LinuxOS 2007 vs openSUSE 10.2 vs Windows XP: Comparing Boot-up/Shut-down timings

I recently installed PCLinuxOS as the third distro on my system (incidentally overwriting Ubuntu). And since I’m an openSUSE (fan) user, I’ve been jumping distributions a lot recently to get things done… just to give each distro a fare usage. Anyway, the moment you regularly jump distributions, the boot-up (and subsequently shut-down) timings become an issue. And I thought it would be interesting to compare the three operating systems from a ‘timing’ perspective.

Testing Method: There’s nothing too technical in my experiment. I used the stop-watch on my wrist-watch. I gave each operating system about three times to load and look the last reading. If the last reading was way off the other two, I took the middle reading. For boot-up, I timed from the moment I clicked the distro in GRUB till the Login screen. For shut-down, I timed from the Logged-in stage (hence the distro would have to logout and shutdown in one go). My desktop is one of those AMD 64bt, 1800+ machines, with 512MB RAM (and a normal hard disk, ie not SATA) So on faster machines the boot-up/shut-down times will definitely be faster.

nb: Please note that while I’m a openSUSE fan, I’m not trying to skew the numbers in it’s favour. Which is why it comes out the ‘worst’ of the three.

BOOT-UP TIMING: from GRUB to LOGIN Screen

PCLinuxOS 2007: 37.33 seconds
Interestingly, all three times I booted up to PCLOS, I always got 37 seconds, it was the most consistent.

openSUSE 10.2: 1 minute 5.43 seconds (65.43 seconds)
I like openSUSE, but this is atrocious. All I can say is that I’ve heard a rumour that openSUSE is trying to speed things up. More power to that!

Windows XP: 25.64 seconds
Windows has always been the faster booting system I’ve seen. These seconds actually matter because you (I) tend to choose Windows when you need to quickly check something.

SHUT-DOWN TIMING: (From LOGGED in position to computer TURNOFF)

PCLinuxOS 2007: 22.81 seconds

openSUSE 10.2: 28.93 seconds
A much improved performance!

Windows XP: 35.44 seconds
This was surprising, and I feel I must qualify by saying that possibly Windows was trying to close all the background programmes running in Windows logged in mode (there were no open programmes), which is why it took so long. But I guess that is a Windows problem, so why give excuses, right? :)

SUMMARY:

My personal favourite openSUSE failed big-time, though the shut-down was not so bad. PCLinuxOS is slowly winning me over by it’s high standard. And Windows? Well, it’s always easy to enter Windows but (in the words of the Eagles) “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…”