Sometimes it happens you're late, and just need to have a look to the internet, or copy some files, or read a document. Complete operating systems, as Windows or Linux, need some time to boot. We can choose to install, moreover these operating systems, also a Linux mini-distro, which are light and boots in a few seconds. Despite their small resources need, they can give us all the major features of a computer: internet, file system access, videos, music, documents. Here we test some Linux mini-distro boot times.
All the tests took place on a Asus F3 Notebook with Intel Centrino Duo T8300 CPU, 3Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce 9300M G Video Card. All operating systems were just installed, without any further component; the auto-login was set, in order to avoid password typing times.
Operating system | Boot time (sec.) | Power-off (sec.) |
Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop AMD64 | 42 | 12 |
SliTaz 2.0 | 33 | 10 |
Puppy Linux 4.3 | 25 | 9 |
xPUD 0.9 | 22 | 1 |
However we can't consider only these times in choosing a distro instead of another. For example, xPUD is a simple interface, not a complete operating system. To me, the best choice concerning features - times is Puppy Linux.