F8/9 6-16x slower than XP to boot
Dimi Paun
dimi at lattica.com
Fri Mar 28 05:24:38 UTC 2008
Folks,
I have reported in the past slow boot times. I have performed
some more tests that may help people improve the situation.
Hardware: 2x2.13 GHz Intel Core Duo 6400, 4GB RAM
Software: Fedora 8, running Innotek's Virtual Box
Virtual Hardware: 538MB RAM, 8GB HDD
OS in Virtual Box: Fedora 9 Beta and XP
Test was to boot the box and start Firefox to the point where I can
interact with it (i.e. type in location bar).
Summary:
* F8 on real hardware, without BIOS time: 2:15
* F9 on virtual hardware: 7:00
* XP on virtual hardware: 0:22
For F8 boot, here is a breakdown of times:
0:00 -- Grub starts
1:25 -- login prompt
1:50 -- I can click on the Firefox icon
2:15 -- Firefox becomes usable
For F9 Beta boot, being so slow, I could record more details:
0:00 -- start of virtual box
0:45 -- "Welcome to Fedora" shows
1:30 -- udev finishes (took 45'!)
1:40 -- first graphics show (rhgb)
3:20 -- X restarts (I guess rhgb ends)
4:00 -- login prompt
6:15 -- Firefox icon is clickable
7:00 -- Firefox becomes usable
A few notes:
* I took out all times for user interaction
* I repeated the tests a few times, the results are stable
* For whatever reason, Fedora 9 Beta feels very sluggish in the
virtual machine (even the mouse stutters), whereas XP runs
extremely well. Maybe Innotek did some Windows-only optimizations?
* I measured to the point where I could interact with Firefox.
However, at that point XP appeared more responsive than Fedora,
even when compared to the Fedora that was running on the real
hardware, with a lot more RAM available.
* Even when comparing Fedora on real hardware vs XP on VM,
it took longer to just start Firefox in Linux vs. the entire
boot + starting of Firefox in Windows!
I'd be glad to provide more information if people are interested.
--
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.
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