I remember visiting a computer exhibition (CeBIT) in the very early 90s. In one booth they had some of the big Amiga systems (2000, I think) and at some point on of the booth's staff did the 3 finger salute (press 3 specific keys on the keyboard to force a reboot) on one of the machines. The machine was back up in what felt like an instant. I was amazed by that. They probably had setup the whole boot process via RAM (see "RAD" disk on the Amiga), but I hadn't any idea about that back in the days.
Still to this day I think this is how it should be. You want to switch ON your computer and it should be ready for use.
But what do we get? What feels like minutes of random waiting time. My Raspberry PI with Linux which probably eats 10 of those Amiga 2Ks for breakfast shifts through through a few 1000 lines of initialising output… my Mac which probably eats like 50 of those Amiga 2Ks for lunch… showing a slowly growing bar doing whatever… Why didn't this improve at all in the last 30 years?
> They probably had setup the whole boot process via RAM (see "RAD" disk on the Amiga), but I hadn't any idea about that back in the days.
> Still to this day I think this is how it should be. You want to switch ON your computer and it should be ready for use.
Don't we already kind of have this? It's setup to be dynamic, and we'd ended up calling it "sleep", but it basically does what you're talking about, but dynamically and optionally, basically chucking the entire state into RAM (or disk for "hibernate") then resumes from that when you wanna continue.
Personally I've avoided it for the longest of times because something always breaks or ends up wonky when you resumes, at least on my desktop. The PS5 and the Steam Deck handles this seemingly even with games running, so seems possible, and I know others who are using it, maybe Linux desktop is just lagging behind there a bit so I continue to properly shut down my computer every night.
Macs on the other hand are extremely stable. In my 4 years of using my MacBook Pro M1 Max, I’ve only restarted during OS updates. There were maybe a handful instances where it froze and I forced restart. Other than that, I only put it to sleep every time and it works like a charm. I use it for heavy duty software development and experimentation with local models, so it’s even more surprising!
The hardware Apple makes is incredible, bar none, which is why is such a shame the OS and application UX is absolutely horrible and continues to get worse with each iteration. If Apple would publicly support Linux efforts on Apple hardware I'd probably switch back in an instant. But until then, I guess I'll continue turning off my desktop at night, and waiting a whole of 15 seconds for the startup in the morning oh the horrors.
Windows prioritize phoning home and data collection over UX. If you have a corporate install you’ll also have negligent EDP software killing your boot times.
You can get fast boot times on linux if you care to tweak things.
Just curious, was something like https://github.com/containerd/stargz-snapshotter considered/evaluated before designing your own lazily-loaded container FS and if so, any pros/cons for the same?
> From my (just a user) perspective, GPUs are expensive, they shouldn't be left standing if they're not being used.
How much does a idling GPU actually take when there is no monitor attached and no activity on it? My monitor turns off after 10 minutes of inactivity or something, and at that point, I feel like the power draw should be really small (but haven't verified it myself).
I honestly can’t believe that the only top level comment right now is this kind of “I can’t be assed to read the linked article, I came just to shit on it” kinda comment
I remember visiting a computer exhibition (CeBIT) in the very early 90s. In one booth they had some of the big Amiga systems (2000, I think) and at some point on of the booth's staff did the 3 finger salute (press 3 specific keys on the keyboard to force a reboot) on one of the machines. The machine was back up in what felt like an instant. I was amazed by that. They probably had setup the whole boot process via RAM (see "RAD" disk on the Amiga), but I hadn't any idea about that back in the days.
Still to this day I think this is how it should be. You want to switch ON your computer and it should be ready for use.
But what do we get? What feels like minutes of random waiting time. My Raspberry PI with Linux which probably eats 10 of those Amiga 2Ks for breakfast shifts through through a few 1000 lines of initialising output… my Mac which probably eats like 50 of those Amiga 2Ks for lunch… showing a slowly growing bar doing whatever… Why didn't this improve at all in the last 30 years?
> They probably had setup the whole boot process via RAM (see "RAD" disk on the Amiga), but I hadn't any idea about that back in the days.
> Still to this day I think this is how it should be. You want to switch ON your computer and it should be ready for use.
Don't we already kind of have this? It's setup to be dynamic, and we'd ended up calling it "sleep", but it basically does what you're talking about, but dynamically and optionally, basically chucking the entire state into RAM (or disk for "hibernate") then resumes from that when you wanna continue.
Personally I've avoided it for the longest of times because something always breaks or ends up wonky when you resumes, at least on my desktop. The PS5 and the Steam Deck handles this seemingly even with games running, so seems possible, and I know others who are using it, maybe Linux desktop is just lagging behind there a bit so I continue to properly shut down my computer every night.
Macs on the other hand are extremely stable. In my 4 years of using my MacBook Pro M1 Max, I’ve only restarted during OS updates. There were maybe a handful instances where it froze and I forced restart. Other than that, I only put it to sleep every time and it works like a charm. I use it for heavy duty software development and experimentation with local models, so it’s even more surprising!
The hardware Apple makes is incredible, bar none, which is why is such a shame the OS and application UX is absolutely horrible and continues to get worse with each iteration. If Apple would publicly support Linux efforts on Apple hardware I'd probably switch back in an instant. But until then, I guess I'll continue turning off my desktop at night, and waiting a whole of 15 seconds for the startup in the morning oh the horrors.
Windows prioritize phoning home and data collection over UX. If you have a corporate install you’ll also have negligent EDP software killing your boot times.
You can get fast boot times on linux if you care to tweak things.
Because we still carry data over coppers and wires.
Just curious, was something like https://github.com/containerd/stargz-snapshotter considered/evaluated before designing your own lazily-loaded container FS and if so, any pros/cons for the same?
Also curious! I was also wondering if criu frozen containers would help here. I.e. load the notebooks, snapshot them, and then restore them.
When did booting time has become a problem to solve?
From my (just a user) perspective, GPUs are expensive, they shouldn't be left standing if they're not being used.
I was there Gandalf, 3000 years ago, when people used folding@home to donate idle CPUs.
and SETI@home too!
> From my (just a user) perspective, GPUs are expensive, they shouldn't be left standing if they're not being used.
How much does a idling GPU actually take when there is no monitor attached and no activity on it? My monitor turns off after 10 minutes of inactivity or something, and at that point, I feel like the power draw should be really small (but haven't verified it myself).
When did low-effort comments become acceptable here?
I honestly can’t believe that the only top level comment right now is this kind of “I can’t be assed to read the linked article, I came just to shit on it” kinda comment
This looks awesome!