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Boot times matter because there are many brain dead journo's out there that think that boot times are a measure of how fast a particular distro is.
As opposed to some real life benchmarks but that would take real work on their part rather than hitting 'Next' in the installers and using that for their copy.
Alot of people here think boot time doesn't matter. I know hibernation makes boot times less frequent and less relevant to some people. However sleep/hibernation modes represent a great deal of complexity between OS/BIOS/hardware, and is frequently the cause of driver bugs. If turning on a computer was as fast as waking it up from sleep, then it might eventually enable a OS to do away with the ugly complexities of hibernation.
In my opinion one should be able to turn on and use a computer much like they turn on and use a TV - only waiting for the display to "warm up".
A while ago, I have tried to sum up in a blog post the reasons why I prefer to turn my computer off instead of putting it to sleep when I'm not using it. Maybe you would want to read that.
http://theosperiment.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/5-reasons-why-i-think...
Thanks for the link. My responses:
#1 -- don't care. I use my laptop like my phone, always has to be at the ready.
#2 -- not sure. I've never had RAM fail on me despite 24/7 operation. It's true that constant charge/drain on a Li-ion battery is not good. On my Thinkpad I set the charge thresholds using the SMAPI interface and leave the laptop plugged in most of the time.
#3, #4 -- not really a problem in Linux
#5 -- this one is more interesting -- I will consider it.
Member since:
2008-11-19
Can anyone explain to me why fast boot times matter? I reboot my laptop at most a few times a year when I upgrade my kernel. I suspend-to-RAM several times a day, and hibernate when I travel.
Aren't fast login times much more important on multi-user systems?