Cheating: Not just for Microsoft anymore [LWN.net]

Cheating: Not just for Microsoft anymore

Posted Sep 22, 2008 19:28 UTC (Mon) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861)
In reply to: Cheating: Not just for Microsoft anymore by rfunk
Parent article: LPC: Booting Linux in five seconds

It's true that Ubuntu does do this, but when the Ubuntu folks test boot times they enable auto-login and test the time to boot all the way to a stable, logged-in state.

I have no problem with putting up the login screen as early as possible, since why should I wait until a bunch of background stuff is ready before I can enter my username/password (obviously, if you can't log in yet due to home directories not being present or whatever, then if the system lets me log in to a "broken" state that's a bug)?

But, when testing boot times the number used should be the one Ubuntu folks are using: the time to get from power-on to a fully-settled, functional desktop... NOT to get to the login prompt.

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Cheating: Not just for Microsoft anymore

Posted Sep 27, 2008 15:22 UTC (Sat) by keybuk (subscriber, #18473) [Link]

Actually, it isn't true.

If you look at the Ubuntu boot sequence, while gdm isn't the last thing
that we start, it's not far off. Very few things are started after gdm,
and this is mostly because X takes quite a while to start so we have some
"free time" here.

We deliberately don't keep starting services throughout login, because as
you note, I do all my timings until full desktop login which is when the
computer is actually usable - not just to when the gdm screen is up.

Log-in screen

Posted Oct 7, 2008 22:41 UTC (Tue) by pgan (guest, #54573) [Link]

The log-in screen should be shown as early as possible (before even X) and should not block the boot process. Thus the computer would be usable earlier, because the boot process would continue while the user is typing her password. This is especially important for users who are slow to authenticate -- some users take about 4 seconds. With a normal boot, they would wait n seconds to see the log-in screen, spend m extra seconds logging in, then wait d seconds till they can use the desktop. If they can authenticate after x second while the computer is booting, they only wait max(n - x, m) + d seconds to use the computer.

With a long boot, this also allows users to authenticate themselves whenever is convenient for them, rather than waiting to do it at the right time for the machine.

And, knowing which user is logging in will allow further parallelization of loading the user's desktop components and services. That will reduce the time "d" required to start up the desktop.