Weekly Edition
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Quotes of the week
The C preprocessor... It is ugly, inelegant, painful, annoying,
and should have been strangled at birth -- but it is always there
when you need it!
-- Paul McKenney
Make Linux Software presents the fastest ever embedded Linux boot
for 720 MHz ARM and NAND flash memory. Linux boot time is 300
milliseconds from boot loader to shell.
-- Constantine Shulyupin
Our hammer is kernel patches and all problems look like nails, but
we'd end up with better user interfaces and a better kernel if we'd
just stop stuffing more and fatter user interface code into the
kernel.
-- Andrew Morton(Log in to post comments)
Quotes of the week Posted Mar 31, 2011 2:32 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>Make Linux Software presents the fastest ever embedded Linux boot for 720 MHz ARM and NAND flash memory. Linux boot time is 300 milliseconds from boot loader to shell. [...more from the webpage/announcement:] [...] achieve a minimal boot time of a minimal but functional Linux system on common hardware. [...] The root filesystem is included in the kernel image; The size of the kernel and the filesystem put together is 1.5MiB
Minimal! 1.5-1.6 MB was the combined size of a Linux 2.6.13 kernel (bz2 or lzma - can't remember) compiled for ye olde i386 DX (read: no modern hardware that would need huge drivers), with the IPv4 stack and PLIP, plus initramfs (cpio.gz with sash). So given the Linux kernel has certainly increased in bloat since then, the image must be bigger these days, at best remedied by new compression techniques. In other words, this 1.5MB image may be "functional" but only for a very specific definition of function - like, showing a prompt. Probably hardly usable for any serious task. Feels just like having started COMMAND.COM (no autoexec.bat/config.sys) from a hard disk.
Quotes of the week Posted Mar 31, 2011 16:12 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Indeed the system image only includes the kernel and busybox. You cannot run GNOME with this but, if you don't want to, why wait any longer?
Quotes of the week Posted Mar 31, 2011 18:00 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] I suppose the operative words in the quoted paragraph are »embedded Linux boot«. That image may »hardly be usable for any serious task« but it may support software that runs a digital camera or basic phone just fine. (If that »application« takes another 300 ms to launch we can probably live with that.) One probably wouldn't expect such an image to contain a copy of Eclipse.
Quotes of the week Posted Apr 2, 2011 13:33 UTC (Sat) by dmk (subscriber, #50141) [Link]
> One probably wouldn't expect such an image to contain a copy of Eclipse.
lol Eclipse :)
Minimal system boot time: 300 ms Posted Apr 3, 2011 0:54 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I agree that this system is hardly functional -- the only function it has is the ability to extend the system to add some real function, like taking pictures or making phone calls. But I think it is still a highly useful benchmark, because it covers the common part of all these possible systems, and a part which has traditionally taken much longer. The benchmark also omits the other end -- getting the system up to the boot loader. So it's just a measurement of kernel start time, and the only function expected of a kernel is to run applications. It would be nice if they would follow it up with an example of a realistic application and tell how long it takes from e.g. power button to view finder active. Because maybe the kernel boot time isn't all that significant after all.
Minimal system boot time: 300 ms Posted Apr 3, 2011 1:25 UTC (Sun) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>Because maybe the kernel boot time isn't all that significant after all.
Indeed not, as has been observed before - https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/
Minimal system boot time: 300 ms Posted Apr 3, 2011 16:38 UTC (Sun) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]
The website mentioned in the email (http://www.makelinux.com/emb/fastboot/omap) mentions the time spent before the bootloader:
> Boot analysis
I agree that it would be interesting to see timings for a sample application as well.
I seem to recall one example of embedded Linux starting a GUI application (Qt over framebuffer IIRC) driving a webcam in about 1 second (again, IIRC) from system reset.
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