If there is anything all PC users have all cursed it’s the slow boot times of even the fastest computers. Microsoft has been trying to reduce this with Windows 7, but it still takes nearly half a minute to get a computer ready for work, often longer. There are several Linux-based operating systems that have shown powerful optimizations enabling incredibly short boot times and one of the better is Intel’s netbook OS Moblin.
Intel hopes to reduce load times for a Moblin computer to less than 5 seconds and already today it can cold-boot a computer in only 10 seconds. Linux specialist company MontaVista has presented a system that can load a tailored Linux distribution in 1 second, perhaps even less.
The Linux distribution is designed for integrated system and optimized for individual hardware platforms but loading a complete operating system, although with minimal drivers and tailored code in just 1 second is very impressive nonetheless.
“It’s always been thought that embedded Linux could never perform at this level of speed and efficiency. We’re proud to be the first embedded Linux vendor to achieve and demonstrate this demanding level of performance.”
There is nothing that says that regular desktop computers will be able to get down to the same quick access times with more functionality and drivers.
The video demonstration MontaVista has posted at YouTube shows how the system loads Linux kernel and a car control system in 1 second.
If we could get Windows load times in around 5-10 seconds most people would be very pleased, but that’s a bit much to hope for today, but there is always Sleep mode I guess… (sigh…)
