which version of linux has the fastest boot time???

For example i would like a smal/simple distro (I really just need a web-browser) which can boot very fast like under 20 secs, does anyone know of a linux distro that does this? or anything related???



I currently have a quadboot laptop running Vista, XP, Ubuntu and Leopard using the EasyBCD to make the vista bootloader, each OS that I have takes roughly 40-50 secs to boot from cold start

thanks in advance

http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot

yeah I heard about that I think asus has done something with one of there boards which boots into linux in 5 secs, but how safe is it? would I be able to restore my bios from scratch or would it stay that way forever? I would be willing to try it out if I knew I could get my bios back

btw: how long does damnsmalllinux or puppylinux take to boot if installed on a harddrive ?

i've got 4 operating systems on my pc.. windows, fedora 8, centos and opensuse.. they all boot in 30-35 seconds

Whichever distribution you enable the fewest startup services on. Arch, Gentoo, and Slackware force you to enable each and every startup service, so they would probably be considered the fastest.

Exactly. I wanted to write the same.

If it's so important for you, you can do these things:

1. Tell the bootloader not to wait too long (probably saves most time).
2. (already said) disable all unwanted daemons/services.
3. Compile your own kernel, with only the things that you need.
4. Choose a fast filesystem.

If it's not going to be a networked box, you can also consider installing an old distro, like an old slackware.

I would guess using Damn Small Linux on a USB key would boot extremely quickly. It comes with Firefox and adobe reader.

You could also perform a Debian minimal installation:

http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst

and add just what you need, like a light Window Manager (Icewm, Fluxbox) and a web-browser.

It's simply not true that start time has to do with loads of services, you can have loads of services and a quick boot time, it's down to the order and how they start and where. Upstart tries to clean this up, slackware, Gentoo never started quicker then my current start time(about 20 seconds.

Yes if you turn udev off it will boot real fast but not much at all will work.

Any distro with in 50-100 megs will boot quickly.

It is definitely true. Slackware and Arch Linux use BSD-style init scripts. Gentoo uses its own. Whether it's event driven or not, if you have less stuff running it will take less time to start. There's no point in arguing with that. Gentoo is the fastest booting distro I've used. Arch Linux and Slackware are comparable.

Thus one of the slimmed down Slackware derivatives could be what Aggg45 is looking for.

He should try Slax, but the smaller version.

The services dont take long to start at all, what boot times do you get anyway, if your talking about a proper average user desktop then some services do need to start. An example is XP, it had loads of services running yet was able to boot fast.

Here's a hypothetical scenario for you then,

Slackware takes 5 seconds to load 10 services up each take half a second. Ubuntu loads 20 services up and takes the same time, how can than be?

Ubuntu is 'n00bified. Understand that it is made so that you can't be able to customize its guts like you would Gentoo, perse. Every serious distribution I have used has a text boot (you can see the kernel, whoopee!). Not some GUI thing that takes forever to load..

Nonsense, sorry but you dont know much about Linux if you think Ubuntu is noob you can't change anything, ever heard of editing grub, yes you can edit scripts and text files in Ubuntu like any other. Build your own kernel, yep I've done that in Ubuntu and it worked like any other, ever heard of verbose mode?

Actually, I build personal distributions almost all of the time I use Linux. I'm very far away from a n00b. I'm talking about Ubuntu's OTB setup. To get it to work as fast as Gentoo or Slackware you'd need to work your ass off. Solution 2: just install Slackwaree or Gentoo.

A default ubuntu install is actually booting really slow, because it loads everything to be user friendly. Sure, you can turn that all off, but that takes alot of time and also wastes disk space, if you don't need it anyways.

Wow, lots of misconceptions going off here, Slackware used to takes longer to boot on the last version because it used 2.4 kernel and old hotplug, thats got nothing to do with services.

SplashTop Linux

Isn't that what they call it now. I hope to see more of this in the near future.

I caters more to your internet appliance market .

Instant on internet flash /Memory based . Usefull for the kinda thing I doing now.

Any one have one of the ASUS boards that has this in the bios.

Wow, that is pretty impressive.

Unfortunately:



http://www.splashtop.com/get.php

I don't know how fast/slow the latest slackware is because I haven't used it since 1999. Let's not get in a distrofight here, I use FreeBSD anyways.

Fact is, more services = more load.

thanx everyone will take this info gonna try all these methods in a few weeks and post which one was the fastest one for me, please post anymore that you know of