Written by Arioch the 28 Feb 08 at 15:26.
Category: System.
Related project:
Nothing/Others.
Status: Implemented
Rationale
I guess everybody has experienced the rather long boot up times in Ubuntu (particularly with laptops). I know they are already working on it, but the change from feisty to gutsy was a pain in the ass in terms of boot up speed.
A default WinXP installation beats Ubuntu's boot up time by far!! That shouldn't be allowed fellas!!
I've 2 distros installed on my laptop: Ubuntu Gutsy and Arch Linux! The feel with arch is that it's whippy. From the other side ubuntu is sluggish. Sure I know that my system is not so up to date (a 1.5 Ghz centrino 512 M Ram) but Arch work very well on it with the same services loaded as in ubuntu.
So I think Ubuntu can do something to improve boot time and performance in general
Gutsy boots in about 20sec for me. With concurrent init.d scripts enabled in /etc/init.d/rc and a mtron ssd HardDrive.
That's soo much faster than when I dualboot Win XP on that same machine.
It's for sure, the quickes non-custom compiled distro*.
*(ie. arch, gentoo etc),
@jakethecake: Not everyone can afford a SSD hard drive, which by the way totally skews the "boot time perception" off. SSD inherently induce faster boot times, so your 20 seconds don't really mean much here.
I've noticed a slow boot time for Ubuntu on my laptop, that's brand new btw and has a dual core CPU, 2 gb RAM, 256Mb graphics, etc. I don't see a delay when booting on my desktop computer however, so maybe this is an issue regarding laptops?
How come we can't find a way to make Ubuntu read our minds and already have the computer turned on, booted up and everything before we even finish thinking about it?
Honestly, i boot up in under 30 seconds, Mounting a 120+GB partition of vista junk (and my music^^) and then signing in to GRUB is a bit slower, but i run Gutsy with Compiz-Fusion enabled, so it's understandable, but still only takes maybe another 15-30 seconds to load the desktop. What i noticed WAS bogging down my boot was the fact that my nforce ethernet card was being renamed every boot, due to the fact that it was assigned a random mac address, so i re-wrote a udev rule so it was assigned eth0 by PCI bus ID and deleted the excess rules for eth0-175 and noticed a substantial decrease in boot time. So, anyone having slow boot times might want to check out if they have any issues like i had before.
I agree that boot time needs to be a little faster. I think all the extra crap that came with gutsy in >system >preferences >sessions should be cut down. There were not as many things in >system >preferences >sessions in the feisty release.
If you wanna talk about boot times, it takes about 10 seconds from the time I login to the time I see my desktop on a dual-core 3.4Ghz machine with 4GB RAM. On the older laptop I have, it takes 20-30 seconds. It takes longer to LOGIN than to BOOT sometimes! For me, boot times are reasonable, it's the login times I'm concerned with.
What annoys me is GRUB's 3 seconds delay before the kernel is booted. Booting the kernel doesn't take that much time in my opinion. I agree with deejross that the time it takes to log in to GNOME could use some serious improvement. The work Federico Mena-Quintero is doing - http://www.gnome.org/~federico/index.html#improving-login-time - on reducing that should get some more backing, because it seems he is the only GNOME developer occupied with it.
A detail review of services is needed so the user can make a choice on which service they need and don't. Or a desktop and laptop and server configuration.
I'd like to see a gui with simple check boxes that will allow an Administrator to turn on or off services that start at boot time. If you don't use bluetooth why load the service and so on.
I agree, the boot times are not that bad, not worth messing with until other issues are solved. Very low priority.
If you really thing your boot time is long, you can speed it up quite a bit by just disabling all the startup services you don't need.
Now, a nice GUI to configure init.d scripts, that'd be nice. The services-admin tool is only moderately usefully to me, and entirely useless to an average user.
Agreed--boot times are comparable, especially if you consider how much longer it takes to log in to XP. I don't consider the machine "booted" until the disk stops crunching and I can actually open my web browser.
ditch gnome. a miss simple miss click can leave you with disaterous setting changes, and it complicates doing basic tasks like choosing which folder to save a file.
I have ubuntu and arch installed on my laptop. I do prefer to boot into arch when I turn on my laptop, because when after pressing enter, I will see arch very soon, but ubuntu cannot do that...hope ubuntu can do as fast as arch does.
I used to think Ubuntu was slow, no it was my windows dual-boot (Dosfsck still very slow!). So I turned that off.
Though, one thing that can help is properly configured splash screens. I see a lot of dark nothingness when booting because screen resolution is misconfigured somehow.
amaranth(Ubuntu developer)
wrote on the 29 Feb 08 at 10:02
Probably close to half your login time is caused by Compiz.
facundocorradini - It's wierd to say Ubuntu is not windows as an argument against compairing - shouldn't Ubuntu or any other operating system try to beat their competitor? These days much of the software people look doesn't work in linux natively so it's important that at least at the performance side of things Ubuntu would stay on top.
boot time sometimes bores me, but I would consider it fast enough if hibernation worked correctly with my laptop, and booting from scratch was not needed each time I power on my computer.
preload idea is cool. however I have never experienced a slow Ubuntu boot on any of my machines (laptop and desktop).
Perhaps the boot delay can be caused by a wait time for some device to initialize (ex. long time for the network adapter to obtain a DHCP IP address.)
Why is everyone rebooting so often? - because, as you say, SUSPEND and HIBERNATE don't work in newer Ubuntu releases!!!
Suspend to RAM typically uses very little more power than the off leakage, so it makes sense to use it. If these are fixed, it really takes pressure off boot times.
As another poster already mentioned, hibernation is broken (for me and my ATI, anyway). I'd love to not reboot constantly, and I'd love to put my home desktop to sleep when it's idle (Nvidia card, still doesn't work). Currently, these are not options.
Slow boot time was the only reason I switched back to XP from Kubuntu (both power-on and wake-up from hibernation were very slow). I have a 1.5GHz Centrino with 512MB RAM and XP boots up 3x faster.
I have P4@2.8 with 1G DDR-400 and Raptor. Windows XP is up in 11 seconds or so. Ubuntu does 25 or so. Most of that is because of the ancient init script system and because of the networking. What I'd do is to remove the bootsplash and start X when you would have normally be doing first userland update to the bootsplash. And hack the GDM to start instantly, it can for instance for networking get dbus signal when it is up. There is no technical reason for not getting the logon screen (as reactive) in the first second.
For boot up time on laptops with a lot of reboots, there at least should be an option to "skip fschk for this session". If you have multiple partitions, you can get fschk's taking forever really often.
It's not so much the boot time that ticks me off as it is that hibernate/sleep and resume don't work consistently. If they did I wouldn't reboot .. well .. ever! But if you can't fix the resume functionality then you gotta make it boot faster (and shutdown faster for that matter) because I'm sure everyone agrees that toting around a powered up laptop 24/7 is just asking for trouble.
I agree, for me the boot time it takes around 20 seconds, and my xp only 4 secs... I'm not actually comparing, but is something that i note.
The fact that there are different systems doesn't means that Linux could do better.
Anyway, that not a big deal, what it makes me uncomfortable is the login time, it takes too much, around 20 secs or more... maybe is because of Compiz or the AWN, OK, i understand that, but in the future the Ubuntu team could make Compiz work better in that aspect.
comparing is always a good thing, because this motivates everyone to improve their goods!
So pls compare, and compare with XP, or with MAc or other operating systems!
My opinion is, if there are resources, and possibility to speed up the boot time, than is should be improved!
Boot time is quite OK for me. It would always be better if faster. A modules loading optimization would be a way to improve: there are too many useless (for a hardware config) modules loaded at startup.
Boot time isn't a problem for, either with Ubuntu or Kubuntu or any other distro or even MS Windows.
Why this obsession with with boot times? Are you seriously saying you sit with a stop watch and time how long it takes your computer to boot?
Perhaps rather than blaming the OS you should look at how many apps you've installed that are causing this unimportant "problem".
Relax, press the power button then go look out the window at the real world for a minute, flick through a newspaper, magazine, book, talk to someone, make a drink etc.
I know it's not a support forum here but just wanted to point that out.
BTW I personally thing fast boot up time are sweet BUT I don't think it's a major problem now and some other issue are more important IMO (just think Suspend, faster application startup...)
it is slow, on my machine, the time cost by the progress bar stage and login in stage takes 8 times that windows needs to boot into desktop....
some body said no comparing because Ubuntu is not Windows,that is fool,we only stop comparing if Ubuntu is Windows.
Despite some comments, boot time (especially on laptops) *is* slow, amd a lot of it seems to be due to overlong timeouts. Like if the network isn't connected (which it never will be on a laptop at boot time), it *really isn't connected*, so don't waste time waiting for it; in fact don't even bother looking for it.
I figured that out around the time Gutsy came out with some people on the Ubuntu IRC. That should help most of you with slow-booting laptops on Ubuntu.
It is not an usplash configuration.
I've tryed every post in different forums and blogs to improve boot up speed, but not success. The main bottleneck is at GNOME start up after login in. I've tryed disabling everything on start up and disabling compiz....it doesn't work either.
Many people has reported same issues.
Upstart seems promissing, but there's not doubt that more work is needed to improve boot up times (both ubuntu and gnome). My flat mate has a macbook...OMG!! that's really fast!! My own laptop with a default WinXP installation is much faster than Ubuntu...
There should be a way to close ideas as "Perenial goal". There will always be people who think that this is not done. It is fast enough with 500mb of RAM.
The Ubuntu community has (and is) manifested its will. This is the sixth most voted post so far. Of course not all of us are 3l1t3, hats (black or white), or skillful programers...but we all share the same pasion (Ubuntu) and concerns. Thus, we all think that Ubuntu needs a faster boot-up process, or at least by default easier ways to configure it to be faster.
The main goals for Ubuntu are Human Beings....lets work for them and not for a few bunch of (unvaluable) geeks (among whom I consider myself) with very particular needs.
UBUNTU NEEDS A FASTER BOOT UP!!!!! It is a pain in the ass to wait 3-4 minutes to get a fully capable desktop.
The more components your machine has and the more services you have to install the longer it takes to load. If you want a faster bootup then only enable your most commonly used services and components and then start them up manually when you log on.
And you cannot compare Ubuntu with Windows:
My machine at work takes 2-3 minutes to get to use-ability after I log on.
When I had installed the same sort of facilities on by Ubuntu, it took just as long to start up, but before I had logged on. Hence I can switch on my Linux machine, go and get everything I need and switch on
Verdict: leave things to startup before log on, that's fine I don't need another Windows
Maybe you guys had better tune your systems a little before comparing boot times and make sure your hardware is working properly, because I had an issue mounting my Windows partition, but once that was fixed in my conf files, I was ready to go. Don't be scared of those Man files and plaaces on the Internet like Linux geek, they can really help you and all.
As has already been said, Ubuntu is not XP. Different (and additional) things need to get done at boot so you will likely see a longer boot time in Ubuntu. You can tweak, but as of now there's not much to do to get your computer to boot faster in Ubuntu (or any Linux system AFAIK) than in XP. Sorry, you'll have to deal with it as part of life with the beloved penguin until someone finds a few more seconds to get rid of in the boot process.
@Scunizi:
Have you taken a look at System > Preferences > Sessions lately? That's where I disable things like Bluetooth and other things I don't need started on my desktop.
@Velvet Elvis:
Some of us don't have the newest hardware or tons of RAM, plus some apps don't clean up behind themselves as well as they should. Just letting Exaile or Amarok run with a bedtime playlist, plus the usual screensaver, etc., can let me wake up to see 20% of my swap space being used, and closing down my media player doesn't free it all back up. So I end up rebooting at least once a day, more often depending on what I'm running. Although my boot time isn't bad other than the hit I take when AWN loads in.
Including the autologin on my 2.2GHz Celeron with a paltry 748 MB of RAM and an Nvidia MX200 video card can be a minute to a minute and a half, although I haven't timed it in Hardy yet. It's not that long, but if I'm trying to reboot to get something done it can feel like several times that duration.
I'm giving this idea +1 in hopes that someone will identify even a half dozen seconds they can save for those of us with older hardware.
I got Ubuntu Gutsy/Windows Vista dualboot on my laptop. Vista is _terrible_ e.g. i'm sure it's doing something very important for say 2 minutes but can't figure out what. My Gutsy boot times are good, but i'll try doing Sys > Pref > Sess and Compiz or even fazter boots.
Hibernate and suspend work on my machine, tho, but it loses wireless sometimes.
Speed up the boot-time? What? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making Ubuntu faster where ever possible. But how much faster could it get really? Have you used XP or Vista? I dual-boot Ubuntu/XP and Ubuntu boots about ten times faster than Windows on the same machine. To be honest, I would wait longer to boot into Ubuntu than I would to boot XP. Ubuntu's much more worth the wait!
My boot time takes forever I am on a Laptop with loads of memory decent processor
The importance for boot times is obvious production and believe it or not traveling.
When you travel to Canada or America customs always ask you to boot your laptop.You can imagine your there waiting for this blasted OS to load. After a 7 or more hour flight to wait an extra 3 minutes is just to much. The customs officials are not to patience either.
So you can see and understand this is very important to improve.
I really enjoy ubuntu there is loads of good things but I am hoping Hardy takes Ubuntu to the next level. Boot times hopefully will improve in the next release.
It's horrible the Hardy Heron boot time!
Beside of very long booting time i always get blue tooth failure message at booting.
I do not understand why is such unnecessary softwares is in the automatic install in Ubuntu.
The second thing i took a short look in the synaptic, i checked the videocard drivers, and i observed that there are installed the driver for all kind of video cards!
Why???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why is not made ubuntu in a such way that at the beginning of install would recognize all the hardwares and there would be installed drivers just for the hardware what you have on the PC.
The second thing it would be the best if i could chose what software i want to install and what not, for example i don't like rhytmbox, totem, etc etc and i don't want that these programs are installed automatically, so i would not mark to be installed, and instead of these (later when ubuntu would be installed from the net) i would install audacious and smplayer.
I managed to shave about 30sec off my boot time. It's still long 'cos I'm loading Compiz and its dual boot with Windows XP, but still...
The basic premise of the forum thread is that too many services are loaded on startup, a lot of which are not necessary. Maybe in Intrepid Ibex, some of these could be dropped.
I dont have an issue with boot or Login. However I tend to agree with you on the fact that quite a lot of crap drivers come with the original installation.
My soundcard never worked on the gutsy - but hardy rectified it. Now when I log on to Gutsy - the sound card also works!
If you want a quick operating system go develop for
KolobriOS
The whole thing is written in pure machine code and it boots in like two seconds and it has GUI etc. The only problems is that you'd probably have to be insane to develop for it because FASM isn't very easy.
I don't have Compiz or loads of photos but most of my boot time is taken up with the horrid "PCI resource: improper address rounding" issue. I hear Linus and Andrew have worked out a fix for it so now I'm patiently waiting for this kernel release in a future Ubuntu upgrade. When that is resolved it would probably only be 2-3 seconds before my desktop is fully loaded.
I've got a pentium 4 3.0ghz and i feel that the Ubuntu boot just fine for me.
I agree with the fact that Windows XP boot faster. But the overall speed performance of Ubuntu is just better in terms of launching applications.
SO the boot speed time is not a problem for me
I think it could be a little faster. I have Hardy Heron on 2 computers, one a laptop where it is terribly slow, and on a desktop (very high spec) and it is slower to boot than Vista was on it.
Before anyone says "don't compare" of course we should compare, it's the closest to competition we can get.
Yeah i remember by laptop booted faster (it is using winXP) then my Ubuntu (a desktop with 100gb bigger HDD and 100mb more RAM then the laptop). However the after I logged in the laptop used 3min longer time to it was ready!
The boot time to login screen takes longer time then on a winXp computer that is half as good as the one with Ubuntu, however the time from login-screen to fully loaded desktop takes about 20seconds for me...
boot time is awesome. i wonder why do you feel that it should increase more? now you can't get it to eye-blink, can you ?its not more than 20 secs for me
Guys just because boot times are good for you does not mean that they are not a problem for the others. We need to stop with this WorksForMeâ„¢ attitude.
I also agree that stability is more important than boot times, but it would be nice to have a nice zippy computer especially for laptops as they need to be turned on and off often.
Go, go, go !
Windows 7's major feature is to boot quickly (less than 10 secondes) and we have to kick it !
Linux and Ubuntu have to be use more and more.
RUMORED major feature pezzos. We have to watch what rumors we believe.
The linux community is funny in a way. They will often psych up potential features, or come up with theories of whats coming, and some stick. Like people were already calling vista too slow to use before it came out based on minimum specs. Batman people were voting on IMDB 10/10 before it was even shown, and people are still like "apple makes such wonderful hardware", until they buy it and inevitably have a problem. And then there were those saying Mozilla hated linux because an alpha version ran slow on Linux.
Every new OS people aim to make boot faster. We should be cautious of what we say though.
I do vote +1 though. As we have barely done much optimisation in the way of booting still.
a. Having upstart instead of old sysvinit the day we move to upstart
b. Make the move to rewriting all those scripts which anyhow need to be rewritten (John Dong tried putting some enthusiasm sometime back but didn't work out )
@pezzos: 10 seconds to the desktop, 20 minutes until all the memory resident crap loads into the taskbar.
I agree that windows generally gets to the desktop sooner, (unless you've tuned your boot, or just hibernate all the time), but once on the windows desktop you still have to wait whereas with linux when you're on the desktop you're ready to go.
It doesn't take THAT long to boot. Still, ubuntu is not a BLOATED as windows, and beats it at EVERYTHING, why should it get beaten by windows at boot time?+1.
The blueprint for jaunty that says (I paraphrase) "make boot times faster" is great, but I feel like boot time is a moving target, something that can -only- be solved forever if the user is able to tune/streamline it. If the user can't diagnose what is slowing down their boot time, they can -always- screw it up for themselves at some point in the future.
Anyway, this is one of the top ideas in the brainstorm, so lets start proposing actual alternate -solutions- to the boot problem so that we'll actually have brainstormed ideas, instead of just agreeing that we all would love to have stuff faster.
sayakb(Brainstorm admin)
wrote on the 26 Jan 09 at 13:52
I am rejecting the "In development" report to allow adding of new solutions that can be voted upon.
On marking "In development", voting should be closed.
I guess you mean "On marking it "Implemented", voting should be closed, though I'd argue that this idea is speed based, and thus barring a boot time of 0.0 seconds should always be open to new ideas for reducing the overall time and experience? Either that or releases after jaunty should open up the concept again for brainstorming without being considered duplicates.
We should always be coming up with ideas for making it faster.
I don't know how to verify we've got all the patches he include in gnome.
robbiew(Ubuntu developer)
wrote on the 24 Mar 09 at 18:35
We've done a good amount of work in the Jaunty release cycle to speed up boot time across the board, and plan to continue our work for Karmic. For details of the changes made in Jaunty, and what we plan for Karmic, please see:
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance
I'm in favour of fast boot times for only two reasons:
1) Nothing should take longer than it has to
2) Since suspend and hibernate are often broken for laptops (as they are for me) with no obvious or simple solution in sight, fast boot time seems the next best alternative. Hopefully it will be not much slower than resume from hibernate. Only downside is desktop state is not restored, but most people can probably live with that.