Canonical Once Again Aiming To Improve Ubuntu's Boot Speed

[caligula]

How could you speed up firmware? The only thing I've tried is "fast boot" and it does help, but not as much..., for loader i get it, not sure of hidden timeout from GRUB is counted or not.

Normal boot (GRUB timeout 1 sec):

Startup finished in 10.053s (firmware) + 1.547s (loader) + 1.684s (kernel) + 1.810s (userspace) = 15.096s
graphical.target reached after 1.756s in userspace

Fast boot enabled (GRUB timeout 1 sec):

Startup finished in 9.169s (firmware) + 1.312s (loader) + 1.580s (kernel) + 1.884s (userspace) = 13.946s
graphical.target reached after 1.831s in userspace

As you can see, benefit of "fast boot" is not enough to justify using it in my case, especially if component such as USB or PS/2 init is disabled, you can't even enter the UEFI. I was lucky that by using efibootmgr and changing boot order UEFI would detect change and disable "fast boot" temporary so I could enter UEFI and disable the damn thing lol. So for anyone willing to try "fast boot" or equivalent, that trick might not work for you, be sure you saved profile because you might end up reseting UEFI with jampers at worst case.

Yes my UEFI fastboot boots faster, but it disables keyboard input in systemd-boot menu, which isn't useful. There's also a 1 second delay in the boot menu. I've tried booting directly and it's really fast. Especially with Alpine Linux and openbox or some other light DM. Possibly around 5 seconds total.

[pracedru]

I'm on 17.04 and I don't boot very often.

$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 5.671s (kernel) + 5.067s (userspace) = 10.739s

That is good enough i think.

[Aisyk]

With or without a SSD ?
Past 9 years, with a HDD in SATA and today with a SSD ?

[TumultuousUnicorn]

windows boots pretty fast these days (on shiny new machines).

Since Windows 8, there is a feature called "Fast startup" (don't confuse with "Fast boot"), enabled by default. It is like hibernating the kernel at shutdown, but this feature has counterpart.

Linux doesn't need such feature. Just run

systemd-analyze plot > plot.svg

and look at the picture to find bottlenecks.

[nanonyme]

Since Windows 8, there is a feature called "Fast startup" (don't confuse with "Fast boot"), enabled by default. It is like hibernating the kernel at shutdown, but this feature has counterpart.

Linux doesn't need such feature. Just run

systemd-analyze plot > plot.svg

and look at the picture to find bottlenecks.

Not just kernel, also significant parts of userland. It basically just logs everyone out and persists state on rest. Seems to be faster than normal hibernation

[varikonniemi]

I want to build a new machine, but those gpu prices and ram prices have screwed that idea..... f*** cryptominers ruining hardware prices!

No, f you for being so ignorant you point the finger at entrepreneurs instead of megacorporations like nvidia and amd for not ramping up production to meet demand.

[bregma]

May main machine is an i7 with an SSD running Ubuntu 16.04. I only reboot after a system hang, which happens regularly if I play games (Intel graphics drivers leave much to be desired). That's because

$ systemd-analyze time
Startup finished in 6.438s (kernel) + 3min 528ms (userspace) = 3min 6.966s

Ouch.

[leipero]

caligula Then it seems your firmware is just faster, there's really nothing we (with slower firmware) can do about it.

nanonyme True, that's why when you reboot Windows 10 you see the real bootup speed, and it's terrible..., basically you can boot Windows 7 two times while Windows 10 boots up, or XP 6+ times. I'm talking about HDD ofc., while Ubuntu (16.04) generally boots in between Windows 7 and Windows 10, a bit slower than Win 7, but faster compared to Win 10.

[DIRT]

From reading comments I guess firmware plays a big role on boot times. On my work laptop i3 form 2013 I get this on xubuntu.

Startup finished in 2.502s (kernel) + 8.842s (userspace) = 11.345s

I don't have access to my home pc with older hardware but it does boot in under 10 seconds. Would that be because of firmware?

[caligula]

From reading comments I guess firmware plays a big role on boot times. On my work laptop i3 form 2013 I get this on xubuntu.


I don't have access to my home pc with older hardware but it does boot in under 10 seconds. Would that be because of firmware?

Your line doesn't display firmware time. It probably uses legacy BIOS boot. That means the actual time is longer.