Kernel Summit: Desktop performance

Posted Jul 22, 2004 20:04 UTC (Thu) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link]

Only 5 to 10 seconds? I have a corp-issue XP laptop. They throw so much mandatory crap in the per-user startup folder it isn't funny. I wait a good 30 seconds or more, waiting for such stuff as:

• network logon scripts
• backup software (why isn't this a system service? why do I have to see it? why does it slow the laptop to a crawl whenever it runs?)
• virus software (same complaint as for backup software)
• firewall software (again... why not a system service?)
• who knows what else?

It's really quite annoying.

Posted Jul 23, 2004 19:58 UTC (Fri) by socket (guest, #43) [Link]

I must say, I'm impressed. My father's XP system is a decent 1.5 Ghz Athlon, a quarter gig of memory, and plenty of hard drive space. It takes 3 minutes from the time you hit the power button to the time you can log in. Once you're logged in, it takes another 7 or 8 *minutes* for the system to actually be in a usable state. He regularly turns on his computer, starts making coffee, logs in, and then finishes making his coffee before going back to his computer.

XP has the annoying feature that if you do something like click on the start menu while things are still being run out of the startup folder, the menu will randomly go away while the other program runs. It's as though these services require you to not be using anything while they're starting up, which suggests to me that they really should be started *before* the login screen comes up. Eh. Windows.

Perhaps this is an unusual case, but my girlfriend's mother's XP system does the same thing. Meanwhile, both my laptop and my desktop running SuSE 9.1 come up from a cold boot in under a minute and a half. I login, and WindowMaker comes up in about 2 seconds, Konsole in about 10, Emacs in 8, and Mozilla in about 20. Once the libraries are loaded, new instances are a lot snappier.