does linux have ready boost?

[jett]

oh was just reading on digg that vista has a technology called ready boost in which if you use solid state memory like an SD card you can boot windows vista instaed of 43secs to 14sec.

is there a linux program that allows me to do the same?
maybe use usb or flash memory to fast boot linux?

and does anyone know any other techniques for speeding up linux?

[900i]

Hi Jett, try these Ubuntu speed tweaks with Mint

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=107856
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=254263

[scorp123]

oh was just reading on digg that vista has a technology called ready boost in which if you use solid state memory like an SD card you can boot windows vista instaed of 43secs to 14sec.

is there a linux program that allows me to do the same?
maybe use usb or flash memory to fast boot linux?

If your PC supports booting from such devices you can of course use a USB stick as "disk" for your Linux installation. There are even distributions such as Damn Small Linux that are specialised on this area, e.g. be small enough so the entire OS including GUI + essential stuff such as web browsers etc. fits onto common USB sticks ...

[techne]

Furthermore, "ready boost" is only necessary for Vista because it is such a resource hog, and many existing personal computers do not already have enough system memory to support Vista's "muscle" (or "fat," depending on how you choose to see it).

If my hunch is right, then Vista is simply using a RAM disk to improve boot time.

Linux distributions already use this technique, especially the portable class of distributions such as Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and Austrumi.

[rlozano]

the ready boost of vista is to allow users with machine using older processor (P4 for this matter) that has an extended memory card slot, so it can act as a n additional memory. and windows can avoid system degradation by reading too much in the disk using its virtual memory page. we know for a fact that disk I/O can hog 100% of your CPU resources.

but if your machine is already configured to its maximum memory, i don't even think that is going to be of a great benefit, specially when you are using Linux.

I consider P4 to be an old processor if you are using Vista, since Vista's entry level machine is actually the dual core; core 2 duo with atleast 1GB of RAM and atleast 128mb of VRAM.

Vista by itself is really a resource hungry OS since it has improved so much in its graphical features, nearly or almost ripping-off the MAC OS 10. this is why, the MAC OS, when they used the intel processor, thay have made sure that it is already using a dual core processor.

if you add the M$ office 2007, which is another resource hungry application, then your machine starts to feel the load and somehow would cease running and start walking, and eventually crawl.

if you plan to use Vista in your P4 machine even configured to its maximum capacity, in one or the other, you may feel disappointed because you will not get the performance you are expecting. (i tried vista in a P4 3.4GHz, HT with 2GB RAM, 128mbVRAM, 80GB hd, with SD card, and my machine was just walking under the moon. LoL)

With Vista out, and you think of retaining your current machine (w/c is not dual core) then, Linux is the best alternative for you, unless you want to stick it out with XP.

[hairy_Palms]

you can do this already with linux already
like this

I RECOMMEND NOT DOING THIS!!

To add a swap file:

1. Determine the size of the new swap file and multiple by 1024 to determine the block size. For example, the block size of a 64 MB swap file is 65536, set it to the size of your usbkey

2. At a shell prompt as root, type the following command with count being equal to the desired block size:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/usbkey/swapfile bs=1024 count=65536

3. Setup the swap file with the command:

mkswap /usbkey/swapfile

4. To enable the swap file immediately but not automatically at boot time:

swapon /usbkey/swapfile

5. To enable it at boot time, edit /etc/fstab to include:

/usbkey/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0

The next time the system boots, it will enable the new swap file.

6. After adding the new swap file and enabling it, make sure it is enabled by viewing the output of the command cat /proc/swaps or free

anyone could knock up a gui for doing this in 2 minutes and voila, readyboost for linux, EXCEPT
the reason why people dont do this, is that it completely knackers your usbkey after a few months.

I RECOMMEND NOT DOING THIS!!

besides ive been using vista since beta2 and it doesnt make any difference to me when ive got readyboost on or off

[hairy_Palms]

ok just re-reading the first post i thought i should state some facts about boot time

ReadyBoost does not claim to add physical memory to your system; it takes memory from a flash drive and uses it as a virtual cache for your hard drive. Will this make your games, boot-up times, and file transferring faster? No. ReadyBoost takes advantage of the fact that a USB 2.0 flash drive with decent quality memory is able to send up small chunks of data to the CPU many times faster than a hard drive having to spin up and seek across the platter. Conversely, a hard drive is many times faster than a flash drive when accessing large amounts of sequential data.

[jett]

your saying if i follow your instructions linux should ready boot. I dont want to use my usb drive for swap all the time,because that would be slower. I just want to use it for boot up, because its faster than the hard drive.

[scorp123]

your saying if i follow your instructions linux should ready boot. I dont want to use my usb drive for swap all the time,because that would be slower. I just want to use it for boot up, because its faster than the hard drive.

You don't need that kind of BS for Linux They came up with that in Vista's case because Vista is so damn slow anyway. If you want your Linux to boot faster you better follow the links that were already given to you. You can gain a lot by disabling unneeded services. That's the route you should go and not try to reproduce some stupid Windoze experiments Micro$oft had to invent because their new OS sucks so much.

[900i]

Scorp, Very true.