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Will it make it faster or slower?Will it make it faster or slower?Posted Sep 6, 2009 17:48 UTC (Sun) by MattPerry (guest, #46341)In reply to: Will it make it faster or slower? by endecotp Parent article: Debian switching to upstart
Is boot speed really important? With the ability to hibernate and suspend computers these days, what real value is gained in removing 15-30 seconds from booting? It seems like a "penny-wise, pound foolish" approach to optimization.
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Will it make it faster or slower? Posted Sep 6, 2009 17:59 UTC (Sun) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
Suspend still uses power, and has the potential for spurious wakeups. Many people don't feel comfortable suspending a system and tossing it in a laptop bag.
Given appropriate optimization, booting should take a lot less time than un-hibernating. In particular, the latter takes more time the more RAM you have in use.
In any case, many good reasons still exist to turn a laptop off rather than hibernating or suspending.
Will it make it faster or slower? Posted Sep 6, 2009 18:56 UTC (Sun) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link] Is boot speed really important?Yes. There is still mainstream hardware (PC clone 1 to 3 years old) that does not suspend and hibernate properly. Also, coming out of hibernation is slower than booting on many desktop and laptop systems, including several that I use regularly.
boot speed matters Posted Sep 6, 2009 19:44 UTC (Sun) by DonDiego (subscriber, #24141) [Link]
Absolutely. Do you intend to hibernate or suspend your appliances? I bet not. You want your
Bluray player, router, etc. to be available as quickly as possible.
boot speed matters Posted Sep 6, 2009 21:58 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well lots of modern complex appliances do do standby modes. Televisions, radios, media players, etc etc. The "shutoff button" is a lie.
The most classic example of this that I can think of is automobile radios. They maintain power continuously in order to maintain the internal memory of radio station selects. If you remove the battery from the car or let the car run out of battery capacity (so you'd need a "jump" to get started) then you would have to go and reprogram your radio.
Another classic example is that older non-solid-state radios and televisions would have to maintain the temperatures on their tubes in order to start up quicker. I had a old tube television that doubled as a nice space heater. When plugged in it would take a few seconds to start up. However if it was cold then it may take up to a view minutes for the image to fully stabilize on the screen.
More modern examples of this are things like HD TV sets that take long to do a cold boot. Also VCRs would often suck more electricity shutoff then when they were operating.
In fact I would not be surprised that most modern appliances use current while "shut off". Not that I have done a survey.
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The thing that sucks about Linux here is that power management is still unreliable. Its unreliable in the sense that it is not consistent and it causes crashes and dataloss occasionally.
If everything was right and proper in the world when you go to shut of your computer there should only be one option
"standby"
And that will send it into low power mode. No shutoff, reboot, suspend, hibernate, or anything like that. To get to those options you should have to dig further because there is no reason to use those during normal operations.
It should suspend AND save a system image to swap. That way when you start it up again then your golden.. even if you remove the battery the system can recover from the memory image in your storage. But Linux is not there yet, so we still need a half a dozen different options. This way no matter the expectations of the user it will more then likely do the right thing.
If Linux was reliable then there would be no hesitation for people to close the lid and stick it in the bag.
There are Linux systems that do this sort of thing correctly. Linux cell phones are one. The e-paper tables like Amazon's go into standby in between each screen render. My Dell Mini9 works like a champ now (I still wait and look for the power light to pulsate (indicating suspend) before sticking it in a bag though).
boot speed matters Posted Sep 6, 2009 22:17 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
as long as you aso have no need to dual boot, and as long as you are willing to wait the time for your memory image to be written to disk, etc
some people want their computer to actually shut off, so that they can use the power in the battery later when they turn it on rather than have it drain away in 'suspend mode'
the 'standby only' mode may be what you consider ideal, but many other people would not find it ideal, even if there were no bugs in the linux suspend
boot speed matters Posted Sep 7, 2009 0:01 UTC (Mon) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
> some people want their computer to actually shut off, so that they can use the power in the
battery later when they turn it on rather than have it drain away in 'suspend mode'
It's certainly possible some people want that, but I doubt there's _very many_ that go weeks
If linux power management worked as well on all the multitude of supported laptops/desktops, as
boot speed matters Posted Sep 7, 2009 0:22 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
well, if you can select exactly what hardware you will run on, supporting that hardware gets _much_ easier than the situation with linux where it needs to work on hardware designed by others.
it's not necessarily that people want to wait weeks between times that they use their computers, but if a battery will last a week on standby, letting the system sit in standby mode uses 1/7 of your power, that's a significant amount if you aren't going to be near a power outlet.
don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want to see improvements in linux power management, it's just that I don't see 'suspend' replacing 'off' as being either realistic or desirable for all cases.
boot speed matters Posted Sep 7, 2009 3:22 UTC (Mon) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
OS X still has bugs in this regard too -- I've seen 15" unibody MacBook Pros attempting to cook themselves in bags many times, with the lid shut.
boot speed and standby power waste Posted Sep 7, 2009 4:55 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] In fact I would not be surprised that most modern appliances use current while "shut off". Not that I have done a survey.Yes, they do. And a lot. Plugging them into a power meter is eye-opening. For example a few years old Dell desktop PC I tested consumes 9 watts while supposedly "off", and my DTV set-top box seems to draw about the same amount, whether it is nominally "on" or "off". Google for "standby power waste" for more complaints... With CO2 reduction being the hot issue, authorities have started to look into this. EU and some other legislators have already set standby power limits that will gradually come into effect. A few years on, only consumer devices that are draw practically no current at all when "off" will be seen acceptable. For Linux to live on then, it either has to boot fast, or be reliably able to suspend into non-volatile memory.
boot speed and standby power waste Posted Sep 7, 2009 11:02 UTC (Mon) by etienne_lorrain@yahoo.fr (guest, #38022) [Link]
Ever tried to plug that power meter on a laptop power supply without any laptop connected? Mine seems to consume 14 Watt all alone...
Long time ago there was good old voltage transformer made of steel, energy leaks were low, but now that is really different.
boot speed matters Posted Sep 7, 2009 22:11 UTC (Mon) by ignacio.hernandez (subscriber, #56157) [Link]
Not sure about what car radios are you talking about but working on them for a while has showed me that almost all radios shipping in an automobile from the factory use a form of non volatile memory for storing you preferred stations.
boot speed matters Posted Sep 8, 2009 8:24 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
All I can say is that you obviously have not been working on car stereos long enough.
boot speed matters Posted Sep 8, 2009 20:26 UTC (Tue) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
It's probably a function of nvram economics and manufacturer philosophy at different times -- my 15-year-old oem radio from Volvo does preserve presets over battery disconnection.
Not that this is terribly relevant to anything.
boot speed matters Posted Sep 8, 2009 16:22 UTC (Tue) by HenrikH (guest, #31152) [Link]
Not on any of the cars that I have ever own, including a 2001 Toyota Avensis had any form av non-volatile memory in the radio. Whenever there was service performed on the car(s) the stations went.
Will it make it faster or slower? Posted Sep 7, 2009 6:03 UTC (Mon) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
I still do not feel hibernate and suspend are completely reliable and always appropriate. Boot time may not be important for a server or desktop which goes months between reboots, but for a laptop or netbook it is very important. When I use my netbook I often am performing a task which may take only 30 seconds once I boot up, therefore depending on the boot time my task could take twice as long to complete.
I would not be surprised if Debian did not care about boot time given my earlier logic. Most people who care about boot time will probably be using Ubuntu or a similar distro.
Will it make it faster or slower? Posted Sep 10, 2009 7:36 UTC (Thu) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600) [Link]
> Is boot speed really important? With the ability to hibernate and suspend computers these days, what real value is gained in removing 15-30 seconds from booting?
The real value of upstart is that it also handles the hibernate and suspend processes. Instead of having separate, semi-magical scripts to handle the suspend process, upstart uses the same scripts as it would if it were shutting down whatever needs to be shut down. That way you know that everything's shut down cleanly and the developer hasn't patched a bug in one place and not in another.
In fact, you can extend this to most state transitions. Turn the wifi and bluetooth off to save power or to work in an airplane? Upstart will do the same things as required if you were shutting down the whole laptop. Shut down the USB devices to save power? Same thing. You get to use the same scripts all the way through, meaning everything is much more robust. And those start-ups start everything up in parallel, just like your boot sequence.
So upstart is great for speed and flexibility whether you suspend, hibernate, shut down, or whatever.
Have fun,
Paul
Will it make it faster or slower? Posted Sep 10, 2009 16:37 UTC (Thu) by Quazatron (guest, #4368) [Link] Is boot speed really important?I have several systems, and not one of them suspends/resumes cleanly (let alone hibernate!). And while I envy the people who use iMacs, that simply open the laptop and are ready to work, I prefer the freedom Linux gives me. So I'll keep shutting down the machines until the day comes when suspend/resume works reliably (or nvram becomes standard, whatever comes first).
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