In last few days, me and my friend Abhishek got interested in the question of how to make our computers boot faster.
Isnt it a bit strange that our computers keep on getting more and more powerful but still it takes ages to boot? I agree that software is also getting more complex as hardware is getting more powerful. But still should our computers take minutes (and not just few seconds) to boot?
We did some search on net and it seems many people are thinking about it. From Arjan van de Ven, who tweaked his Linux to boot in 5 seconds (!!!) to Frederic Crozat, who has worked to reduce the boot time of Mendriva distribution.
gOS Cloud also looks very interesting. They aim to develop a very fast booting Linux based OS that will have just a few applications (Web browser,Skype etc) running at first and then it will load the main OS (which can be Windows/Apple OSX/Linux) in the background, while you browse the web or use skype!
Abhishek is more interested in the gOS kind of approach and I wish he can get something good done soon, but I am thinking on a more personal note and have set two goals for myself:
1. Build a fast, stable and easy to use system for my home.
2. Build a fast, feature rich and nice to look system for my laptop.
My dad and sister use a old desktop with 256MB of RAM and Pentium 4 Processor plus there is no Internet access from that machine. But my sister needs a system that is as media capable as Windows XP and my dad needs a system which is easy to use (for a Windows only user) plus difficult to mess up.
I spend almost all of my laptop usage time on web browser or media player. Apart from occasional miscellaneous stuff like compilers, virtual machines and few big and heavy games. So, I would love to have a system that boots in few seconds, has full Internet and multimedia support and can be expanded if needed. And I can always have dual boot if I really need Windows Vista.
So, keeping these two uses in mind, I will try to optimise my systems for best performance and will keep a record of my progress here :)
Any comments/suggestions are welcome :)
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