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."

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: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.

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: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...)