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?"
hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming hibernation works for you. It doesn't for me.
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There is a workaround.
Setup screen saver.
Turn off monitor.
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That's not a workaround, if your goal is to save power. Screensavers, especially 3D-accelerated ones, use power. If you set the 'saver to "blank screen" that is fine.
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Screen savers that draw stuff on the screen is so 1992 -- flying toasters and all. I have forgotten them so thoroughly that I read the posting but parsed the word as "going into deepest DPMS OFF mode".
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If your goal is to save power wouldn't you just turn off the monitor?
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Yeah, great, but the screensaver could still be running in the background eating electrons. Just because it's not being displayed doesn't mean it's not happening.
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Why would a monitor that is turned off need a screensaver?
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Informative)
But from the perspective of a cold boot:
I have WinXP and Ubuntu dual-boot on my 5 year old system. I timed their bootup the other day. WinXP took approx 3 and a half minutes, Ubuntu took approx 1 and a half minutes.
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Informative)
Damn small linux (Score:5, Informative)
DSL linux boots insanely fast. On my pentium 2, 300Mhz machine it takes 28 seconds to cold boot off of a CD. And part of that is the delay at the grub prompt! Plus it fires up the applications like a mail client nearly instantly.
main difference is the graphics and dialog boxes are not as sexy as ubuntu
I note that one possible reason linux or windows boots slowly or wakes from hinernation slowly on an older machine can be it's memory starved. For example ubuntu boots on that machine in about ten minutes(!). the machine only has 396MB of memory so it's a miracle ubuntu even boots at all.
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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.
Linux Newbie (Score:5, Funny)
This is the standard of a Linux Newbie (from TFS)?? Recompiling the kernel, modifying startup scripts and understanding SSEx instruction sets?
It's too much. I'm quitting the Linux stuff and going back to Windows. I'm going to download Test King papers, memorize the answers, and get my MSCE certification. Experience and knowledge be damned!
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Yeah, so instead of getting an answer which *does* help, you just get the answer "No, you can't"
How awesome
At least he knows what to look for now, so he can ask for some one-to-one assistance on IRC, for example, or a nearby LUG.
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Wait, are you arguing with a post that says this?
I think this doesn't even qualify for a "don't feed the trolls" anymore; more of a "whooosh". :P
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I second this recommendation.
Using a smaller specialized distribution is IMHO a better choice than all the bloat found in "full" dists like Ubuntu -- notice that I do use Ubuntu :-S.
Years ago, I used a PentiumIII with 128Mb and a terribly slow disk. It booted Debian into Gnome (a very old version - can't remember which) in 23 seconds. My "Core Duo" laptop, or brand new Quad-core desktop take more than twice that to start up. BTW both run Ubuntu.
In my experience, this claim/expectation that XFCE is significa
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This is interesting. The boot time for XP (or any operating system at all) must depend on the hardware.
I mention this because I have XP running in a virtual machine (with automatic login) and it takes almost exactly 20 seconds from when I click "run" to a usable desktop. I always have it do a full boot. (This may not work for the long term on a real computer, though, because I have it revert to the state it was in before I booted it every time I stop needing it, and thus each time I boot it, it is as though
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Informative)
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what do ya got? 16 GB of ram and a quantum bigfoot hard drive?
Nope, an Acer AspireOne netbook...
And this is using the specialized kernel posted in the AAO Users Forum, which makes all the hardware work and makes it boot faster, but the hibernation doesn't really save any time. Therefore, I tend to suspend the machine a lot.
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My observation was made when it had 1GB RAM, though now it has 3.25 or so (something to do with "memory hole mapping" not being on and not having a BIOS entry, it prevents the OS from seeing the full 4GB; or something like that.)
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Educate her that doing a boot everyday wears down the hard drive more than a resume. In hibernate it's (depending on the motherboard) basically off.
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Funny)
typically i dont refer to it as 'educate' when i 'totally make shit up'.
the wear and tear issue has been debunked by several prominent tech websites.
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Shhh...
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I don't know about consumer desktops frequently cycling, but I have second or third hand knowledge that 24/7 systems running for a decade can physically crumble when turned off, due to the temperature change.
Offtopic, but it makes me feel smart to repeat trivia I heard elsewhere.
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It is less about the temperature change and more about the difference between static and dynamic friction - on old hard drives you get the double whammy of motors that get weaker over the years, bearings that get sticky, and finally drive heads sticking to the landing zone on the platters. As long as the drive continues to spin, the coefficient of friction (dynamic) is low enough that the motor can keep spinning the drive. Shut it down overnight and the grease in the bearings gets sticky and the heads sti
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then dont say educate, say its a white lie.
no sense clouding your means unnecessarily when its clear all you care about is the ends.
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason she boots every morning is because she thinks she will "break" the computer by leaving it on. Not sure if she is afraid of malware or thinks the computer is suffering 'wear and tear' in hibernation mode, but she just thinks its safer to turn it off. And before you say "educate her" - she doesn't listen to me when her 'intuition' tells her something.
Then it is her ignorance that's standing in the way of a fast-access system, not software.
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He just needs to look at her sternly and say 'I find your lack of faith ... disturbing.'
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The reason why it doesn't seem faster is because there really isn't that much more "fast" then it can go for daily tasks.
Heck, we have timed delays built in to some interface features (menus come to mind).
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Hopefully intuition doesn't tell her to bone the mailman
Hey, I'm their mailman, you insensitive clod !
Linux, too (Score:2)
I set up a WindPC running Ubuntu for my mom at Christmas. I'll get a call every once in a while that something's not behaving properly (usually, it's not resuming from suspend). She's quite computer illiterate; the usual best fix is to have her hit ctl-alt-backspace and restart X (such as was the case when an app was frozen and stealing input focus, and I didn't have access to an IP network to kill the app). It happens in all software environments, not just Windows.
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:5, Funny)
Why, I don't know... but it's the truth, and nearly globally applicable.
Re:hibernate instead of shutting down... (Score:4, Funny)
Wait...
Slashdot suggestions quality (Score:3, Insightful)
On behalf of Slashdot, I apologize for the quality of some of the suggestions given. (Basically the readers here write what they want, instead of what you want.)
As you have discovered, the best suggestions tend to gather near the bottom of the HTML page (as they have fewer replies), while the trolling suggestions tend to gather near the top.
You write well. Hope you can be a regular contributor with us.
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Just tell her that I said that the computer doesn't know if it's turned off or hibernating, so it couldn't possibly have any different affect than just powering off the computer. Also, I don't take talk-back from my women. (Now show her the back of your hand.)
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Having bought a Asus board recently I would like to mention that:
Yes, you got that right. No Linux-based Splashtop for Linux only users.
A second nitpicking: my experience with KDE4 has been the opposite of yours. Other than the new Konsole, and Okular; I find it a disaster. In any case, I d
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Download Puppy and run the live CD for a day sometime. You'll think KDE 4 is a half-dead slug. KDE 3 is a spritely, healthy slug compared to JWM, but still a slug.
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It isnt, they insist on attempting to force people to use Konqueror. I wish the package statistics system actually worked and the Kubuntu team would just install FF, Gimp and Synaptic by default.
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np; on the whole, I much rather KDE because of its flexibility and most of the apps I agree are great compared to Gnome's selections.
As for the grub manager, what can you do? most people abhor logic.
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.
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It depends upon whether you're hibernating or sleeping (yes, I'm aware you're switching between the two on boot). Sleep can take less than 3s. Hibernate, depending upon your HD and other issues, can take longer than a fresh boot, with either Ubuntu or Windows. I've actually forced a reboot on my Ubuntu system because it was virtually unresponsive coming back up. (Disk was 99% full) If you were heavily swapping before hibernating, forget about coming back out in anything approaching a reasonable time frame.
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Not with 8GB of RAM it isn't... plus keeping 8GB of disc around for swap that you'll only ever use for hibernation is a waste IMHO.
Suspend is an option of course (wakeup time of less than a second on my 2GB and 4GB laptops) but means you have to keep the thing powered.
Defective ACPI support in audio driver (Score:2)
Just suspend. instant on. Done.
And silent, but not in the good way. I've seen two computers that cannot play sound after coming out of suspend, until the next restart.
Why do you boot XP every morning? (Score:2, Informative)
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Well, that doesn't really address the fact that the machine is exposed to malware and sucking down electricity all night.
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Suspend-to-RAM. Comes up faster than hibernate, and sucks minimal power as long as you remember to shut the monitor off. On mine the only thing getting power is the RAM; the fans and drives are all turned off.
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Another vote for suspend / sleep here. If the bios is set to "mode 3" suspend/sleep, then only the ram stays powered, which truly is negligible. It's already common on laptops, closing the lid normally sleeps instead of shutting down.
I use it myself at home.
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Just leave it up all night. I boot our XP system once a week if that.
Did you note, you'll be wasting equal amount of electricity as a printer printing 10000 pages if you leave your computer on all night long?
Guys, help conserve energy.
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Re:Why do you boot XP every morning? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you note, you'll be wasting equal amount of electricity as a printer printing 10000 pages if you leave your computer on all night long?
[Citation needed]
Dot-matrix? Ink-jet? Colour laser? Laptop? Desktop? Server? Display on or off? CRT? TFT? Storage? Power saving mode?
Notwithstanding that I challenge your statement to be anywhere within an order of magnitude or two off target as a generalised rule, the usage can be radically different depending on the combination. CRT's are different from TFT displays in energy use for example, rather dramatically in fact.
And my work laptop - a Dell Latitude D620 / XP Pro gets unplugged and locked into a desk drawer each night. I close down Outlook and shut the lid. Resumes in about 6 seconds the next morning. Whatever power usage it's consuming in that state, it's not enough to warm the desk drawer it resides in appreciably, and I don't see it spending much time recharging.
Boot? I do that every few months with XP... (Score:2)
Honestly my wife's XP box gets rebooted maybe 3-4 times a year. Otherwise it's just in powersave mode. Takes about 5 seconds to wake it up.
How old of a laptop? (Score:5, Informative)
The decision of a Linux distro for old hardware is somewhat dependent on the age of the old hardware. I've been pretty successful at using PuppyLinux [puppylinux.org] (and MacPup [macpup.org] isn't too bad) on a very old Toshiba laptop with 192mb RAM. However, I have found that the "random incompetence" factor is an issue with it, as well as some laptop quirks (X refuses to come back if you close the laptop lid, and you then have to power it off, X doesn't start up on boot, and you have to type "startx" at the command line and chose xmesa or xorg...).
Xubuntu [xubuntu.org] is actually not too bad from the resources side... I tried it on an old 256mb ram/celeron computer. It was pretty slow, though.
gOS [thinkgos.com] also isn't too bad. It's geared towards getting online and using Google stuff... gmail, google docs, etc. It booted faster and the liveCD was faster than Xubuntu, for me.
Another one that I haven't used a whole lot but looked pretty good was TinyME [tinymelinux.com] (based on PCLinuxOS I think).
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I think you were using Xubuntu wrong, i had 256mb ram and a celeron (1.2GHz IIRC) working as my primary os with kubuntu and it ran well (unless i ran firefox2+compiz at the same time)
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I should say it wasn't exactly slow... it was mostly the video response time that was really slow. Meaning, moving a single window around the screen stuttered. I just did a default install.
Come to think of it, though, I might have only had 128mb ram in it at the time. I thought it was 256 though, I could be wrong.
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RAM/CPU, do you know?
If you're not incredibly worried about the "breaking" part, and can run "startx" in the event that something dies, and choose "xorg" (or xmesa if xorg ends up not working), PuppyLinux is really pretty good. Not sure it comes with openoffice by default though, would have to check on that. It can be a little hard to use. Good side though: it is very fast to boot, uses very little RAM, and actually boots from CD or USB very quickly as well... so you can try it out.
Another cool thing abo
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or just tweaking your book process (using bootchart + changing your init scripts) and maybe even a custom kernel
Have you thought about a USB bootloader? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Have you thought about a USB bootloader? (Score:5, Informative)
usb will be slow to boot
Actually it depends. USB 2.0 itself has a maximum throughput of 420Mbit/sec. [wikipedia.org] To put that in perspective, it's nearly identical to most 7200 RPM hard drives on the market right now [tomshardware.com] and about half as fast as a Western Digital Velociraptor VR150 which is one of the fastest consumer hard drives on the market.
(60MB/s == 480Mb/s) I do admit this solution breaks down in two situations:
1) you cheap out on the flash drive - in order to do this with reasonable speed you'll need to get a high-speed USB stick, but honestly a 2GB or 4GB high-speed stick is not that expensive
2) The computer is not USB 2.0 compliant. - This is only a problem for older hardware, but if their normal home computer was made in the last 8 years, they should be safe.
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The theoretical throughput might be 480 Mb/s, but I have yet to see any real-world benchmarks above about 300 Mb/s (37.5 MB/s), and if my own experience is any indication you'd be lucky to get even 20 MB/s on bulk transfers without high-end (read: expensive) hardware.
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I did something like this. Just installed Ubuntu from a LiveCD using the "Text mode install" option. It installed a minimal install which booted quickly. (I did this with the internal disks unplugged to guarantee that GRUB got installed to the correct place). You could do this with Debian as well (which would be preferred for something like this, IMO, except for the way that Debian's kernel still uses the old ata drivers and it might cause some issues).
Theoretically, you could then do something like just do
What's the hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
Go check here for a list of minimalistic Linux distro's:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros [laptop.org]
Slackware with a XFCE and Firefox/OpenOffice is very, very fast on even older hardware.
Re:What's the hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
tinycore linux (Score:5, Informative)
link [tinycorelinux.com]
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...anything based on Slackware...
openSUSE it is, then.
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Along those lines, I'd recommend SliTaz [slitaz.org]
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It uses only 10MB of RAM and boots to a fully installed system in seconds -- Tiny Core rules
If your laptop can take it (Score:2)
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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.
Get a Wii + Opera (Score:2)
You can set it to download updated weather, news and WiiMail while it's in standby mode, and you can check your webmail, [facebook|myspace|slashdot|whatever] if you spend $5 to download Opera for Devices. Get a usb keyboard and you're all set for posting as well.
If the TV is already on, it's probably quicker.
Wii takes a while to render anything (Score:3, Informative)
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But it DOES do flash 7, so youtube is fine, and for a quick peak into your email, it's really all you need.
Mind you, the *smart* thing is to just turn on the computer, then go do something for a minute or two while it boots. If you set it to auto-login, she'll come back in a few minutes to her desktop - and if she didn't bother closing her browser when she shut down, it'll be right there, same as the other apps.
What's annoying in that scenario is shutting down, then a few seconds later - "oh, darn - I f
do you have a home server? (Score:2)
Install LTSP on your home server, and use the laptop as a LTSP thin client. You'll reduce boot time because there's hardly anything running on the client machine, and probably get better performance once everything is running (assuming the server is faster then your old laptop).
Xandros Presto! (Score:4, Informative)
Think outside the bun..... (Score:2)
Random observations:
- Why reboot? Uptime on this (linux) notebook is currently 7 days. I usually only reboot a linux box ONLY when a software upgrade requires it. I haven't rebooted my (accursed) XP office-mandated notebook since February (more than three weeks).
- Suspend / Hibernation (OS independent comment) are your friends. XP comes back pretty fast, linux not necessarily so quickly, but still LOTS faster than a cold boot for either OS.
- The heaver the OS (XP or linux) and the apps runnning, the long
How to Experiment w/ Fast Booting Linux:3 EZ Steps (Score:2)
Step 1. Download UNetBootin from SourceForge (2 minutes)
Step 2. Stick in a blank USB thumb drive and use UNetBootin to install Linux Mint version 6 or Puppy Linux version 4 onto the drive. (3 to 30 minutes depending on network speed)
Step 3. Reboot and tell your BIOS to make your newly bootable USB thumb drive the boot drive. (2 minutes)
Splashtop / Asus Express gate (Score:2)
If you have an Asus motherboard it's branded as Express Gate [phoronix.com]. Some models have it in the flash bios, some require a 512 MB image file to be located on an NTFS partition (also the installer is windows). Either way, it boots really fast, 5-10 seconds.
It has Firefox and Skype, Pidgin and a photo viewer. When you exit, the system boots from the hard disk.
Fixing Windows XP (Score:2)
Defragging doesn't fix this, as even if files aren't fragmented and reasonably well placed on the drive, files are simply not longer clustered in say, the first 10% of your hard drive.
Updates to Windows also mess up your system file layout and footp
Auto Power On (Score:2, Informative)
netbook? (Score:2)
Windows kiosk (Score:2)
Just alter
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Shell=pathtofirefox.exe
and whatever auto-logon guest type account for that shell.
Downsides: you won't be using it for anything else.
Upside: Two minutes of (reversible) changes, so least amount of work.
Just did this... (Score:2)
Recently I'd noticed that my main laptop (a Dell Inspiron E1505) was not quite as fast as I'd wanted. It is a CentOS 5.2 system running KDE. The main apps I use are Firefox, JEdit, VMWare/VirtualBox, konsole, xine/vlc.
I started with Firefox, since it's always running. First steps were to install NoScript and AdBlocker. With these installed, it seems like a completely different browser.
Next thing was to get rid of KDE. On other systems I use Fluxbox. This time I went with XFCE4. From the GDM screen to a rea
Say no to Windows (Score:2)
Xubuntu 9.04 would be a bit faster at booting than Ubuntu 9.04, but there are several lightweight GUIs available. You can use a normal Ubuntu install and install the xubuntu-desktop metapackage to get it. Under System > Admin > Login Window, you can set automatic logins and other things (it also asks you if you want auto login during the install).
Awake from Sleep in 3 seconds (Score:4, Interesting)
Why reboot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is everyone rebooting? Just leave it on and reboot once a week if it is XP and about 45-60 days if it is Linux. Always on rules!
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Or use sleep. Takes all of a second to become usable after pressing the power button, without the power use of leaving it on all the time (though admittedly slightly more power usage than actually turning it off).
Or you could just use hibernate (Score:2)
Or you could just use hibernate.....I have one computer at one whose sole designation is to connect to the internet and check emails or the web, (in its own dmz zone)....I hate waiting, so I hibernate it when I am done with it...leaving everything as it was before hand. It takes me only 2 seconds to boot, and voila open pages, open outlook....presto!
Magic!
To the computer illiterate, everything smells like Windows
I'd stick with Windows (Score:2)
My home desktop has 512Mb RAM and a Celeron D as a processor (ie, not cutting-edge). I run:
Windows XP fully patched with automatic updates from MS. No 3rd party AV (just use Limited User Accounts [msdn.com] and you'll be safe as houses).
So long as you don't install tons of crap, basic Windows XP is a snappy, responsive and consistent OS. Chances are your wife already knows how to change desktop background, change volume, start program x, etc. No learning curve whatsoever. Other posters have told you what you need to k
performance or boot times .. (Score:2)
There is a difference and you can tweak Linux to get that little more performance on old hardware. Secondly your wife won't risk having her online identity stolen in some drive-by phishing attempt. One of the fastest put-of-the-box solution I've seen is Yoper [yoper.com]
Some linux suggestions (Score:2)
If you want to get her to Linux, a few things:
first, turn off all services that get started on bootup she'll never use, such as apache (if it's installed), or a d/b (ditto).
Next, and everyone will have their own favs here, I use IceWM as a window manager. Unlike the 12M or whatever of KDE, it's 600k, and comes up *far* faster, since it also doesn't start half a dozen heavyweight processes. Has a few little nicities, like the system monitor on the toolbar. My only irritation with it is that it does *not* re
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Huh?
Do they even MAKE 30 gig HDDs any more?
An 80 gig is $35.00, 250 gig is $45, 320 gig is $50, 500 gig is $60, 640 gig is $70, 750 gig is $85, 1 TB is $90, and 1.5 TB is $130.
Heck, for $100 you can buy a 32 gig SSD.
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The problem with suspend is that you don't get a clean boot next time around - any memory you've leaked, and any processes that are a bit fscked up, will continue to be that way.
That being said, I was surprised with how opensuse handled going into suspend when I forgot to plug it in when doing a 5 gig update (I've got a lot of crap installed :-) ... after a couple of hours, the laptop started beeping ... I ignored it. Next morning ... "oh, crap!" Plugged it in, it resumed downloading packages where it ha
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