Linux Distributions Reducing Boot Time

Those who want or need faster boot times should be happy with some of the upcoming Linux distributions. For purposes of this discussion, I consider "boot" time to be the elapsed time from when I press return in the GRUB boot menu, until a login window appears and is usable. The time is measured with a wall clock; precision is not my goal here, the general user feeling is.

On my laptop computers, most of the current distributions take about one minute, plus or minus 5 seconds, to boot; a couple of them take somewhat longer than that. However, the current test releases of Ubuntu (9.04 Alpha 6) and Mandriva (2009.1 RC1) both boot in about 30 seconds! That's a dramatic improvement.

So, at the end of April when these distributions are released, there are likely to be quite a few very happy people around.

jw 23/3/2009