Speed up Linux Boot - Stopping Services

[verndog]

I have a couple of areas of Linux I would like to see improved on my system.

Bootup & Shutdown for one.

It takes at least twice as long to boot from Grub menu to running Linux
than from a running Windows XP. Shutdown is even worst.

I know and have looked into removing some services, and I wonder if all
those services are neccessary. For example, Cron. If I don't have any
need to run scheduled programs why is it neeeded?

By the way, I have searched for ways of speeding up Linux, and have
come accross a few sites but nothing help my system. Also, I'm aware
that some services have dependencies.

This site for Ubuntu shows a list of 68 services and if they can be stopped:
HowTo: Speed up ubuntu boot process - the way you can feel it. - Ubuntu Forums

My Process Table shows 89 running. I'm not quite sure how this differs from
services though, and what can be done to minamize.

If you leave you system running this is a non issue. I don't leave mine running.

I would love to be able to dump XP, but its hard to get around the fact I can
boot it up in 15 seconds, and shut it off in 7 secs !


OpenOffice vs. Office 2003

Another area is Office. I tried Office 2007, but soon realized that 2003
was all I needed and much faster. Starting up Word in Office 2003 was almost
instantaneous.

OpenOffice, regardless how good you claim it to be, is a slug compaired to
Office 2003. I'm aware of all the bells and whisles, but in the end its
getting the job done in reasonal amount of time. It seems to me that the
devolepers keep improving what OpenOffice can do and neglect to improve
preformance!

If you have any ideas along this line please comment. I'm most interested in
stopping services that don't see the light of day. At least that.
Hopefully someone here has done just that. I know in the Windows arena there
is Black Viper to explain services that are needed.

[daark.child]

Are you specifically referring to Ubuntu here or Linux as a whole? There are many distros out there that boot pretty fast because they are configured to only start essential system services by default unless you configure the system to start extra services.

Cron, it is needed because its used by the system to schedule things such as cleaning up temp files, updating file databases, rotating logs etc. Also one thing to note about XP is that when you see the desktop, the system may be unusable for some time because services are still being loaded in the background.

I can't comment about Openoffice since I don't use it much, but when I do, it works fine for me and I am pleased with the performance, but like any piece of software, I am sure it still needs improvement.

[bigtomrodney]

As daark.child was explaining there, XP uses a system called 'asynchronous boot'. This asynchronous boot means that booting may not finish for 2-3 minutes after the desktop appears because it is still working in the background.

With that said many distros are working heavily on this as it is still a nuisance to have a slow boot. I found Feisty pretty fast, Gutsy is rumoured to be better again and openSUSE has completely changed its layout for its next release next month. SUSE 10.3 and Ubuntu Gutsy are both out next month - you may consider checking them out.

[verndog]

As daark.child was explaining there, XP uses a system called 'asynchronous boot'. This asynchronous boot means that booting may not finish for 2-3 minutes after the desktop appears because it is still working in the background.

With that said many distros are working heavily on this as it is still a nuisance to have a slow boot. I found Feisty pretty fast, Gutsy is rumoured to be better again and openSUSE has completely changed its layout for its next release next month. SUSE 10.3 and Ubuntu Gutsy are both out next month - you may consider checking them out.

My XP after bootup can be used almost straight away.
Regarding 'asynchronous boot', I just read about 'initng' which replaces sysvinit, and starts processes asynchronously.
I am not referring to any specificly, but my mind distro is PCLinuxOS.
Maybe initng would help.