Casual Windows/Linux conversation

When I do a restart on my spouse’s Windows laptop (her favorite games only run in Windows, but I still have to do the maintenance), I use the wait time to take a shower and read the paper. Now, do I hear correctly that you’re concerned about boot times of 40 seconds when I’m lucky to find the boot completed after 15 minutes?

It depends on the machine you are talking about.

If you have e.g. Windows 10 installed on a 2008 laptop that is barely breathing, yes you might be right. But if you are used to having a 15 seconds boot on your gaming rig, then why would you not complain about a 15 minute boot time?

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Not complaining. I have an almost instant boot on my Linux machine. Someday she will listen and ask me to change hers over to Linux. Until then, I’m happy with mine.

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What games does she play?

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Yes, I know it’s all relative. And a 42 second boot time is excellent. But what I was trying to find out is why? Did moving swap cause the boot time to go up or was the expansion of root that cause the time to go up. What is causing the kernel go go from 15 seconds to 40?
After doing more research, I found 2 answers so far as how someone else corrected the slow down after moving swap or expanding root.
1 - update the kernel.
2 - Re-install Linux.

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From personal experience working on quite a lot of computers, I’ve actually found that Windows boots surprisingly quick on mechanical drives. A little slower than most Linux distros, but not by much.

The type of boot drive makes the biggest difference with boot times. Mechanical, especially the 5400rpm HDDs you find in many laptops, are the slowest. SATA SSDs are vastly quicker, even the cheap ones. And M.2/NVME SSDs are even faster.

Capability of the processor can also makes a difference in boot times. If you’re using something like an old core 2 duo, it’s going to boot slower than something far more modern and with twice as many cores or more.

So basically what I’m trying to say is; the hardware plays a bigger role in reboot/boot times than the OS.

My gaming rig running Windows 10 boots in 10-15 seconds with an FX 8350 @4.6GHz and a SATA SSD. My laptop running Manjaro boots in 20-30 seconds with an i5-540m and SATA SSD.

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The thing with any boot time is that the system can boot quickly, it is just the loading of applications that slows it down and there are various tweaks that you can do to speed them both up. I agree with you that there is little real difference in loading time between Windows & Linux and hardware does play a large role in that. I think the reason why Windows is slower is because of the additional software that it loads that it needs. My son has an HDD with an i7 processor running and I have installed Mint on an HDD with an i3 and they load in about the same time. Comparing the those with my own system which has an SSD, running Mint does make them seem slow. I don’t think it is something most will worry about as long as it doesn’t hang when booting.

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Usually, yes. I would also like to add, to be fair, that you can choose “Fast Startup” within Windows or let Windows tell you that you should let your PC Sleep instead of issuing a shutdown. All these alternatives come with their downsides, though. Additionally, if that wasn’t enough, with every Windows update come thousands over thousands of users who get even serious problems with their computers. In Linux at least, it appears to be fixable. By its open source nature, it is naturally more fixable, as everything you work on is actually free for everyone to look up and inspect. Now try to inspect a closed piece of software, where you have to entirely rely upon the technical documentation to be thorough and correct.

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the comprehension and implementation of which is beyond the scope of the average user’s skillset.

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Exactly.
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15 minutes sounds to me just too much for a simple reboot. It may be just right if Windows installs (or installed and just finishes some install processes of ) updates.
Are ALL your reboots so slow? Or just those you make every couple weeks?
I’m a quite recent Windows refugee, and I can tell that Windows 10 boots up quicker, well it seems.
It’s in a hurry to show up login screen for you, and make you able to log in and show the empty desktop. But that’s all, if you need to acutally do something, you have to wait for dozens of backround tasks to launch. If I measure the time from cold boot to login, windows10 was a little bit quicker the Mint Mate 19.1. However, starting the first program (Firefox, L.Office) and load something into it (webpage, or load a doc) Linux ran multiple circles around Windows. This was on my previous machine, Ryzen1600, 16GB RAM, Sata SSD.
(Have to admit, windows10 fast boot was disabled, so I could use the data HDD when booting Linux).
So I think, If all your boots are so slow, then something is wrong with that particular Win install.
Unless, I’m missing something :wink:
Can you add some details about the hardware?
Edit:
I kept Windows 10 in Virtualbox, just in case… :smiley:
It booted now in 42 seconds on my laptop (Lenovo Z51-70). (I gave him 3 cores and 4GB RAM)

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Having read this again Bill, if you having to wait 15 minutes for it to complete, this system has problems and I would start off by doing full scans on in and include a full memory scan. That is far too long, I don’t think I have heard of it ever taking that long without their being a problem with it. It is just a matter of finding it and fixing it, which might take some time to do.

I did download the 1903 upgrade and ran Windows Repair Tool–took a day, of course, since I can’t just sit and watch a progress bar. Those updates made an improvement, as did a dump and restore of the email client She prefers. Now it seems to be running ok and I can ignore it until the nect complaint.

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I’ve to dis-agree with you on this one. Windows user since Win 95 and just learning Linux. Mint 18.3 on this laptop boots in 12 seconds! Window 10 (same H/W) does not even come close at 40 seconds. And 40 seconds is great for Windows.

On the same storage device?

“(same H/W)” - meaning same laptop, same disk, same cpu, same memory. It was a dual boot system.
Timing was done from the grub menu from the moment I hit the enter key until I got the OS menu using my watch (same watch …LOL).

I once worked on a site, that had a “professional” team of SOE/MOE ‘developers’, who developed a Windows XP SOE image that literally took 20 minutes from power on, login, to opening email client and able to start reading emails (Lotus Notes - what a steam pile of ____!)…

TWENTY minutes??? I was astounded these clowns kept their jobs! Unacceptable!

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Interesting. Windows should boot faster than that, so I’m wondering if there are some other factor(s) at play.

I actually think 40 second boot time for Windows 10 is good. I would be happy to tweak a couple setting if you have any suggestions.

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First thing I would check is if it’s fully updated. Next, I’d run disk cleanup. I’d also look at the startup applications. Things like OneDrive should be disabled (unless you use that). Anything unnecessary should be disabled. Does it have any AV software? If so, that can also impact boot times.

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