Eee PC modded by Intel engineers to boot in five seconds

Sure, we've seen projects like SplashTop boot a stripped Linux build quickly, but Intel engineers at the recent Linux Plumbers Conference took things a little farther last Thursday, starting up modified versions of Fedora and Intel's own Moblin Linux on an SSD-equipped Eee PC in just five seconds. That's all the way to an idle CPU and disk, not cheating and starting a window manager while background services thrash in the background, mind you -- and it's fast enough that the splash screen was removed from both distros. The changes are being sent back to the Moblin and Fedora trunks, but if you're curious, a detailed overview of the changes awaits at the read link.

[Via SlashGear]

[collegekid13 @ Oct 7th 2008 3:48AM]

it will take you longer to unzip the pants and remove them then to boot this up for pr0n. damn!

[tha-don @ Oct 7th 2008 3:46PM]

you take your pants off to watch pr0n?

[Laur @ Oct 7th 2008 3:54AM]

Typo: "a little father last Thursday" should be "a little further last Thursday"

[Matt @ Oct 7th 2008 3:58AM]

or "a little farther last Thursday"

[Bufsabre @ Oct 7th 2008 5:26AM]

no further cause its past tense

[Jesus @ Oct 8th 2008 2:20AM]

"a tiny dad last Thursday"

[Chris Aubeck @ Oct 7th 2008 6:15AM]

No, it should be "further" because this is using distance figuratively.

[霽月瀛台 @ Oct 7th 2008 3:58AM]

Should Microsoft study about it?

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Oct 7th 2008 4:43AM]

...riiight.

[Macca @ Oct 7th 2008 5:29AM]

Its got nothing to do with Microsoft, they're booting Linux.

[LondonConsultant @ Oct 7th 2008 6:21AM]

These Intel engineers should give a series of motivational speeches to Microsoft's Vista programmers.

[Macca @ Oct 7th 2008 7:48AM]

Again, it's got nothing to do with MS, their kernel is designed for compatibility over speed and size, whereas Linux and Unix are.

Also its Windows Vista not Microsoft Vista. Its like saying I brought a MacPhone or iPod Pro.

[BipolarChucker @ Oct 7th 2008 9:26AM]

Microsoft has Vista programmers, therefore they are Microsoft's Vista programmers. Nobody said anything about "Microsoft Vista" so stop correcting people unnecessarily.

Secondly it's "bought" not "brought".

Brought is the past tense of bring
Bought is the past tense of buy

[UoMDeacon @ Oct 7th 2008 10:30AM]

My Vista system boots from cold to idle on desktop within 30s. I'm unaware of Linux boot times, but with all the people complaining about the slow Vista boots, I assume that the normal Linux distro boots much more quickly?

[cb88 @ Oct 23rd 2008 4:01PM]

linux may or maynot boot faster... depends on the distro (ubuntu is among the slowest IMO..debian fairing a little better)

@Macca since when does MS run on anything not x86 based? yeah there was an alpha port a long time ago but big deal... Linux is far more compatible in fact its developers strive to write drivers for hardware they don't even have docs on (and they do pretty good too ) when did you ever hear of that on windows?

[Ian @ Oct 7th 2008 4:40AM]

@Matt: It's "further". "Farther" isn't quite right.


Um....anyway, why Fedora? I figured Ubuntu was the Linux flavour of choice?

[Duv @ Oct 7th 2008 11:25PM]

Well, yes Ubuntu is the most popular at the moment. But two things... it's not the only big distro out there... and Intel's Moblin Linux platform moved there upstream to Fedora awhile back. They seem to be jumping back and forth between the two.

[Macca @ Oct 7th 2008 8:08AM]

I wouldn't call Ubuntu the most agile of operating systems anyway. Its best for them to choose a lean OS if they were aiming for a 5 second boot time isn't it? Ubuntu is somewhat locked up too, which makes it harder to customise to make it so fast.

[jorvay @ Oct 7th 2008 9:53AM]

Ubuntu is popular because the primary focus of its development is on stability and support. Fedora is developed with the goal of providing a mainstream operating system using the most bleeding edge developments in the linux world. In other words, Ubuntu is more reliable and dependable and nothing gets into the distro until it has been proven, while Fedora is more advanced, but you see more beta bits and flakey stuff. This is mainly because the Fedora team is interested in driving the progression of linux-based OS', and because Fedora is used as a bit of a testing ground for the commercial RedHat Enterprise OS.
So if you want to try something new, like...i dunno...boot an EEE if five seconds, you need the most recent and advanced tools possible.
I'm in no way suggesting one is better than the other, only that they are designed for different types of use.

[Chris @ Oct 7th 2008 5:05AM]

@ Ian

> @Matt: It's "further". "Farther" isn't quite right,

Where are you from, Ian? The rest of the English-speaking world thinks that "further" and "farther" are interchangeable, except in certain contexts like: "Further news follows later". This isn't one of those contexts.

--
Chris

[fh @ Oct 7th 2008 5:41AM]

"Farther" is for quantifiable distances; "further" is for figurative amounts. It's true they are often interchangable, but exactly "how far Intel took things" cannot be quantified, so "further" is the more appropriate choice in this instance.

Most of the English-speaking world probably doesn't care. But then most of the English-speaking world is also filled with grammatical mistakes.

[Banners @ Oct 7th 2008 5:14AM]

"Luke, I am your Further" really wouldn't work.

[Tristan @ Oct 7th 2008 5:16AM]

Does anyone have a link to the modified distribution they used for this? Would love my Eeep to boot in 5!

[Harkonian @ Oct 7th 2008 10:53AM]

You aren't getting modded down because people here are "FanBoi's", you are getting modded down because your comment was completely inaccurate, off-topic, and had the grammar, syntax and intellectual content of a six year old.

But if you are six, we apologize.

[Ixon @ Oct 7th 2008 5:17AM]

This is completely useless if you ask me. How about instead of wasting time on Linux we hax the hell out of Windows and make it benefit us more, hell maybe Microsoft might learn a thing or two. Then maybe more then the three people on Linux can have faster boot-times, like 600,000+ Windows users.

Besides if you're going to work on linux, work on getting it ready for it's prime time.. Not useless speed boosts. It's still not quiet idiot proof, which is why I think Linux developers need to take pointers from one of the biggest idiot operating systems around, of course I'm speaking of Mac OS X..

LOL.. Flame me FanBoi's I'm waiting for it.

[eggothewaffle @ Oct 7th 2008 5:37AM]

Err...Microsoft *is* working on this :]

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/08/29/boot-performance.aspx

[Patriks7 @ Oct 7th 2008 5:37AM]

Oh I won't low rank you because I partly agree with you, but Mac OS X is in no way an idiot operating system.

[Desides @ Oct 7th 2008 5:46AM]

Don't see anything wrong with what you're saying. Linux does have a fairly limited user share. Microsoft definitely should take notes on the general concepts Intel used: eliminate redundant services and boot only what is absolutely necessary. Microsoft could also benefit by actually slimming down some of those background services. Ironically, Windows' bloat comes to the fore only when you look at the background.

Patriks7, he didn't say OS X is an idiot OS, he said it's an idiot-proof OS. It's not quite idiot-proof, but a damn sight better than its competition.

[ethana2 @ Oct 7th 2008 6:46AM]

Ixon, I generally try to leave more intelligent comments than this but... screw you.

Besides- Intel /can't/ improve windows. .....which is why they're throwing their weight behind linux. Even if you do hate us, you should be grateful for the competition.

[Chanzo @ Oct 7th 2008 8:06AM]

Blatant, BLATANT troll. Read his comment again, it's perfectly crafted to offend the largest number of readers. Don't feed.

[Boards of Canada @ Oct 7th 2008 5:39AM]

Am I the only one with a fast booting xp??? its booting in 20sec on a Duo2core 3ghz... Just put out the useless stuff from your startup items...

[Matt @ Oct 7th 2008 6:18AM]

@ Boards: yeah, but you are not booting in 5 seconds. Na na na boo boo.

[Wolfticket @ Oct 7th 2008 10:04AM]

I was shocked how fast my heavily n-lited XP install boots on my EEE

[Ixon @ Oct 7th 2008 5:52AM]

@ Patriks7

I know it's not, I'm just joking around to bug people!

@ eggothewaffle

Wasn't aware, but I was referring more to hacking currently released version of windows instead of dishing out an extra $200-300 for an OS that is suppose to do so many things and no doubt will FAIL. lol

[Henrik @ Oct 7th 2008 10:07AM]

So your just an Microsoft fanboy with the only goal in life is to bug people who use something different than you?
Piss off and get a life!

[CosterMonger @ Oct 7th 2008 12:08PM]

shhh Henrik, don't feed the trolls

[Chris @ Oct 7th 2008 6:24AM]

@fh

> "Farther" is for quantifiable distances; "further" is for figurative amounts.

A myth. Taught in some US schools where, "He is taller than I" is also taught. There's some interesting socio-psychology behind these attempts to invent language tramlines, but this isn't the place to explore that fascinating avenue. :-)

--
Chris

[Kelmon @ Oct 7th 2008 6:46AM]

Assuming that shutdown can also be achieved in a similar period of time then I could well be tempted to go this route rather than using sleep functions, as I am today. One of the things I love about my laptop is that it will wake from sleep in about a second and is usable almost immediately (a bit longer to establish network connections, mind). The downside, however, is that it consumes battery power while asleep. If I can have the same sort of boot times as waking from sleep without the computer using battery power while off then that'd be great.

[dzhiurgis @ Oct 7th 2008 6:51AM]

I keep my Mac sleeping over the day, so it takes me 1 second to boot (enter password). Maybe it draws like 5% of battery over the day, but.. Who Cares?

[nikster @ Oct 7th 2008 8:44AM]

I do have to reboot once a week though, for some software update or other.

I'd rather have engineers working on that, actually, than on the "fast booting" thing. I recently had to reboot because an update that promised support for new RAW image formats. An outrage. And I am only half kidding.

[Ogo @ Oct 7th 2008 7:25AM]

I hate nothing more than having to wait a long time to boot my computer just to check something like a phone number, date and then shut it down again.

[Ixon @ Oct 7th 2008 7:25AM]

@ ethana2

You were right! Your message isn't very intelligent!

Jack ass. =)

[CosterMonger @ Oct 7th 2008 12:10PM]

to bad Ixon doesn't know how the reply system works :(

[Paul J. Cohen @ Oct 7th 2008 8:08AM]

Please - let's not take this any farther - or is it further?

[Fred @ Oct 7th 2008 9:57AM]

dictionary.com says: "Although some usage guides insist that only farther should be used for physical distance (We walked farther than we planned), farther and further have been used interchangeably throughout much of their histories. However, only further is used in the adverbial sense “moreover” (Further, you hurt my feelings) and in the adjectival senses “more extended” (no further comment) and “additional” (Further bulletins came in)."

[Jash Sayani @ Oct 7th 2008 8:30AM]

Ballmer promised that Win7 would boot in 15-20 seconds!!! Lets wait & watch!

[jorvay @ Oct 7th 2008 9:59AM]

Sleep is great for laptops, but desktops are power hogs, even in sleep mode. I like being able to power down my space heater of a PC (especially in the hot summer) when I'm not using it. One of the reasons I've stuck with Fedora as my OS of choice (as opposed to Ubuntu or Mint linux distros...I don't have the patience for MS or Mac "user-friendliness"), is because they strive to make their OS more efficient in every way.
On a related note, both laptops that I've owned have had significant battery life increases when booting to Fedora compared to either XP or Vista.

[*brotha @ Oct 7th 2008 10:23AM]

its cool.. but for a desktop i dont think i really care that much. My vista boots up in about 20-25 seconds; thats plenty fast enough on my cheaply built 2.5 year old machine.

i usually keep it on all 24/7 too, so there isnt even a need to boot up.

hope Windows 7 is even better then Vista.

i know many people talk shit about it, but if you have a decent computer it really..."performs well" Its very stable and i have only had 2 crashes in now 11 moths of use. Both caused by my complete abuse of system resources. This is better then xp, and it overall just has a much more solid feel. Especially after all the recent updates.

do not expect to be having as much fun on a laptop or a (non dual core machine)

With Windows 7's small disk space maybe we can hope that it too, can reach similar boot times.

[faustino @ Oct 7th 2008 2:54PM]

Your windows boots to a complete system in 20-25 seconds without any background activity( disk accesses after that time) wow it's the first time that i see a machine that fast. Even in a new windows install i don't see that because lots of stuff gets loaded after the desktop seems ready. That's a problem with lots of people they start clicking thinking that their machine is ready and have to wait a lot of time.

[pJo @ Oct 7th 2008 10:33AM]

5 seconds to a full desktop is impressive. They also claim they're loading enough modules to cover 95% of all laptops, which would be even more impressive - I assumed they stripped out huge amounts of hardware compatibility when they optimized the kernel. Apparently, they were mostly removing seldom-used parts (sendmail server, etc) and seemingly overzealous self-testing routines.

The linux Aspire One boots in almost 15 seconds (don't get me wrong - that is pretty cool) but that ain't 5 seconds, and I'd be surprised if that flavor of Linpus Lite works on 95% of all laptops.

This thread makes me want to move my old Vaio running Xubuntu over to Fedora...