Jun 25, 2008 01:06 PM EDT by Jeffrey L. Wilson
Earlier this month, we spoke with Gerry Carr, marketing manager at Canonical, about the upcoming Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a specialized version of Ubuntu aimed squarely at the mini-notebook market. In the interview, Carr said that Ubuntu Netbook Remix would have a boot time of 5 to 10 seconds, but it appears that may have been in error. Carr contacted us this morning with this statement:
In our interview, I inadvertently gave you some misleading information with regard to potential boot times in upcoming Netbook products running the Ubuntu Netbook Remix or derivatives of it. I spoke about 5–10 second boot times, which is way off what we are seeing right now and was based on a misinterpretation of some data I saw in a very early spec for these category of machines. In short, I was plain wrong and we don’t want to set expectations we are ultimately going to disappoint in market. We are working very hard to reduce the boot times we are currently seeing, which we think are too long. Right now we can’t give accurate estimates but it will be longer then 5–10 seconds for sure. When we have more accurate estimates, I will be happy to share it with you and your readers.
So there you have it folks: the real deal on Ubuntu Netbook Remix’s boot time. Much thanks to Gerry Carr for clearing up the situation.
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June 25th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I have to say, I was pretty skeptical when I first read that number. While it’s certainly possible to create an OS that boots that quickly, Ubuntu Netbook Remix isn’t being built from the ground up. It’s based on existing code, and while Ubuntu can boot pretty quickly on a reasonably fast machine, even with CPU-specific optimizations, I would have been quite surprised to see a 5-10 second boot time.
Personally, I’d be pretty happy with 30 seconds.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Jeffrey, thanks for clearing this up – I wonder how well XP is optimized for this new plattform compared to Linux (say moblin.org and Xandros)
Another question though: Which notebook is sturdier, has a better casing build quality, the MSI Wind or the EEE 901? The 901 seems to be better than the old EEEs, bt what about the competition from MSI? Thanks a lot!
Tom
October 30th, 2008 at 7:20 am
It’s definitely possible to boot linux in and under 5 seconds. Here is an article about it telling something about how it was done without sacrificing usability.
http://lwn.net/Articles/299088/
It’s the second article on the page.
April 2nd, 2010 at 2:26 am
Not sue I agree entirely, but I have to say that I find the commentary insightful.
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