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…”

How this “poor chap” fixed his GRUB

Recently I ooh-ed and aah-ed about PCLinuxOS 2007. But one gripe I did have was that it messed up my GRUB (ie. it recognised my Windows but it did not recognise my openSUSE partition). While writing that point, I confessed that I have some GRUB problems with many distros and only Ubuntu in my experience recognises and boots everything correctly. I then confessed that I have actually installed an entire Ubuntu distribution (in the past, but on more than one occasion *blush blush*) to fix my GRUB!

Later, I saw a GRUB fixing how-to post that was intended to help ME fix my GRUB, and it referenced me as “the poor chap”. Which I admittedly am! :) The helpful techinical post is found here: http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/16701

Anyway, I was inspired to fix my GRUB, but the post was a little complicated for a noob like me. And so I did what I usually do, go for shortcuts and hope for the best. The following text is extrapolated from the comment I wrote in that post. Hope that helps some people, though I would urge as many people as possible better read the helpful techinical post to get a better idea of how to REALLY fix the thing.

*****

Hey thanks for your effort, but what you wrote, for a person like me, was tooo scary. Really, I’m one of these people who find it difficult to read too much technical stuff… and so I found it difficult (and scary) to read your help. But you did inspire me to fix my GRUB immediately, and so, I did. And this is how I did it.

Firstly, taking on from your pointer, I realised that GRUB is just code. Thanks for that pointer.

Secondly, I realised that I actually needed to “cut and paste” only. Thanks for this pointer too.

However what I did, was I went to my openSUSE GRUB menu.lst and opened the file (using su) and then I copied openSUSE’s boot code, which in my case was

title openSUSE 10.2
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc4 vga=0×317 resume=/dev/hdc3 splash=silent
initrd /boot/initrd

I pasted this to the end (replacing my previous openSUSE detailed attempt). And then tested.

Viola, it worked!

Now I know that people like me are the bane of linux. Meaning, if I knew the code, I’d understand it… but instead, more and more, a generation of windows-based users (like me) are infiltrating linux and filling the space with a desire for ‘easy’ solutions. I try not to be one of them, but sometimes I am. However, I guess I have to go with my strengths. I don’t think I will ever be friendly about understanding code (cut and paste solutions are just about all that I can do), and so I guess I want to thank you again for taking the time to address this issue… and hopefully there will be more people who will read your entry and actually UNDERSTAND what they’re doing.

Cheers!

PCLinuxOS 2007 installation review and first impressions

Never have I had such an incident free installation procedure before. Really! I’m not joking. There’s literally nothing much (in terms of problems) to report. My installation of PCLinuxOS 2007 was simple and error free. What I will say now (about installation) will be comments on certain preferences and perhaps some confusion on (my) part. However, I would say that while PCLinuxOS 2007 installation was one of the most simple and straight-forward linux installations I have ever done, it wasn’t perfect!

Installation Ease? 10/10

Speed of installation? I think I had a whole installation completed in under 30 minutes. That’s excellent, though not as fast as Freespire which I think has a record (on my machine) of about 10-12 minutes!

Configuration capability? Now there’s the problem. I guess every Linux distro has to choose between how “easy” to make an installation and how “configurable”. Well, PCLinuxOS’s installation configuration ability is not thaaaat great. It’s sufficient, but somehow, it is a little scary because when you’re messing with the partition editor, everything looks “fun” even “childlike” and the gravity of the situation just seems to be lacking. The advanced options are limited and often unhelpful. Perhaps to compare, one of the BEST installations in term of configuration was openSUSE 10.2. Now in that installation you can almost change everything (including which windows drives to mount or not)! But I guess, PCLinuxOS just saves the user the trouble and does the thinking for you. Nice, but a little frustrating to non-so-new Linux users.

Bootloader? Well the final bootloader looks pretty, and it even automatically recognises my Windows XP partition, but it failed to recognise my openSUSE 10.2. This was made all the more frustrating because while installing there was no way I could add (or figure out how to add) the full details for openSUSE which was really frustrating. (it’s still not working and I know I have to edit grub somehow, though I don’t know how). Anyway, all this should not be a problem for those who work only with Windows and PCLinuxOS. I must say though, that the BEST bootloader installation is by Ubuntu, which doesn’t look pretty, but recognises EVERY single distribution that I’ve had on my machine. In fact in times of greatest frustration, I’ve actually loaded an entire Ubuntu just to fix my GRUB. OK… that suggests I’m still a noob, but it also shows how reliable I think Ubuntu’s grubloader is.

Internet connectivity? No hassles at all. My DSL modem worked fine as soon as I entered my IP address etc details.

Graphics display? I must add that PCLinuxOS has been one of the BEST (alongside Mandriva) out of the box experiences in terms of my monitor graphics display. Usually, in openSUSE, Ubuntu and any other distro I’ve tried, I’ve usually had to re-configure my Graphics display settings, and even download a VIA driver when available. And even with a VIA drivers, my Ubuntu display blinks! No such problem in PCLinuxOS. It’s working. No configuration needed. And that’s excellent. Really excellent!

Multimedia Codecs? Well, I’ve not tried everything, but so far, everything has worked; EVEN DIVX movies. Can you believe that? (Yes it plays DVDs and mp3s too) No need to install anything. I’m yet to try a Quicktime .mov file, so I’m not sure about that, but any distro that can read my .divx (which even Windows needs a software package for!) out of the box is excellent!

Look and feel? I must say that PCLinuxOS is visually a standout distro! The icons and the desktop look unified, as if they had one designer thinking it all through. We don’t get the modular design look (where many designers work on different programmes to give their own ‘personal’ and contradictory touch). In terms of other distro’s, openSUSE is pretty good, but you still have to work to make it look really good. Ubuntu is just terrible! But PCLinuxOS is just simply beautiful. It did remind me of Dreamlinux, but a better version of Dreamlinux! It even makes the blue look good (and I hate blue distros)! There is one minor drawback. I think because of the lack of ‘proprietary’ fonts, the font-display of my webpages is not as ‘good’ as on openSUSE or on Windows. Well, that can be changed, or gotten used to, but that’s just an additional comment.

Software Packages? I’ve given the packages in PCLinuxOS a quick look-in and I’m surprised that all the major programmes are there… OpenOffice 2.2, GIMP etc. But I’m surprised that the games are missing. That’s sad. Because for such a distro, the games would only help strengthen it. I know where to get the games, but I wish, especially if/when I were to give this distro to a newcomer, the games were already there because it would just be that much more attractive (because the Linux collection of games are actually quite fun… some of them at least).

Summary? Basically, PCLinuxOS 2007 lives up to the hype. And as a single-CD distribution, it looks and feels much better than Ubuntu, at least in its first impression. I find myself missing the power of openSUSE, but then, openSUSE being a multi-CD distro with big-buck-support, is a tough act to beat. I liked PCLinuxOS for all the reasons people are saying that it is a great distro: looks, ease of use, out of the box multimedia functionality etc. And I can’t wait to try and test it out more. Cheers to the PCLinuxOS team. This is really a Linux Plus!

(final screenshot after installation and slight modification below)