Fastbooting Linux For Dummies? 241
Linux First timer writes "I wonder whether the Linux Gurus of Slashdot could help me with some advice on setting up a Linux system for my wife. She is not at all computer literate, but likes to get on the net for a few minutes every morning to read news etc. She is always bitching that our XP desktop takes way too long to boot 'just to get on the net for a few minutes.' I was thinking that I could take an old laptop we have, do a little first time test drive installing and using Linux, and possibly solve her problem in one go. The requirements for the system are simple: fast as possible boot/load Firefox, easy for a computer dummy to get onto the net, hard to break through random incompetence, and comes with Open Office.org or similar for occasional use. Wouldn't be used for much else. Any useful advice for us two poor Linux newbies? For example, is Ubuntu the best choice for this, or is there a better Linux flavour for the purpose? Any useful tweaks a novice can handle to make it work better for these simple tasks only?"
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming hibernation works for you. It doesn't for me.
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you put your system in hibernation mode, the wake up process is much faster then a cold boot
I concur with this. I have an older Dell laptop with XP and Ubuntu on it. I always hibernate Windows, and it takes (once past Grub) about 8 seconds to be ready to log in. I've never had any trouble keeping Windows hibernated for weeks at a time.
On the flip side, I don't know what the problem is, but Ubuntu takes longer to boot up after being hibernated (assuming it comes up at all -- now and then it just stops resuming). I keep hearing about low power modes being better supported in Linux distributions, but I've yet to come across something that will work reliably in standby or hibernation on any of the laptops I've used.
It's unfortunate because it means if I need to do something quick, I always go for Windows. On the same machine I can be up and running Windows in literally 15 seconds, while Ubuntu takes over 4 minutes to be ready (or even longer when there's no network connected) with or without a previous hibernation.
Re:If your laptop can take it (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the website, around 3 seconds. Now, some embedded systems have Flash cards large enough to take a mini distro. The Arcom card I used a while back could do this. This is unlikely to be the case for the laptop as-is, but I can't see why you couldn't ultimately have a memory image placed into Flash which is booted into via coreboot.
Re:tinycore linux (Score:1, Interesting)
I've used Puppy inux for my wife's computer (PIII, 900Mhz, 128MB RAM). It does boot and shut down way faster than WinXP on that computer.
But...
- installing it and configuring it has been a lot of work I'd rather not do
- it is not that user friendly in some ways (she constantly can't find where she saved files, since the Linux filesystem is not as familiar or easy as WinXP)
- It is not trivial to find a working version of Firefox for it (last I looked), so we are using the somewhat lame SeaMonkey browser.
- It was easy to accidentally hose all her bookmarks within SeaMonkey when I did an upgrade, and they are not able to be retrieved.
- Today it crashed and will not restart (waiting on help for that).
Overall, I really want to love Puppy, and it is so close to being very cool indeed. But these problems move it close to dealbreaker territory, at least for someone who does not want to put a lot of time into it.
Re:Damn small linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Use Linux, recompile the kernel with the necessary drivers only and use fvwm or another light-weight window manager to speed things up even more.
Also optimize the startup scripts to skip any service not needed.
And finally - recompile the kernel specifically for your processor.
Awake from Sleep in 3 seconds (Score:4, Interesting)