OpenSuSE 11 better boot speed

English Open Chat
1

I have been using OpenSuSE for the last few months and i love it. honestly. the only complaint i have, though, is their not-so-fast boot up speed. while Ubuntu 9.04 and fedora 10 are all working towards really quick boot times, is something like that happening in the Opensuse project. we all have heard of the Ubuntu promise for Jaunty; and Fedora 10 is planning on integrating Plymouth
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=plymouth;a=blob_plain;h=b22be35f3113d640f3277da37a7a767da579499d;f=README

in their next release.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup

[Phoronix] A Closer Look At Red Hat’s Plymouth](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=fedora_plymouth&num=1)

what is opensuse doing in this regard?

2

anyone know?

3

> honestly. the only complaint i have, though, is their not-so-fast boot
> up speed.

What is the difference between SUSE and whatever is faster (Vista?)?

Are we talking seconds?

I mean, my machine is three years old and only a single core AMD Athlon™ 64
Processor 3000+ running at 2.0 GHZ and it boots in about 57 seconds.

How long does yours take, and what do you want?

4

I don’t know what’s being done, but in another set of forums this
discussion came up and someone pointed out "if you don’t need to boot the
system often, optimizing the boot speed shouldn’t really be a high
priority…

Jim

5

i agree…IF you don’t need to boot the system often.
but that is not the point. the point is: if a good thing is out there being done by someone else in the same field, then a question should be asked as to why we are not doing it in ours. otherwise, it is a competitive world. it was never about giving people what they need…it was about making people believe that they WANT something. i mean, the whole compiz desktop effects is a prime example of it. nobody NEEDS it, but we like it, we want it.
same thing with boot speeds. if Mac can do it, Ubuntu is doing it, Fedora is doing it…and it is not a bad thing they are doing…then there should be some very good reasons for another distro (especially of the same stature as the other two) not to try it.

6

On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:16:01 +0000, viperskunk wrote:

> i agree…IF you don’t need to boot the system often. but that is not
> the point. the point is: if a good thing is out there being done by
> someone else in the same field, then a question should be asked as to
> why we are not doing it in ours. otherwise, it is a competitive world.

With limited resources, too. That said, openSUSE is a community project,
so anyone who is willing to put the time in can contribute. Myself, I’ve
actually just installed bootchart because I was curious about my own
systems. The funny thing is that I so rarely reboot my Linux boxes (in
fact, the only one that regularly gets it is one laptop because I have
some beta kernel drivers installed and they occasionally hang up), so I
haven’t had a chance to look and see what my boot speed looks like.

> it was never about giving people what they need…it was about making
> people believe that they WANT something. i mean, the whole compiz
> desktop effects is a prime example of it. nobody NEEDS it, but we like
> it, we want it.

“Need” is probably too strong a word, but I find that Compiz does
actually make me more productive. I mostly use the enhanced zoom
functionality to read small text when I have trouble focusing on it, and
while the cube rotation isn’t necessary, I find the multiple desktops are
extremely useful.

> same thing with boot speeds. if Mac can do it, Ubuntu is doing it,
> Fedora is doing it…and it is not a bad thing they are doing…then
> there should be some very good reasons for another distro (especially of
> the same stature as the other two) not to try it.

Well, sure - and that’s the beauty of a community project. If it’s
something you’re personally passionate about, give it a shot. :slight_smile:

Jim

7

totally agree on every single point with you there. it is indeed a community project. but quite honestly, i have not even the slightest bit of knowhow on such coding issues. i just downloaded this e-book with deals with the absolute beginner’s stuff on linux programming.
i am interested in learning though…

8

Fedora work depends of kernel mode setting. I don’t think KMS is already available in upstream projects, Fedora probably is patching. Nothing wrong with this… but Fedora is known for putting new/untested technologies the first… openSUSE can wait until KMS is integrated upstream.

And Ubuntu… well, we have the announcement with Shuttleworth saying “We want Ubuntu to boot as fast as possible”. Anything else? Because that doesn’t says too much…

9

does boot up speed really matter?

Shouldn’t what matters is the experince of using the system when it is booted up? I don’t know if it is slower than others, but the experince of using OpenSUSE is what matters. Or would people use a distro that boots faster and has a bad user experince?

10

true. what is definitely more important is the user experience once booted up. but we are talking about the top 3 linux distros in the world here, namely Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, and Fedora.
so the standards are pretty high as well.
the user experience cannot be called bad in any of these three distros. they are equally good (it just depends on one’s tastes really). so we find these cutthroat things to compare among these distros.
the goal still remains the same…striving for perfection…it always will.
to that end, little things matter.
so does boot up times.

11

I disagree, I know plently of people whose experince with ubuntu has been what has brought them to opensuse. So people do have bad experince with distro’s. it doesn’t matter where it is in the standings. Heck just go read the kde’s news and see all the explosive comments from ubuntu users there.

I just feel if you are going to be comparing boot times and complaining about one being slower than the others, then it is the person complaining that has the problem, not the distro, the experince using the computer is far more important than impatient people who can’t stand to wait a few seconds

But alas, I do think this world is getting impatient and people are getting bent out of shape about things that they really shouldn’t matter.

12

errrr…sorry to break it to you; but we were discussing Gnome here.

13

1)the number of ubuntu > opensuse converts is a lot less than opensuse > ubuntu converts.
2)yes people do have bad experiences with distros; but they are mostly hardware related issues, where the wireless doesn’t work, or something else doesn’t work. but when everything works for you, then the top linux distros are all good.

3)the world might be getting impatient. and that at a certain level implies the lack of time one can dedicate to an activity. especially an activity as mundane as a computer booting up in ages.

as an example (not the only one i can give):if i am a college student, and i am getting late for class, and i absolutely have to email an assignment in the next 3 minutes (trust me…this situation is very common), then i am more likely to use a distro with better boot speed.

rather than justifying not having something, one should try and achieve that something.

14

> to that end, little things matter.
> so does boot up times.

How little are we talking about? On your machine Ubuntu boots in how many
seconds? And, SUSE in how many?

How many services and unused kernel modules are you loading that you don’t need
to? Have you yet recompiled a kernel for YOUR machine. Etc?

15

viperskunk,

As far as I know, no, there is currently no major effort being placed on boot times in openSUSE. oS 10.3 received some work in that field but since it’s been quiet. I suspect they are going to take whatever works from the Intel/Kernel/Fedora/Ubuntu efforts that are being done right now.

I agree with you as a laptop user that boot speed is important. Certainly desktops & servers can use less boot-shutdown cycles but a laptop is different. Further, laptops have surpassed desktops in year to year sales (in the US at least) so it becomes more serious an issue to think about along with power management and suspend/hibernate.

Much of the rest in the thread is just dodging the issue, I would hope more people are moving from Ubuntu to openSUSE than the reverse because Ubuntu has more users to move. In addition, the desktop experience will not fall apart if work is put into boot times. If openSUSE truly is so far ahead with its desktop experience and polish - doesn’t that mean it should have more time available to improve other parts of the operating system?

So have a little patience, watch what others are doing, and if you want to stick with openSUSE - wait for it to merge the best efforts of others in future releases (11.2 or 11.3).

16

thank you. it makes sense now.

17

On Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:46:01 +0000, viperskunk wrote:

> totally agree on every single point with you there. it is indeed a
> community project. but quite honestly, i have not even the slightest bit
> of knowhow on such coding issues.

Everyone has to start somewhere. :slight_smile:

> i just downloaded this e-book with
> deals with the absolute beginner’s stuff on linux programming. i am
> interested in learning though…

And that’s probably a good place to start. Another thing that has worked
for me is to just dive in (along with a reference).

Of course, mucking about with the boot sequence can be a bit more
dangerous than just mucking about with code - if it were me, I’d probably
start with a virtual machine (I use VMware myself - and would here
because I could snap the system before I started playing with it and if
it ended up not booting, I could just revert to a known good state).

Jim

18

On Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:06:01 +0000, viperskunk wrote:

> errrr…sorry to break it to you; but we were discussing Gnome here.

I thought we were talking about boot speed. :wink:

But seriously, GNOME, KDE - doesn’t matter, the comments about speed of
user experience are generally going to be valid regardless.

Jim

19

On Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:36:01 +0000, rs3york wrote:

> Certainly
> desktops & servers can use less boot-shutdown cycles but a laptop is
> different.

It doesn’t need to be. Myself, I use hibernate rather than poweroff/
poweron. Good for the battery life, fast startup/shutdown
times…what’s not to like?

Jim

20

No we are talking boot speeds here. And my comment was in reply to the notion that people do not have a bad experience with ubuntu, federoa or opensuse, to which I showed you that you were wrong and people do have bad experiences.

And honestly, if a few seconds boot up makes the difference between you sending off an email, you really need to look at your time management. Honestly that you want to argue over a few seconds in boot up is rather bizarre.