A Look At The Speedy Clear Linux Boot Time Versus Ubuntu 19.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Look At The Speedy Clear Linux Boot Time Versus Ubuntu 19.10

Given the interest last week in how Clear Linux dropped their kernel boot time from 3 seconds to 300 ms, here are some fresh boot time benchmarks of Clear Linux compared to Ubuntu 19.10 on both Intel and AMD hardware...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Clear-Linux-Ubuntu-Eoan-Boot

[StandaSK]

Great improvements! But if the boot time can be improved so much, why don't other distros do the same or at least some of these boot time optimizations? Are they considered unsafe, can they break on legacy hardware or what exactly is the problem with enabling them?

[Britoid]

Great improvements! But if the boot time can be improved so much, why don't other distros do the same or at least some of these boot time optimizations? Are they considered unsafe, can they break on legacy hardware or what exactly is the problem with enabling them?

If I was to have a guess, normal distros have a lot more options available during boot time. e.g. LUKS, mounting over a network etc.

That's not to say it can't be improved though.

[caligula]

If I was to have a guess, normal distros have a lot more options available during boot time. e.g. LUKS, mounting over a network etc.

That's not to say it can't be improved though.

Some time ago Ubuntu also started up network and modem drivers. Not everyone needs PPP and 56k modem drivers these days. Anyway seems funny that suddenly everyone cares about boot time. Like I said few days ago, I don't think the Linux boot time is that big of a problem, the firmware UEFI initialization takes a lot longer on many systems.

[Xicronic]

Some time ago Ubuntu also started up network and modem drivers. Not everyone needs PPP and 56k modem drivers these days. Anyway seems funny that suddenly everyone cares about boot time. Like I said few days ago, I don't think the Linux boot time is that big of a problem, the firmware UEFI initialization takes a lot longer on many systems.

This. At least on my system, boot takes about about 14s, about 7s from UEFI and 7s systemd. While dropping my boot time to 8s would be great, it wouldn't be making my boot instantaneous.

[Britoid]

I'm also under the impression something like gdm will start up and display the login manager before systemd has finished starting all services, so I wonder if different setup of systemd units might make a difference to the reported time, but not the actual time.

[nvaert1986]

Depending on your needs you can actually improve boot time a lot. I'm running a manually compiled kernel with only the stuff I need and minimal systemd on Gentoo and my boot time is a lot faster then the average distro (my kernel is around 8MB if I remember correctly). A bit slower then the Clear Linux results here, but comparable.

Stuff that slows your boot times: initramfs images, plymouth, luks, boot over network, huge kernel, wait DHCP in the foreground instead of backgrounding it, and lots of other services one doesn't always need. Using an NVME SSD and using F2FS with that and tweaking the mount options of course helps too, though only minorly (the SSD a lot of course).

[skeevy420]

Some time ago Ubuntu also started up network and modem drivers. Not everyone needs PPP and 56k modem drivers these days. Anyway seems funny that suddenly everyone cares about boot time. Like I said few days ago, I don't think the Linux boot time is that big of a problem, the firmware UEFI initialization takes a lot longer on many systems.

Like my system. Boot time is irrelevant when it takes 10 seconds to go through firmware initialization and security checks, finally the GPU activates and I have the "Hit F12 yada, yada" screen, from there another 20 seconds until the bootloader fires up, 5 seconds with GRUB, 1 second of GRUB decompressing the kernel and initramfs, 3 seconds worth of crap done in the initramfs, and now I'm finally to the point to where the actual system will initialize. That's my boot process on Manjaro with the default settings using GRUB since my system doesn't support systemd-boot. Around 35 seconds from power on to exiting the bootloader so the system can initialize.

My reboot procedure normally involves either a bathroom break or getting a fresh cup of water or juice.

[Anty]

Most distros are preloaded with bunch of useless staff for normal desktop. Once I started with ubuntu minimal 18.04 and install only things i needed (and still removed few services) boot times shortened by large margin. Then install pure desktop package without a ton of $hitty plugins and childish effects, akonadi, avahi, indexers etc..

[szymon_g]

hurray! the hibernation/sleep doesn't work fine on half of the laptops under the linux, but at least the kernel now boots in 0.3 sec! whoop whoop!