Explaining Ubuntu's 10 Second Boot Time

We shared two weeks ago that Plymouth would not be making its way to Ubuntu with the next 9.10 release as was once planned. Instead Canonical is putting their focus on improving the boot time so that there is less rationale for spending time on making a fashionable boot experience. With Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Canonical is looking to achieve a ten second or less boot when using the Dell Mini 9 or similar devices. With Ubuntu 9.10, they hope to be on their way to accomplishing this goal.

Canonical's Scott James Remnant has now outlined more on their plans for the Ubuntu boot performance targets with Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 LTS. The main areas that developers will be working on is speeding up the X Server start-up process and improving initramfs.

More information on these efforts can be found on the Ubuntu mailing list (along with slides from the UDS talk on boot performance). Canonical is looking at approaching the boot times of what's possible right now through Moblin V2.