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Windows Operating Systems Linux Business Software

Boot Windows Faster, Using Linux 369

Posted by timothy from the linux-to-the-rescue dept.
BiOFH writes "TechNewsWorld is reporting that InterVideo has a solution for slow boot times runing Windows XP MCE. 'The new Linux-based InstantOn software -- designed to help Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs boot more quickly -- is aimed at taking advantage of the power of Intel's Pentium processors, not at fixing fragmented hard drives. The software integrates into the computer's BIOS and the operating system.'" According to this article, the software uses a small Linux partition on the user's hard drive. I wonder how BIOSes with hard-wired Microsoft-based DRM would cooperate with this scheme.
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Boot Windows Faster, Using Linux More

Boot Windows Faster, Using Linux

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  • Vaporware! (Score:5, Informative)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:32PM (#8078017)
    It doesn't make Windows boot faster. It's just a stripped-down version of Linux which of course is going to boot faster because it provides far less functionality. If you want to get to full Windows, you'll have to wait out the remainder of the boot process you interrupted.

    Any CD-based Linux distro can achieve the a similar effect with far more functionality.

    • Re:Vaporware! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gid13 ( 620803 )
      "Any CD-based Linux distro can achieve the a similar effect with far more functionality."

      Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I really doubt you can show me a live CD that can hand off to an installed Windows.

      Furthermore, live CDs, while great, are not the solution to slow boot times.

      And just cause it's related, I set up my VectorLinux (with kernel 2.6.1) to boot right into KDE, and timed it against Windows XP (on the same computer, so there's no hardware advantages). From pressing enter in Grub to being inside

  • It doesn't boot windows faster! (Score:5, Informative)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:34PM (#8078021) Journal
    It boots Linux faster, offering a choice of several entertainment related programs, as well as the choice to boot windows, which takes as long as usual.
    • yes, but the key is that the DRM particulars are hidden in the BIOS of the machine...after all a DVD player doesn't really need that many KB to run...if the hardware is setup properly. It neatly avoids many of the industry fears of using linux...too bad more mobos can't come with built in 64MB SDcards then the MOBO makers could install all this stuff by default...

  • Common sense (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:36PM (#8078032)
    What About the old "Don't load programs you don't need to load at startup"? Prefetcher tweakage. (yay for bootvis) Killing ad / spyware, tweaking services? My XP boot fairly quick (if I *enter* out of my 30sec countdown from my Xp bootloader asking me if I want Linux Or windows today.) Who doesn't know that isn't very likely to install a seperate Linux partition just to boot quicker?

    • Re:Common sense (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @08:03PM (#8078181)
      Slow start up times are the price of using programable, general purpose machines. The ultimate way to reduce startup times is to hardwire the specific functionality you're looking for, as in conventional TVs or stereos.

      Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice, as they say.

      KFG
    • The bootvis [microsoft.com] page explicitely says that it's a poor choice of a tool by end users for improving boot times. So, um... what do you use it for that makes you impressed with it?

      • The bootvis page explicitely says that it's a poor choice of a tool by end users for improving boot times. So, um... what do you use it for that makes you impressed with it?

        It impresses me by shaving significant time off boot times. However Microsoft describe it bootvis can do a lot, depending of course on how fast your boot is already and the factor that is slowing it down. If you load a lot of services at startup then bootvis is a great help.

        Or didn't you realise that what Microsoft say, and what

        • HOW does it help you shave off time though? Obviously it does, you just introduced it to thousands of people who don't know anything about it.. Please just explain in a little more detail so we can all nod our heads and agree that MS is full of it.
    • I agree with your completely.

      Also, I use LILO for a bootloader, and set it for 5 seconds. That way, if I'm not looking at the screen, it boots into Windows fine, but I still have time to select from the several other OSes installed. It's a lot better than the default 30 seconds.
      • Psh. My LILO is set to 2/10ths of a second. Just enough for me to press a key and get it to boot vmlinuz.old, vmlinuz-default or memtest.

        10 seconds is for W1Nd0Wz n00bs.

  • LinuxBIOS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:37PM (#8078033) Homepage Journal
    Sounds like they are using LinuxBIOS plus some apps for the quick boot option.

    Now, the question is, will Joe User start asking himself "Why can't EVERYTHING run this quickly?", and will the companies start realizing that everything CAN, IF they port their stuff to Linux?

    (NOTE: Obviously there is one company that is unlikely to take this action, but perhaps others might.)

    Of course, there is always the option of embedding Windows into the system ROM as well.

    (shudder)
    • Then, everybody insists on loading at startup in Linux... and everything comes crashing down again.
    • >>Sounds like they are using LinuxBIOS plus some apps for the quick boot option.

      What makes you think that? Just because they use Linux as part of their project does not mean they're necessarily using LinuxBIOS [sourceforge.net].

      Besides, if they are then where's the source code? There is that little issue about the GPL...

  • It isn't some kind of linux based boot loader... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:37PM (#8078035)
    Which is what I thought when I read the writeup. It is actually a minimal media-distro designed to boot quickly. To do windows stuff, you still have to wait for windows start time.

  • New MS BIOS source code leaked! (Score:3, Troll)

    by a XOR b XOR a XOR b ( 744728 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:38PM (#8078045)
    Here it is!

    F000:E05B call check_for_linux
    F000:E061 jc do_error_beep_and_halt
    F000:E063 nop
    F000:E064 nop
    F000:E065 nop
    F000:E066 int 19

    All kidding aside... I write BIOS code for a living, and this scares the crap out of me. What Microsoft wants is to basically eliminate the BIOS, except for the jump to the OS code (the "int 19" above). Windows already does just about everything that we do in the BIOS, like PCI device enumeration, etc...

    No doubt, this would make Microsoft's life a lot more simple, but I think it would give them too much control -- way too much. DRM would just be the start of it.

    I wonder what the EFI proponents (Intel) think about this deal...

    • Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by adrianbaugh ( 696007 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:45PM (#8078082) Homepage Journal
      I thought Linux also re-did (or had the ability to re-do) pretty much everything the BIOS did, purely to fix up cretinous BIOSes that didn't do their stuff properly. I can see why that would scare you as a BIOS programmer (not knocking your personal ability, you understand) but surely the simple answer is for the BIOS industry to improve its standards so that OSes don't have to incorporate numerous workarounds.

      • Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by runderwo ( 609077 ) <runderwo.mail@win@org> on Saturday January 24, 2004 @08:59PM (#8078484)
        Some things that the BIOS does can't be re-done. For instance, Athlon 64 SMP configuration must be done by the BIOS and cannot be done after the kernel has been booted, like x86 MPS can. Other types of things absolutely have to be done at initialization time for you to even get to the kernel.

        LinuxBIOS project has the right idea by ideally cutting out as much cruft from the system firmware as possible and leaving it up to the OS to perform initialization, but in reality some tasks are forced onto the firmware by design.

    • Re:New MS BIOS source code leaked! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @08:47PM (#8078415)
      I don't understand why it scares you, or why it gives MS any more control than they have now. If you more or less eliminate the BIOS, it means the operating system needs to do more work itself. Big deal. All modern operating systems ignore 95% of the BIOS anyway. It wouldn't be a significant change from the current situation, and OSes are much smarter than BIOSes anyway. They do a far superior job of resource allocation.

      Now consider the scenario where BIOSes get bigger. Remember that BIOSes are on a chip, which makes them damn hard for normal home users to replace or modify. If some DRM crap gets put in there, it's nearly impossible to remove. Now that's the part that's scary. The BIOS might refuse to boot unrecognized OSes, in which case you're SOL. But if it's the OS that's handling DRM, well, someone will have a crack for it a week before the OS comes out. Or you can uninstall the OS and run one without DRM, like Linux. Or you can install Linux and write some DRM software. Or whatever.

    • MS already has their own BIOS.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by T-Ranger ( 10520 ) <jeffwNO@SPAMchebucto.ns.ca> on Saturday January 24, 2004 @09:17PM (#8078595) Homepage
      In the XBox. Which is kinda-sorta a PC, but not quite, because it dosent have a compatable BIOS.

      If MS was to start producing BIOSes, which Im sure they could do, they would have to maintain compatability with the existing BIOSes of the world.

      There are pleanty of things that are not MS OSs that use the BIOS. Ghost. PXE. DOS before Netware (do they still do this?). Recovery CDs. And of course the OSS OSs.

      I have no idea how much the license for something like Phoenix BIOS costs. Less then a dollar per mobo, Im sure. Lets say that MS starts giving away their BIOS: How many PC hardware manufacturers are going to switch, to save pennies, at the risk of no longer making PC hardware? The hardware world has settled on using industry standards a long time ago. Not even MS can change that.

  • "Entertainment machines" (Score:4, Informative)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:39PM (#8078048) Journal
    A partition on the hard disk houses the Linux software in an area separate from the Windows operating system. The developer claims that with the new software, the boot time is brief -- a mere 10 seconds. When a user turns on the PC, the InstantON software preempts the Windows boot sequence and takes over, quickly loading basic entertainment functions.


    Business Applications

    Moving from the quick-boot entertainment functions into Windows, however, will take users more time than the initial 10-second boot because the InstantON software must hand off the user to the Windows operating system at that point. Still, the company believes that most users inclined to use PCs as entertainment machines in their living rooms are accessing those machines mainly for entertainment-related functions, rather than to run business applications like Microsoft Word or Excel.
    1st step towards seperating 'entertainment centers' from general computers. "Ro foresees a market emerging for computers that don't have conventional operating systems but are used in the living room as entertainment devices, right beside TVs." And since this technology is being marketed towards OEMs, HP and Gateway etc, I can't imagine that it will compromise WINXP Media Center's DRM.
    • ". "Ro foresees a market emerging for computers that don't have conventional operating systems but are used in the living room as entertainment devices, right beside TVs.""

      He's a genius! Or would have been if he made that statemnt 25 years ago.

      Shesh. VCR, has a computer(albiet primitive) cd player, dvd player, stereo, Tivo.
      The market is here Ro.

  • Missing the point of Windows Media Center (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:39PM (#8078049)
    Windows Media Center is meant to be a TiVo clone. In order for it to record the shows you want, you need to leave it up at all time. This stripped-down Linux just isn't going to make the cut... the proper mode of operation is to simply avoid rebooting by leaving it always-up.
    • Yeah. Funny they would attempt to sell a media center competitor whose only saving grace is faster boot time!
    • Actually, with a reliable fast boot procedure, that boots into the application that can initiate and end recordings, I don't see any real reason to have even a TiVo clone on all the time.

      If you are wondering how that would work out, all you need is to set the bios alarm to a couple minutes before the program you are going to record next, and power down. The bios alarm clock will turn the computer on at the appointed time, your program gets recorded, and after the recording is done, the computer resets the
  • Didn't we just (a few months ago) have a /. story about how to speed up linux boottimes (by parallelizing stuff) so it could stay competitive with WinXP? Somehow I don't think this is going to help.

    Meanwhile, my shiny new RHEL 3.0 box isn't mounting NFS filesystems on boot because the network hasn't finished initializing yet. Apparently it takes the network about 30 seconds to come up. Wonder if that's a gigE thing. :(

  • Who needs fast booting? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who does it more than twice a year? Oh wait... this is Windows. Nevermind.

  • why not use hibernation? (Score:3, Informative)

    by techvd ( 744989 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:50PM (#8078114)
    When the PC is hibernated, it comes back up much much faster than a normal boot. Most PC/laptops on market have had support for hibernation for a while. Except when necessary, why not get rid of a complete boot process and just stick to hibernation? It's no Instant On, but a lot better than a complete reboot!
    • Why even bother with hibernation if your looking for fast time up. Just turn your monitor off and when you need your computer turn your monitor on and Volia! No boot time no stand by wait time... Well i guess you still have to wait on your monitor to come up.
    • That was my first thought. XP resumes from hibernation very quickly. The only reason not to do this would be if instability and memory leaks progressively mess things when the system isn't rebooted frequently. XP seems stable enough that this isn't a problem. It might be an issue for applications though.

      There's also suspend, and it can be almost instant. Suspend to RAM can use less than 5 watts. That's definitely acceptable for a home entertainment system. It's within the range of power used by TVs

  • Using Linux to boot Windows (Score:5, Funny)

    by Our Man In Redmond ( 63094 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:50PM (#8078121)
    "I'll take Irony for $1000, Alex."

  • This isn't the solution to the problem... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:53PM (#8078132)
    The solution to the long boot time problem isn't quicker boots, it's getting rid of the need to boot or reboot! Think about it, Handheld devices are designed so that they don't need regular reboots. Embedded devices are the same way. My Tivo takes forever to boot up, much longer than my laptop running Windows or Linux, but it doesn't bother me because the only time I reboot it is when it's moved! The solution to these issues is not faster on time, it's always on! This is where Linux has a big lead too, even though WinXP is much better than 9x in terms of stability it still can't beat Linux when measuring stability in weeks and months...

  • Oh come on. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ProtonMotiveForce ( 267027 )
    Is everything about Microsoft's DRM? Really, now, is it?

  • Memory images on disk (Score:4, Informative)

    by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @07:54PM (#8078138) Homepage
    There was a project a while back to take a snapshot of a boot state then load this snapshot directly into memory. Any modern harddrive can move the 40M or so in a few seconds. The sticking points were mainly due to hardware that needed initialization and some OS design issues (beyond my understanding, but had to do with how control is passed to the operating system). If not for these issues, the machine could boot completely in seconds.

    • Re:Memory images on disk (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation&gmail,com> on Saturday January 24, 2004 @09:07PM (#8078536) Journal
      Check out notes for the KeyKOS project:

      http://www.eros-os.org/project/novelty.html#persis tence [eros-os.org]

      There's an interesting story regarding Novell there. Anyway, that OS would take snapshots of the entire memory state every N seconds so that even if you pulled the plug out of the wall while the machine was running, you'd be back up to where you left off (minus some seconds) as it simply reloaded everything from disk again.
    • I would think they'd be able to make this work by booting, then doing a suspend to ram, and storing that (or you could hibernate, and convince the os not to remove the hibernation file when it dehibernates). That would solve the hardware init issues, but any software that starts on boot might not it, because of the back and forth in time.

      • Re:Memory images on disk (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @10:42PM (#8079035) Journal
        Current hibernation modes would not be able to do that because they end up storing various memory-based file-system caches in the hibernation as well. You do not want those caches to get out of sync with the real contents of the disk; big lossage.

        "So avoid saving those caches...", well there's a reason they are saving them. If you don't save them, you have to first close all open files, and now your "suspension" isn't transparent. So you've opened the door to two "modes" of program starting, "suspended" and "not suspended", or some such other crap. And re-loading the cache with new, valid data on startup takes time, which defeats the point of this in the first place.

        My point is not that there are no solutions to these problems but to try to give a taste of how these things cascade rapidly. OS design is a subtle and tricky work, which only becomes truly apparent once you actually try to sit down and code solutions to these problems.
  • Wait a minute this smells like an innovation and we all know only MS can bring innovation to the marketplace. I think they have an exclusive license from SCO.

  • Timmy Stay in your Chair (Score:2, Informative)

    by sPaKr ( 116314 )
    Jebus. This doesnt boot MCE faster. Rather it uses Linux for some media operations.. but still boots MCE for other things. Timmy You make the most mistakes in posting. You post more dupes, and wrong descriptions then anyone else. Please stay in your chair.. and fondle your joystick.. and keep all your comments to saying only your own name. The world .. and slashdot will be a better place.

  • Incredible Misleading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ageless ( 10680 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @08:06PM (#8078197) Homepage
    This has to be one of the most misleading articles, and even more misleading /. blurbs I have ever seen. This software has nothing to do with Windows. It's a stripped down version of Linux that has basic media center programs. It "integrates" with the BIOS by "booting" like every other operating system.
    • Just remind yourself that Slashdot isn't journalism and doesn't need to be held to such standards. Really, it's nothing more than a community blog. Slashdot is a business and to get people to visit the site, they basically troll and wait for comments. Personally, I'm fine with that as usually some comments are more interesting than the actual article.
  • I RTFA!

    How does it boot in ten seconds? I suspect parallel init scripts.. I realize it wouldn't need alot of services... but heck, ten seconds is still awfully short to run X and a few tiny apps.

    Seriously, the next distro to have parallel init, is the distro I am sold to... no functionality would be more essential than booting in less than 20seconds to me.

  • Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @08:27PM (#8078288) Homepage Journal
    My recollection is that Windows boot times first started getting bad (WFW booted pretty fast comparatively) when publications like CNet were bending over backwards (or was it the other way) to show how much faster Office was than competing products. The benchmarking consisted of: (1) boot both systems, (2) start timers, (3) start application, (4) start benchmark series, (5) end application, (6) stop timers.

    Lo, and behold, more and more initialization work for Office, and then IE, started showing up in the Windows boot sequence.

    Merging applications into the OS is BAD DESIGN, but it won the poorly thought out benchmarks that many organizations used to select their "productivity" tools. Now Windows, and Windows users will pay the price. Serves them right.

    Sure, leave your Windows machines running 24/7 to avoid the boot delay. Linux and OS X users have that option too, but for them it is truly an option, not something they NEED to do.
    • you have no idea what you're talking about.

      it's very easy to see when and which files are loaded by Windows as it boots. try the /SOS switch in boot.ini. Better yet, run XP under the kernel debugger (you do know how to do this, right ? I mean, you _are_ an expert on windows OS design, right ?)

      XP is one of the fastest booting MS operating systems there has ever been, since the DOS days at least. Significant engineering effort went into optimizing the boot time. ... Which is hillarious because XP also n

      • Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design (Score:4, Insightful)

        by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Saturday January 24, 2004 @09:32PM (#8078673) Journal
        Where does cmacb ever mention XP? Cmacb is talking about something that started to happen in Windows long before XP came out. XP is a fairly quick booting OS, I'll admit, but previous versions of Windows weren't.

        However, I think a lot of it is really the GUI and memory resident utilities loading. Try booting Linux into a GNOME session running Enlightenment as the window manager with a ton of applets, buttons and suchlike gewgaws. Almost every Windows box I ever had to service had far too much crap like that running, not to mention spyware. It's a wonder some of them even booted at all, and given a clueless user, a Linux system could be just as bad.

        God knows mine was when I first started playing around with X Windows. :-) Look everyone, Enlightenment v0.4 with the Aliens theme and a dozen applets running on a 386 with 32 megs of RAM. Hey Rocky, watch me pull an X Server hard lockup out of my hat! (but try telneting in to reboot a frozen windows machine...)

      • Re:Bad Benchmarking Screwed up Windows Design (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @09:55PM (#8078775) Homepage Journal
        Well, I DO know something about optimizing large systems, even though I don't work at Microsoft. Judging by your photo, most of my work in that area was done when you were very very young.

        In a character mode system you can put a prompt up for the user almost immediately. You don't actually have to be ready to process his input yet, just grab keystrokes. You finish initialization while the user is still thinking and typing. You don't need to initialize memory at all. Unless your code is buggy to begin with and you need zeros there for debugging, allocate space as needed and allow it to start out random. I know most modern systems don't do this, but it's been done.

        GUI systems are of course a lot more involved. Can the part of the system that draws the screen and all the icons be isolated so as to get that up before loading all the common elements from Internet Explorer, Word, etc (and NO, they don't show up as separate entries on the task list!)? Yes, they probably could, but as those components get more and more bloated they each have their own initialization requirements.

        I'm quite sure people at Microsoft don't sit around twiddling their thumbs and TRYING to make the system less efficient. They DO have a vested interest in making ordinary PCs less and less desirable each year so that the hardware upgrade cycle needs to continue. Every new version of Windows has a larger memory footprint and that has to do with putting more and more stuff on the critical path between turning the system on hand handling that first mouse movement.

        I was doing my OWN benchmarking of these systems during the NT 3.5-4.0 timeframe and I DO know what I am talking about.

  • Slow XPMCE booting? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Utopia ( 149375 )
    What the hell are they taking about?
    My XPMCE boots faster than any OS I have ever seen.
    I rarely have to reboot. But when I do, it takes less than 30 seconds to boot my machine.
  • Well, linux may be good for many things, but my notebooks with its slow 4500rpm disk boots Windows xp 10 seconds faster than my main pc Linux->Kde from a raid with 128MB hardware cache. (and no, there arent tons of unused services running, both are the standart instalations (suse 9.0 ftp install, windows xp home).
    (counting only after bios, because the raid controller adds 10-15 secs which the OS cant change).

  • Two things (Score:2, Informative)

    by ev1lcanuck ( 718766 )
    1) My XPMCE laptop boots in about 20-30 seconds, much faster than my XP Pro desktop or SuSE 9 desktop.

    2) Does it really matter? I mean, in the home environment (I hope to god our corporations aren't stupid enough to buy MCEs for workstations) what is 45 seconds at maximum to wait for the computer to boot. If you REALLY need your computer to boot that fast then just put it into standby or hibernation - both options are excellent and give you almost instant gratification. Standby in my MCE laptop takes

  • Fujitsu Lifebook (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @09:02PM (#8078502) Journal
    My business partner has a Fujitsu P1100 Lifebook. [fujitsupc.com] It runs on Windows and takes quite awhile to boot up but once it's up, she never turns it off. When she's done using whatever program, she just closes the lid and it goes to sleep. When she needs to use it, she opens the lid and 10 seconds later she's back doing whatever she was when she last closed the lid. She bought the extra large battery so it'll run for 7 hours or so between charges. It's pretty neat.

    The only downside is the screen is very small so if you're at all far sighted, it's hard to read. Not a problem for her so she's happy.

    • Re:Fujitsu Lifebook (Score:2, Informative)

      by crimson30 ( 172250 )
      The only downside is the screen is very small so if you're at all far sighted, it's hard to read. Not a problem for her so she's happy.

      I wouldn't say it's the only downside. The graphics capabilities are quite slim, crippling an otherwise decent laptop.

      I will admit I was surprised the first time I closed the lid and forgot about it. It didn't look like it lost any battery power whatsoever in the 10-12 hours I left it on.

  • Too complicated... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ByteSlicer ( 735276 ) on Saturday January 24, 2004 @09:13PM (#8078568)
    If you really want to boot Windows XP fast, configure your BIOS to do a suspend to RAM on sleep. When you hibernate XP, the computer will be completely off (except for a tiny current for self-refreshing the DRAMS). From this state, booting will take only about 5s. And all programs you had previously running will still be there. Even music will continue playing where it left off.
    The only drawback is: if you lose power, the DRAMS will be cleared. That could be solved by a UPS or maybe some built-in battery.
    • I meant 'Standby' instead of 'Hibernate'. Hibernating will write your RAM to disk. It is controlled by the OS instead of by the BIOS. Reading half a GiB worth of RAM back is significantly slower than resuming from suspend to RAM. But in hibernation state the computer is really off, so no risk of losing DRAM content.

  • Acelerating windows (Score:5, Funny)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) * on Saturday January 24, 2004 @09:26PM (#8078640) Homepage Journal
    That is nothing new... with Linux I accelerated Windows to 9.8 m/s^2
    • I know it's a joke, but you're describing a change in acceleration, not in velocity, so it's referred to as, um, jerk.

      "That is nothing new... with Linux I jerked Windows to 9.8 m/s^2".

      (This is, also, a joke).
  • How about a Linux image small enough to act as the BIOS firmware, which runs Windows as a process, and a watchdog process that restarts a new Windows image when a Windows heartbeat process heartbeat stops? Enough CORBA/COM+ IPC work with an event rollback queue might keep Windows app state persistent across Windows restarts, so crashes would be momentary pauses in continuity. Redundant sync'd servers delivering restart attempts to a single client GUI via VNC might actually present an apparently crashproof W
  • I can attest to this. I used Linux to boot Windows right off my PC!

  • Apple (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bluewee ( 677282 )
    Last time that I was using an Apple Powerbook, it seemd to boot nearly instantly. How are they doing this? Parrell int scripts? I have tried to emulate this through using Hibernate, but it still takes 10+ seconds to get to a working state.

  • Why booting takes so long (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @03:31AM (#8080060) Homepage
    Just think of all the things that have to happen during boot-up today:
    • Displaying Microsoft logo.
    • Enumerating peripherals.
    • Waiting for the nonexistent floppy drive to time out.
    • Checking file signatures for files covered by "file protection".
    • Re-homing the scanner.
    • Restarting the print queue.
    • Loading Internet Exploder.
    • Loading Microsoft Office.
    • Loading every DLL that contains anything those two ever need.
    • Starting services nobody except attackers ever use.
    • Loading fonts into memory and generating bitmaps for them.
    • Bringing up the PPPoE connection.
    • Checking for new updates to Microsoft software.
    • Downloading new virus signatures.
    • Loading spyware and adware.
    • Loading latest ads for home page in browser.

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