Some boot time comparison : MeeGo is ahead

I've got a brand new netbook to test MeeGo images I'm generating and I thought it could be useful to have some comparisons data regarding boot speed across the various distributions available, on the same hardware (even if it is considered as a low-entry system, it shares the same kind of hardware as most netbooks around)

Hardware : eMachines M350 : CPU : Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz, 1GB memory, 160GB hard-disk

Test was done with system running on AC power and with Ethernet cable plugged. Each distribution was installed then updated to latest bugfix / security updates and rebooted several time to ensure readahead (or similar mecanism) were working properly (when available)



Values there are not extremely precise (I used my watch to measure them) but bootcharts data (measured with each distribution integrated bootchart tool, which explains why they don't display the same data) are available at http://www.gnome.org/~fcrozat/bootchart/

• Win XP preinstalled with the netbook:
• 56s : user interface visible (but still stuff running in the background)
• 1min27s : ready
• JoliCloud 1.0 :
• 36s to get to gdm
• 1min 16s (to get from grub to main interface ready, in autologin mode)
• Mandriva 2010 Spring (GNOME)
• 34s to get to gdm
• 48s (to get from grub to main interface ready, in autologin mode)
• Fedora 13 :
• 41s to get gdm
• 55s (grub to main interface ready, autologin, with readahead enabled)
• Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook
• 25s to gdm
• 36s (grub to main interface "ready", mouse cursor no longer busy), but interface visible and usable at 26s
• Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop (GNOME)
• 22s to gdm
• 27s (grub to main interface "ready", mouse cursor no longer busy)
• openSUSE 11.3 (GNOME) (with preload working)
• 37s to gdm
• 55s (grub to system ready)
• Intel MeeGo 1.0.2 :
• 25s (after first boot)
• 18s (bootloader to system ready) with sreadahead working
• SUSE Meego 1.0:
• 24s (bootloader to system ready), without prelink
• 20s (bootloader to system ready), without prelink when sreadahead is done
• 17s (bootloader to system ready), with prelink + sreadahead

GUADEC finished, time for a new job : SUSE MeeGo

GUADEC 2010 was great (as always), meeting unknown and new faces, attending great talks. My favorite was Open Design Thinking Workshop and I hope InventedHere.de folks will be to future GUADECs and maybe other events, like FOSDEM (hint, hint).

I guess most people who discussed with me there knew already and  Michael already let the cat out of the bag: I've joined Novell, to work on SUSE MeeGo.

10 years, time to change

It has been 10 years since I joined a small company called MandrakeSoft at that time.

When I first arrived, I was asked "What do you want to work on ?" and I said "I don't know, I use GNOME at home..." and you know the story ;)

Now is a good time to change, so I'm leaving Mandriva at the end of this month (I'm already off, so don't search me on irc / mail ).

It has been a pleasure to work everybody in Mandriva company and community.

GUADEC, PACS

and since yesterday, I have a PACS (name of civil union in France) with my beloved girlfriend (now, my wife) !

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1 released : with GNOME 2.30 and GNOME-Shell

 Time has came for first beta release for 2010 Spring version of Mandriva Linux.  It's now available through 32 and 64 DVD isos, as well as live-CD isos for GNOME and KDE on public mirrors

• 2010 Spring planning
• Detailed information about Beta1 release

This release is including GNOME 2.30 (released on April 1st) and a preview edition of GNOME-Shell, which will be part of GNOME 3 (which is planned for release on september 2010). Of course, KDE 4.4.2 is also available, as well as various updates for many programs in the distribution.

As usual all your feedbacks are really important to help in improving global quality of distribution. You can report improvements proposals and/or bugs in Mandriva Bugzilla.

Enjoy!

Nokia N900 : not impressed either

No, Cody you aren't alone (but I can't comment on your blog, it asks to login and I don't have an account on blogs.gnome.org) : I have the same feeling regarding Nokia N900 and I'm not impressed by a "already obsolete" product (or should I say platform), by Nokia own words (but not expressed in that way) . The good point is the money they injected in free software companies isn't lost and morphed in improvement in various projects (Telepathy, etc..) but that's it.

I'm much more impressed by Palm Pre and I'm waiting for it to be available in Europe.

Boot splash evolution in Mandriva Linux

For some time, I've been working on adding Plymouth support for our next Mandriva Linux 2010 release, as graphical boot splash and I thought it could be interested to do a recap of the various solutions we used in our distribution over the years.

Mandriva Linux (Linux-Mandrake then) was one of the first Linux distributions to ship with a graphical boot :

• in 2000 (yes, 9 years ago !!), for Linux-Mandrake 7.2, we integrated Aurora (written by Egil Möller who joined Mandrakesoft to work on it at that time), allowing users to control and follow boot with keyboard and mouse, before X was started. 
• in 2002, we switched to Bootsplash, which was kernel based and allowed also to polish VT (a nice touch).
• in 2008, we switched to Splashy, mostly because Bootsplash was becoming deprecated by Splashy and could not run on non-x86 platform and was a pain to maintain in kernel.
  
• yesterday, we switch to Plymouth. It will be available for the first time in Mandriva Linux 2010 beta (available tomorrow). 

Why did we switched to Plymouth :

• it supports Kernel Mode-Setting, which reduces screen flickering, permits smooth transitions between boot phase and X startup. 
• it still works on VESA framebuffer. For chipsets not yet supporting KMS, we can still have graphical boot, so no feature regression.
  
• Plymouth is much more customizable than Splashy, allowing nice UI effects.
• It has a nice and simple script language (from Charlie Brej) : you don't need to code in C to write a theme. I was able to write a theme which looks like our current splashy theme in about a day (discovering the language at the same time and with examples from Charlie).
  
• Plymouth authors are extremely responsive and inclusive : I got commit privileges only two days after sending my first patches (and after my fd.o account was fixed ;)
• We are not alone to use Plymouth : our Fedora friends were the first to integrate it and we can share our experiences and expertises in graphical boot, thus improving the entire Linux ecosystem.
  

So far, we are extremely happy of the result : Mandriva Linux 2010 beta looks very nice (even if plymouth for this beta doesn't feature text support, it does now on cooker).

We hope you will like it, so don't forget to test Mandriva Linux 2010 beta when it is released (and did I say it will have GNOME 2.27.90 in it too ? :)