesn't really matter as long as it's linux.

Re:How long

[garaged]

About the time it takes to download the packages plus 1 minute to install, something like that, I did it a couple of weeks ago

Rebooting in the Age of Hibernation?

[Kohlrabi82]

I will savour the three seconds which I save each half a year.

Also, a 20% decrease might sound like much, but when we're talking about 15 seconds vs. 12 seconds, it's just not something most people will even notice at all.

Re:Rebooting in the Age of Hibernation?

[Jamu]

Personally, unless it takes longer than the time it takes me to hit the power button and go and make a coffee, it's never going to be an issue.

What a time-saver!

[Intropy]

Those extra three seconds during my monthly reboot are really going to add up!

Re:What a time-saver!

[TrekkieGod]

Those extra three seconds during my monthly reboot are really going to add up!

That's what I was thinking. If the only advantage of switching from GDM to LightDM is that they can book 3 seconds faster, it's not worth it. Going from 15 seconds to 12 seconds is not significant at all.

In fact, here's a simpler rule. If you need to use your stopwatch to determine whether the boot sequence got faster or not, then it's not significant.

Re:What a time-saver!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's fucking significant... not every Linux is running on a desktop. 3 seconds taken off "cold start -> ready to use" is massive for a mobile phone/tablet.

Re:What a time-saver!

[CastrTroy]

What I want to know is, have they improved hibernate speed yet? Last time I tried Ubuntu (11.04?) on my laptop, it was faster to do a clean boot then it was to come out of hibernation. Even if I didn't have anything open when I went into hibernation.

Autologin and WLAN keys

[tepples]

I used to use autologin until I realized I had to enter my password anyway to unlock the keyring in which the WLAN keys (WEP/WPA) are stored. Is there still a practical benefit to autologin on a laptop?

Re:Autologin and WLAN keys

[realityimpaired]

You realize that you can easily remove the password prompt on the keyring by nuking your keyring and not entering a password when it asks for it the next time?

That said, I still have to enter my password on my laptop, despite using autologin, because I have it set to lock the screen on startup. (prefer entering password through locked screen, because the network and other services start up earlier).

Re:Autologin and WLAN keys

[mmcuh]

If you encrypt the whole disk (except the boot partition) as a LUKS volume, having to also login manually is just a nuisance.

Re:Autologin and WLAN keys

[Vegemeister]

Click on network icon -> edit connections -> wireless tab -> select the encrypted wifi network -> edit connection -> check 'available to all users'

No more abstruse prompts about unlocking keyrings.

cool

[mewsenews]

but unity still sucks

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

and forever will

Re:cool

[perryizgr8]

100% true. also, does anybody know of a distro that can be installed like wubi?

Re:cool

[RenHoek]

I hate Unity so much... I wiped the system and installed 10.04 again. I was perfectly happy with Gnome and the way things were set up.

The problem, is that it's form trumping functionality. I hate Windows because they push 'features' onto you even if you don't want them. Microsoft knows what you want, and if you don't want it that way, it just means the problem must be you.

The king of this trend is of course Apple, but then again they sell to a peculiar market anyway. It's like those people buy a car because it's pretty and do not even inquire about the mileage.

Ubuntu was free of it, but now they are going the same way. They decide what you want, if you want it or not.

Re:cool

[Sepodati]

Not for everyone. It works just fine for my family.

Re:cool

[DCFusor]

Agree -- all my linux machines are 10.4. Ran some of the newer stuff in virtual box. Ewwww, it stank utterly. I don't need the opsys itself to be entertaining, I just want it to load my programs and get the heck out of the way, except for providing them services. Done. 10.4 does that, the newer stuff, not. Hope they get over it before the next LTS, or I'll be distro shopping myself.

Re:cool

[Dusanyu]

I hated unity as well. Than I tried Gnome shell than suddenly Unity was decent.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate Unity so much... I wiped the system and installed 10.04 again.

That's crazy overkill; Unity is just the _default_ shell. Choose "Ubuntu Classic" from your login manager, and you'll see the familiar Gnome interface.

Re:cool

[shish]

Hope they get over it before the next LTS, or I'll be distro shopping myself.

If you are presented with a choice of two desktops (as you are, if you have installed 11.04), and you can't manage to choose the one that you like that even comes pre-installed for your convenience, I recommend you go shopping for a mac :-)

(Seriously, WTF has happened to the tech knowledge of the average slashdotter recently? A few years ago every man and his dog was writing his own window manager from scratch, and now people don't even realise that the world outside of default settings exists...)

Re:cool

[floyd-humphrey]

I wiped the system and installed Peppermint OS2 (Mint/LUbuntu hybrid). Boom. All the bells and whistles of what used to be Ubuntu and decent speed on netbooks. Install Nautilus, install Libre Office, install Firefox, Opera, Quanta Plus, Inkscape, Gimp... No idea why people feel the need to have loads of window effects. Waste...

Re:cool

[Nimey]

If you're talking about KDE 3.x, maybe. KDE 4 is an abomination.

Re:cool

[Nimey]

In 11.04. ISTR reading that GNOME 2.x goes away in 11.10, so yes, you're probably better off sticking with LTS until Canonical un-fucks their desktop environment.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I too disliked unity 'ver 1' (on 11.04), but it's just that: the first release. The UI 'bugs' will get worked out ahead of time before 12.04. As long as there is an alternative UI for experienced users or special case applications such as using LXDE, then the bases are covered. What Ubuntu is doing with a fast 6 month release cycle vs ~3 year Apple and 5+ year MS development cycle is taking many small incremental steps to suddenly be out front. Think Toyota through the 1970s and 1980s vs the US Big Three, small continuous incremental improvements changed the global automotive industry.

Re:cool

[Laser Dan]

100% true. also, does anybody know of a distro that can be installed like wubi?

Linux Mint?

Re:cool

[jatoo]

Ubuntu's goal is to bring Linux to a wide desktop market, including people who aren't especially technically literate. No one's saying that Gnome 2 wasn't great, but in this day and age, it looks dated. Compare the Gnome task bar to the Mac dock or Windows start bar. It's old - harder to get information from and harder to interact with. Half the people who run Gnome 2, and know what they are doing, install something like Docky or Awn, and get that functionality. If you want an OS to be mainstream you can't expect your users to have to resort to 3rd party modifications for what is now considered basic functionality. Unity is NOT more intrusive or distracting than than Gnome 2 (or really any other desktop manager). Gnome 2 has the top panel, bottom panel and windows borders visible all the time. Try hitting maximise in Unity, everything you don't need disappears. This is getting out of your way as a good OS should. Additionally they're introducing window management features like the windows Aero Snap or whatever it's called. This is not intrusive (no new UI elements) and provide functionality which is great for productivity. My only real problem with Unity as it is, is that it's fiddly to open an application with the mouse. Open the application menu, click on the small drop down menu, find the category, then find the app. That's too fiddly. But opening apps by hitting Super then starting to type the name is the best way to go anyway. You might say "why not just use Gnome Shell?" Well that's a good point. But in 11.10, Gnome Shell will be available, and now we have more competition to encourage innovation. Is that a bad thing? I think most of the criticism of Unity comes from the same old fear of anything new (take the new facebook, new myspace new anything...). Sure there are a few kinks, but they'll be ironed out as time goes by.

Re:cool

[Grippen]

You didn't have to go back to 10.04. You could have simply changed the desktop environment from Unity to Classic Gnome at the login screen. The Unity interface will be okay for new users but not for most people who are used to using Windows and Gnome. If you have observed Mark Shuttleworth, you will see that leads these changes to ensure that Ubuntu remains modern and is not stuck in a time warp.

Re:cool

[Buttink]

Yes why revert to the classic gnome via one drop down list when you can install a whole new OS BRILLIANT!

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly some said it already but you should have just chosen the other environment, and not meant to be a D-bag but if ur so into Ubuntu I assume you could have found that out quite easily and second no one is trying to force anything on you any more than the original gnome devs did. You need to stop confusing forcing with innovation and that goes for all of you they are just trying to pull away from their similarities to others just like Apple is doing and Microsoft too. Change doesnt mean forcing anything its just change and frankly change is not the end of the world yeah Unity needs work but Linux needs work as a whole they are getting so close on so many things that it became time to change the game a bit focus on neglected areas... gnome lok and functionaliy has not changed much in a decade or two even Gnome said WTF and did a 360. So I mean maybe its more the user accepting change than the company F***ing up. I applaud Canical for being brave enough to try.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

(Seriously, WTF has happened to the tech knowledge of the average slashdotter recently? A few years ago every man and his dog was writing his own window manager from scratch, and now people don't even realise that the world outside of default settings exists...)

We should be happy to have the new users. Linux adoption resulting in an educated user/admin is no longer a given. There is too much shiny and too many people encouraging the belief that CLI is supposed to be compared to GUI, and is therefore inferior.

The ignorance will wear off a bit with time, hopefully. Meanwhile we profit from the stat bumps. I have no problem letting big vendors count these users when considering nix penetration.

Re:cool

[GeoffreyBernardo]

Exactly!

Re:cool

[mikechant]

If you are presented with a choice of two desktops (as you are, if you have installed 11.04), and you can't manage to choose the one that you like that even comes pre-installed for your convenience,

11.04 support runs out 12.10
10.04 support runs out 13.04
11.10 apparently will not support the classic gnome desktop at all
So sticking with or going back to 10.04 rather than using the classic option on 11.04 *does* make sense if you want to stick with classic - it gives you an extra 6 months support.

Re:cool

[Nimey]

Paragraphs: your friends and mine.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the point.

They shouldn't be hijacking a user's default interface on an upgrade. It's disruptive.

Fuck their agenda. Fuck their pissing contest.

Who cares if they have OMG AWESUMZ NEW ANIMATIONz0rZZZ!!!1 OMG 1337 UZAR INTARFAECES AND USABILITY AND UZAR EXPRIENCEZ TESTING.

Don't. Care.

They shouldn't be screwing up my efficient, established, habitual behavior in favor of pushing forward their idea of "progress".

They need to show some courtesy in that respect.

Nobody ever measures that component of the user experience.

The only time you hear about that part being addressed is when people complain about instances like how their office admin staff needed to be retrained for the upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007. The only people to shed light on that were the Open Office people. And usually the problem is lampooned like "OMG HOW WILL I EVAR LERN 2 COPY AND PASTE AGAIN???"

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, you're probably better off sticking with LTS until Canonical un-fucks their desktop environment.

You are wrong.
Just run "sudo apt-get install gnome" and THEN choose it from your login manager!

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried Linux Mint?

Re:cool

[lennier]

But in 11.10, Gnome Shell will be available, and now we have more competition to encourage innovation. Is that a bad thing?

If the only competition is between Gnome Shell and Unity, sure it's a bad thing. It's like Alien vs Godzilla. Whoever loses... we lose.

Re:cool

[perryizgr8]

checking now. thanks.

Re:cool

[jatoo]

Yeah, i didn't know how to. Just switched to 'plain old text' mode and it's working now.

Woohoo. (demonstration)

Re:cool

[Jello B.]

Nnnnnnnnnawww...

Re:cool

[Vegemeister]

I like the behavior of KDE most of the time, but there is a irritating tendency to waste huge swaths of pixels. See: Dolphin_FileManager.png

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

the point of many distributions is to decide what they provide you. You are free, however to choose a different distribution. No foul here.

Re:cool

[kamapuaa]

Your post makes no sense. If you can't figure out how to change the shell, even if it's not included with the default installation, why are you using Linux?

Personally I sort of like Unity.

Re:cool

[Compaqt]

And you wouldn't think that Linux users actually want to do stuff with their computer instead of messing around with the settings and compiling?

Like writing proposals, writing software, collaborating via email/chat/Skype/etc., or what ever else you need to do in order to run your business?

Fast enough HD to restore all of RAM

[tepples]

Hibernation?

Provided your hardware is fully supported. A lot of PCs that I've used have no video or no sound after coming out of hibernation. And provided that your hard drive is fast enough to restore the entirety of RAM from the swap file faster than a 12-second boot.

I will savour the three seconds which I save each half a year.

If you reboot only twice a year, how do you remain protected against newly discovered (and fixed) defects in the kernel or other long-running processes?

Re:Fast enough HD to restore all of RAM

[uigrad_2000]

I've never been able to get any PC with an ATI card to hibernate correctly in linux, and I've found very little help on the topic. The best document I've found about the suspend process is here, and it is specific only to Ubuntu:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnderstandingSuspend

Suspend works on my laptop, but it will overheat when I place it in my bag. I really would like to get hibernate to work.

Re:Fast enough HD to restore all of RAM

[The Dawn Of Time]

Reading these sorts of comments after a decade plus of smug nerds ragging Windows for not being perfect makes me chuckle.

(Note: I don't own any Windows machines, before you accuse me of some form of fanboyism)

It's a feature!

[kakyoin01]

It's a feature! It's gotta be! Wait, that can't be right...

What point did they start timing?

[kevinmenzel]

Heck, my computer takes more than 12 seconds to hand over to any OS... I mean, graphics card initialization, POST, initializing 3 RAID controllers.... probably at least 15-20 seconds before the OS gets a chance... I'm pretty sure every modern OS I've tried on my machine can boot to a functional desktop on a fresh install in less time than the BIOS takes...

Re:What point did they start timing?

[jon3k]

Not being snarky, honest question - why are you rebooting a machine with 3 raid controllers? I mean I understand maybe occasionally (once every few months?) but at that point who cares if it takes 5 minutes to boot up?

Debian concurrent boot

[XanC]

Why does Ubuntu get all the credit? Isn't this Debian's new system for running init scripts concurrently at work?

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[Just Brew It!]

If you're referring to upstart, IIRC that was actually an Ubuntu (Canonical) project.

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[XanC]

No, I wasn't; hadn't heard of Upstart. Debian does have a concurrent boot system, which is now the default in squeeze, but apparently this is an area where Debian and Ubuntu are doing their own things. I withdraw my original comment!

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[Just Brew It!]

... 'cause we wouldn't want to do something crazy like come up with a single new standard for running concurrent init scripts! http://xkcd.com/927/

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not want credit for upstart.

It made a non-standard, unreadable mess out of bootup.

systemd is a step in the right direction, though the upstart may slow such a transition.

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[Ant P.]

1: It isn't new, it's been in testing/unstable for 2 years by now. 2: This isn't Debian's init system, because this takes longer to get to a usable desktop on a 2011 3GHz multicore than that takes on my eee701 with a 630MHz Celeron.

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[oursland]

Blame Ubuntu for that, in this instance. Most systems had a functioning SysV init, with a few holdouts opting for a BSD style init. Then Ubuntu created their own. Debian's system is still SysV init, but the scripts all have a LSB header on them. No new standard, just evolving a system that works.

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, Gentoo has had that as an option for quite some time (years). However, it's fairly useless since it's fast enough to boot without it. The bottleneck in my case is to wait for the clocksource and the DHCP lease.

Now if only there was a way to speed up compilations to near-instant speed...

Re:Debian concurrent boot

[XanC]

It was released about three months ago. I call that new.

My media PC gets shut off a lot

[Wee]

I typically don't run the media PC hooked up to my TV unless I'm actually watching a movie or listening to music. Because of a hardware peculiarity, the power button won't put it into standby like my desktop PC. So I just leave it shut off unless I'm using it. It's got 10.04 on it now and boot time is about 30 seconds (never timed it, I usually turn it on and head to he kitchen for a drink). I'd love a fast boot time.

-B

So what?

[digitig]

I thought a major advantage of Linux was supposed to be that you only had to boot it once and then it ran forever...

Re:So what?

[sourcerror]

Unless you use it as a desktop machine, and try to save power.

Re:So what?

[Daniel Phillips]

I thought a major advantage of Linux was supposed to be that you only had to boot it once and then it ran forever...

A well deserved reputation. However there are such things as power interruptions, kernel upgrades, physical relocation of a workstation, hardware changes. My Shuttle SD11G5 running as a server (quiet enough for always-on in the home) has typical uptime of a few months.

There is also kernel development in which boot time can easily dominate the development cycle, indirectly affecting kernel quality and hence every user.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

However there are such things as power interruptions, kernel upgrades, physical relocation of a workstation, hardware changes.

You're still not answering the 'So what?'

HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK I CAN'T TWATTER AND LOOK AT PORN FOR TWENTY SECONDS OH NOES OOBOOONTOO TO TEH RESCUE

Seriously, this is a fucking shit statistic; mere nerdgasm-inducing nonsense.

Re:So what?

[Zan Lynx]

Except for when the suspend/resume cycle crashes because of a video interrupt problem.

Except for when the kernel is updated three times a month for security fixes.

Except for when the GUI freezes solid and you don't have another machine nearby to SSH in with.

I am sure I could think of some more.

Re:So what?

[digitig]

Except for when the GUI freezes solid and you don't have another machine nearby to SSH in with.

Nice to know it's not just me.

It doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter. You know why? Because I've just updated my Ubuntu to 11.04 (thinking: hey, it's been long enough, they've probably polished out silly issues) and now VLC doesn't work anymore. Google has hundreds of complaints on forums but apparently no one-solution-fits-all answer (extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0").

As long as developers and packagers can afford to have this kind of fuckups on a regular basis, it will be easier for me to dual-boot win7.

Re:It doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck are you using XFree86? Wasn't that depreciated 6 or 7 years ago?

Also, you still have mplayer.

Re:It doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

XFree86-DRI is the name of a X11 protocol extension defined by the XFree86 project, but the protocol can be supported by anyone. Looking at xpyinfo output on my Ubuntu 11.04, there indeed is no sign of XFree86-DRI, but I suspect that DRI2 is supposed to be a replacement. Then it's a question of whether all linux installations on computers new enough to run VLC support DRI2 - if they don't, then VLC has no reason to upgrade if XFree86-DRI is sufficient for their needs.

Same result here!

[Sepultura]

That's about how long it took me with Unity before I gave it the boot too!

Power

[DeeEff]

Now if only we could control those pesky, random power consumption bugs from the 11.04 kernel.........

I kid I kid. I don't know if that specific issue still affects people because I haven't upgraded, but I plan on installing either 11.10 or 12.04 when they come out.

This is still pretty impressive stuff though, good job Canonical.

Try it on a current processor...

[Anonymous Coward]

E8400 Core 2 Duo is more than a couple of years old. Be interesting to try this on a Sandy Bridge generation Core i7 (and yes, with and SSD)
Should be less than 60% of that time.

Re:Try it on a current processor...

[DCFusor]

You ought to see *any* opsys on a huge 8 thread i9 with SSD. Bios takes far longer than the opsys, in my case ubuntu 10.4 64 bit (because I have 16 gigs ram on that box).

Re:Try it on a current processor...

[Nursie]

That depends if it's processor bound. I have a feeling the disk is pretty important, maybe more important.

With a bit of tweaking I managed to get debian squeeze to boot on my netbook in 20 seconds, on an atom processor. I think the SSD is probably the key there.

Sweet!

[Lanteran]

Now ubuntu can go from cold boot to crashing apps faster than windows! Ah, bug #1 will be solved any day now.

P.S. Mint has been better since 9.04

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

> P.S. Mint has been better since 9.04

Unless you want to do something mundane like installing your system on LVM partitions. Basic stuff like that is boring so the Mint team don't support it.

Re:Sweet!

[Lanteran]

Talking about as a desktop OS for newbies, mint is much friendlier, and stabler. And I could have sworn there was an option for it when I set up debian edition.

Sod how fast it is, fix some damn bugs!

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno about anyone else, but i've found the last 3 or 4 releases to be increasingly unstable. It's starting to hack me off. White boxes when playing flash, missing window decorations (intermittently), 1px Stay Tray icons... the list goes on. Most annoyingly, I can't even get the native nvidia drivers working. I know i'm not on my own

Re:Sod how fast it is, fix some damn bugs!

[Thing 1]

Or, "Buy ATI!"

Wayland

[Anonymous Coward]

When are we going to see it used by default on Ubuntu instead of X?

Re:Wayland

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess, probably in 12.10, after the next LTS release. No need to come out with yet unproven tech with a LTS coming after Oneiric is released.

LightDM

[Alain Williams]

I am glad to see the use of LightDM -- hopefully this reduction of bloat on the desktop will continue. It is not just a matter of boot times but also CPU & RAM usage. This might not seem important of a new top of the range machine, but is great when running on a netbook or a PC that is affordable in the 3rd world.

One of the nice things about Linux was that it was lean & mean, then the desktop guys trashed that reputation.

Re:LightDM

[dudpixel]

yes, until LightDM reaches feature parity with GDM at which point it will be labelled "bloated" and there will be a new EvenLighterDM project start up and so it goes on.

Re:LightDM

[schwaang]

One of the nice things about Linux was that it was lean & mean, then the desktop guys trashed that reputation.

  I too would like to see more emphasis on performance for Linux desktop components. When Ubuntu started they made it a stated aim to run well on whatever hardware Dell was selling for $500. So neither third-world nor top-of-the-line. Today versus even 5 years ago a $500 Dell is a lot faster, with more RAM, and better graphics hardware. Why hamstring the OS experience of Ubuntu or Fedora to not take advantage of all this? There are other distros that focus on running well on special-needs hardware, without the "bloat" of GNOME etc.

I have only love for GNOME, but it is interesting to consider whether the resistance to LightDM from within GNOME is a reasonable caution of dominance by Ubuntu or an inertial stop on needed improvements to the Linux desktop experience.

Boot times mean nothing

[PenquinCoder]

They are a retarded thing to try and 'show-off'. Who cares that it takes you 12 seconds to start doing something, when the system you load into can't even get past screwing things up release after release. Ubuntu needs to fix it's many recurring, regressions, and add some functionality to other wise lacking programs/code.

Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[saccade.com]

I'm always skeptical of these "Boots in N seconds!" claims. Because often it takes another few -minutes- to log in, launch an application, and start doing something useful. We need a new metric. Say, the time it takes from power on to fully loading an uncached copy of example.com in a browser.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[danomac]

I agree. My BIOS on my htpc takes 15-20 seconds to post, then 12 seconds to boot into mythtv THEN xbmc for a frontend, and is ready to actually use - you can use the remote and select a recording to watch. Installed on a SSD.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

But then the major distros will just cache this page instead: http://www.iana.org/domains/example/

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[IB4Student]

My 2009 intel Atom netbook with a 5400 RPM hard drive goes from GRUB to being usable in about 10 seconds. Arch Linux.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[dudpixel]

I dunno, KDE tends to login in about 5-10 seconds and you're usually ready to go straight away.

Your claim of a few minutes is overstated.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always skeptical of these "Boots in N seconds!" claims. Because often it takes another few -minutes- to log in, launch an application, and start doing something useful.

We need a new metric. Say, the time it takes from power on to fully loading an uncached copy of example.com in a browser.

How about loading about:config? It's better as it removed network speed form the equation, not everyone has a fat pipe ;)

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always skeptical of these "Boots in N seconds!" claims. Because often it takes another few -minutes- to log in, launch an application, and start doing something useful.

We need a new metric. Say, the time it takes from power on to fully loading an uncached copy of example.com in a browser.

Then that includes your connection speed - How many threads you have connecting etc

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, having to wait after you have logged in is a Windows feature.

My desktop is instantly usable when I've logged in into Linux.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I was as well. Now in Ubuntu 10.04 I can load my gmail within about 30 seconds, I think that's pretty good! I use auto-login, but to access the WiFi needs a password, so once the desktop is booted the keychain prompts me. Still, it's only about 30 seconds.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. To me, it's not a matter of how long before I can see the "desktop" of the OS - it's how long before I can USE it.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[romco]

That would be

Boot + Load Browser + Connect to Internet + Fetch Page

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, on Linux, the system generally IS usable & ready when the desktop appears (on Windows it begins to start all the services and Autoruns after the desktop appears). Add to that an automated login, and you can be looking at example.com in 20 seconds with an SSD.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[webheaded]

This. A thousand times this. Windows 7 "boots" really quick but it seriously takes several minutes before I can actually get Firefox opened. Yeah, it boots quick "to the desktop" but to a useable state? Pretty much the same as ever. Instead of staring at a loading screen or a Welcome screen, you are instead staring at your desktop wallpaper for longer.

Re:Boot time vs. actually doing something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

This is frequently corrected as Ubuntu doesn't just show you a non-responsive photo of your desktop, but actually gets you in a ready-to-run environment by the time the stopwatch ends (or in this case, to the log-in screen). From there, it depends on your preferred browser's load time. Many go further and put browsers in the list of startup applications so part of their load time will fit with the desktop loading.

Lubuntu

[twocows]

I'm looking forward to the first official-status release of Lubuntu as part of the Ubuntu family. I wonder what its boot time will be?

Who'll make such a fork?

[tepples]

What organization will have the manpower to fork and maintain Ksplice? Writing and thoroughly testing the patches needed for semantic changes to each distribution's kernel takes considerable human effort, as I understand it.

How to get rid of Ubuntu's weird "Unity" launchers

[Anonymous Coward]

Choose "Ubuntu Classic" from the login screen's bottom-center-right menu for the old program menus. This setting persists.

That's really great

[jonahbron]

That's really great. But I hope they remove Unity for 11.10, I've been using Windows until they fix it.

It's almost doing something useful

[dbIII]

A few minutes? That's the MS Windows (and possibly gnome or KDE) way where you can see the stuff you want to click on but can't touch it beacuse a pile of background tasks are still starting up. Apart from GUI elements (eg. gnome-panel) everything should be up by the time the login prompt is there and with most window managers it's only a second or two from login to usable desktop. It's not all that bad even with the panels but it's still a few seconds that probably could be trimmed off.
My eeepc with the linux xandros interface it came with a few years ago has a desktop ready to use in less than ten seconds from power on if you pick the option to skip the login screen. That is using an SSD though, but it's one that's much slower than the current SSD drives.

Counting disk check?

[grikdog]

Not impressed here. Not even convinced.

Coffee while booting

[johsve]

Who cares about 12 sec boot time, when the overall experience with the Unity desktop is totally crap.

What a time saving

[BestNicksRTaken]

I wonder how much development time has been wasted saving you 12 seconds per month?

Development time that could have been used fixing Gnome3, PulseAudio, Systemd......

Re:What a time saving

[Just Some Guy]

None whatsoever, because the people that hardcore into systems work probably wouldn't work on PulseAudio if you held them at gunpoint.

Re:What a time saving

[whtmarker]

Because ubuntu laptops in sleep mode still eat battery, most people will turn their laptop off to save battery. Ergo, ubuntu laptops get turned on and off 2-3x per day, and 8-10x for students, so boot time does matter.

Re:What a time saving

[vgerclover]

That is assuming that Open Source developers work on things because they are told to, and that because of that somebody working on the boot sub-system means less resources are allocated to those other sub-systems. Volunteers work on the projects they have an interest on, or they don't at all.

Re:What a time saving

[Just Some Guy]

They don't eat that much battery unless something's broken. It's certainly not the normal state of things. I think the only times I've ever turned off my netbook with Ubuntu is when upgrading the RAM and before removing the battery for travel.

Boot time vs resume from suspend

[wild_oscar]

The boot time of my Ubuntu 10.04 on my desktop is 2-3 seconds. True, it's not boot from scratch, it is resume from suspend. But I've wondered: wouldn't it be better to focus on making the OS suspend/resume compatible with the majority of computers instead? I asked myself this because boot time will only be so fast. And for the end user, if you suspend and the machine goes to a no-energy spent mode and he then turns it on and it takes 3 seconds to resume where he left off...it seems better than a 12 second boot.

hibernation problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they solve first the hibernation problem with the current Ubuntu ?

Kernel 3.0 yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

or not?

irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

My debian based laptops suspend/resume in less than two seconds. All apps that I need are instantly available and already open in the state I left them. The strain on the battery - when disconnected from power - is minimal (~1mA on this thinkpad). Reboots are for kernel updates. This boot-speed hype is just so 90s.

I did look into bootchart[d] and was able to the get boot-time down to twenty-something seconds IFF I don't start services that I regularly use (e.g. apache2, postgres, mysql, jabberd, yaws, icecast2, tor, etc) and those basically just depend on disk-speed. WTH. If it takes a minute to boot every other fortnight, what do I care.. I spend more times waiting at the coffee-machine or trying to tweak the system.

Does this include USB initialization?

[RogueWarrior65]

I've messed around with embedded ARM Linux boards from Technologic Systems. They claim sub-2.0 second boot times on most of their products. However, that's booting to Busybox. Okay, no big deal for an embedded system. But the big time hog is initializing the USB system. If you have devices plugged in on startup, I'm seeing boot times approaching 10 seconds.

Only Amiga makes it possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Amiga 500 with 2 MB of RAM and a processor running at 16 Mhz with a 16 bit architecture running Workbench 3.1...

A computer that sported a 4096 color pallet, 16 bit digital stereo, window based OS and the ability to truly multitask running dozens of applications simultaneously.

With 15 inch CRT: $700

Boot time: 4.5 seconds on a slow day.

The year: 1987

Dumping Ubuntu

[Compaqt]

I can't to speak to that specific poster, but, in general, the reason people are dumping Ubuntu for Mint or Debian is that Ubuntu is dropping the classic desktop choice in 11.04.

And that fact has been hashed out in almost every Slashdot discussion of Unity, including this one.