Ubuntu Wiki

• Launchpad Entry: foundations-karmic-bootspeed-targets

• Created: 2009-05-26

• Contributors: ScottJamesRemnant

• Packages affected:

Summary

We will continue the work done for Ubuntu 9.04 to reduce the time to boot the operating system. There will be a switch in focus from attempting to reduce the current time as much as we can, to setting a target time for the total boot and a budget which each component must not exceed to reach it. This work will continue across both the 9.10 and 10.04 development cycles.

Release Note

This section should include a paragraph describing the end-user impact of this change. It is meant to be included in the release notes of the first release in which it is implemented. (Not all of these will actually be included in the release notes, at the release manager's discretion; but writing them is a useful exercise.)

It is mandatory.

Rationale

There are many important rationales for the continued focus on the boot performance of Ubuntu:

• Boot performance improvements are an important marketing story for comparing Ubuntu to our competitors. Users have become used to each new software release requiring more memory, faster computers and taking longer to do things. Ubuntu releases are instead faster, work on a wider range of hardware and reduce memory footprints.
• It's an important sales story for Canonical when bidding to have Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based systems such as Ubuntu Netbook Remix installed by default on Netbooks or Laptops. A fast boot provides a competitive advantage over other operating systems.
• The initial "wow" user experience of a fast boot can help make a new user much more positive about the system, so more likely to continue to try it and less likely to want to return to an other operating system.
• The process of reducing boot time is strongly related to the process of reducing the bloat and complexity of the operating system, a fast booting system is a system with a reduced memory footprint and reduced complexity which are worthwhile results in their own right.
• A hefty majority of the boot time is actually the desktop login time. Even with good suspend and resume times, we want the times for switching users and opening a guest user session to be short.
• Reduced downtime of data centre servers.
• Developers and power users following development releases or testing stable release updates often need to reboot, a faster boot means that they're down for less time

Assumptions

Design

You can have subsections that better describe specific parts of the issue.

Implementation

This section should describe a plan of action (the "how") to implement the changes discussed. Could include subsections like:

UI Changes

Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this

Code Changes

Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.

Migration

Include:

• data migration, if any
• redirects from old URLs to new ones, if any
• how users will be pointed to the new way of doing things, if necessary.

Test/Demo Plan

It's important that we are able to test new features, and demonstrate them to users. Use this section to describe a short plan that anybody can follow that demonstrates the feature is working. This can then be used during testing, and to show off after release. Please add an entry to http://testcases.qa.ubuntu.com/Coverage/NewFeatures for tracking test coverage.

This need not be added or completed until the specification is nearing beta.

Unresolved issues

This should highlight any issues that should be addressed in further specifications, and not problems with the specification itself; since any specification with problems cannot be approved.

BoF agenda and discussion

Use this section to take notes during the BoF; if you keep it in the approved spec, use it for summarising what was discussed and note any options that were rejected.

CategorySpec