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.