General Linux Chat and Small Questions v. I broke my Arch Install - Hardware & Software

[QUOTE=esalaka;40966061]Well, there are several things that make it relatively cool: ... 4) Linux supports every damn peripheral you can imagine. Hell, I can use my joystick to control the mouse cursor! There are drivers for practically [I]everything[/I] you could imagine that isn't propretiary - and even if it is, there probably is a driver for it. I believe the first publicly available PC driver for the Kinect was written for Linux. Not because of profit but because someone wanted to do cool things with it. (And possibly because someone offered a cash price for it... But the development is ongoing.) ... [/QUOTE] I wanted to play a few arcade-style games with a controller and with friends. I went to gamestop, grabbed two used PS3 controllers and it was just plug-and-play for the games which support gamepads, and I had to throw together a couple joy2key configs for those that didn't. Also, you can use the damn thing as a mouse cursor, because X already has configs for joystick-to-keyboard with surprisingly sane defaults (I still wouldn't recommend using it, but it was a nice touch). Also my first backup was a complete success(!) I just backed up the essentials, avoiding some of the larger subdirs of my /home because I'm putting it on a 50GB partition on the main server HDD until I get my hands on something specifically for backups. I think I'll set up a cron job to backup once weekly or something like that. I could probably do it daily but I'm not sure that's necessary.

[QUOTE=smlance;40965445]If this is true, then why should we expect Linux to ever become popular? If that were to happen, either Linux would have to become much easier for that large group of users to use, or people would have to lose their aversion to opening up a terminal. I'm not sure the latter is likely to happen.[/QUOTE] I didn't say you should expect Linux to ever become popular.

IMO its good that not many people use/know Linux. Saves my position as a Sysadmin/Programmer, and have less competition when looking for a new job:v:

[QUOTE=IpHa;40966871]On linux I have 20s from bootloader to desktop without any effort to optimize it. Windows is atleast 1-2 minutes.[/QUOTE] I have a 2 minute booting time just to get in to windows, and when I actually manage to get in it takes another minute to do anything meaningful.

Loonix boot to desktop in ~10 seconds here. [editline]10th June 2013[/editline] To be fair, ATM its just DWM. which loads almost instantly.

Sounds like more of you ^ above me need to invest in a SSD. 20s MAX Windows 8 boot time, can do anything straight away. Linux on the other hand, Crunchbag opens before I blink :dance:

Yeah I have KDE open and firefox running in like 10-15s. (including the time it takes me to type my password)

I never actually timed my boot, I should probably do that.

[QUOTE=whatthe;40969694]Sounds like more of you ^ above me need to invest in a SSD. 20s MAX Windows 8 boot time, can do anything straight away. Linux on the other hand, Crunchbag opens before I blink :dance:[/QUOTE] Yea, my boot time into windows 8 (with auto login) to desktop, is like ~12 seconds. I love SSDs.

[QUOTE=sabreman;40973009]Yea, my boot time into windows 8 (with auto login) to desktop, is like ~12 seconds. I love SSDs.[/QUOTE]Currently my SSD holds my Windows partition as well. Just waiting on a few more programs to be ported so I can swap it from Windows to Linux. Then oh goodness, it will be fantastic.

[QUOTE=whatthe;40969694]Sounds like more of you ^ above me need to invest in a SSD. 20s MAX Windows 8 boot time, can do anything straight away. Linux on the other hand, Crunchbag opens before I blink :dance:[/QUOTE] I wouldn't make any use of an SSD. I can deal with a little longer loading times, otherwise it has literally no affect on my day to day operation

I'd love to get a SSD, but my motherboard doesn't support AHCI and I don't want a SSD if I can't use TRIM.

Are you Windows 8 guys [i]actually[/i] powering off? I didn't realize at first on my friends laptop, but it turns out "shutdown" is the new terminology for hibernate. I had to hold down the damn shift key while powering off just to get into the BIOS. If you would, please actually shut the thing down and see if it affects boot times, if you haven't already.

[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;40980169]Are you Windows 8 guys [i]actually[/i] powering off? I didn't realize at first on my friends laptop, but it turns out "shutdown" is the new terminology for hibernate. I had to hold down the damn shift key while powering off just to get into the BIOS. If you would, please actually shut the thing down and see if it affects boot times, if you haven't already.[/QUOTE] It's not full hibernate. It only hibernates the kernel and some other windows stuff, everything else restarts as it would normally. It's a new feature they call hybrid boot and there is no reason to turn it off since there are no side effects and it speeds up boot up times significantly.

[QUOTE=RautaPalli;40980243]It's not full hibernate. It only hibernates the kernel and some other windows stuff, everything else restarts as it would normally. It's a new feature they call hybrid boot and there is no reason to turn it off since there are no side effects and it speeds up boot up times significantly.[/QUOTE] ...except if you want to measure cold-boot times, which was the case here.

[QUOTE=esalaka;40980321]...except if you want to measure cold-boot times, which was the case here.[/QUOTE] ... except measuring cold-boot times in that way is pointless, since you'll never be doing one in Windows 8 except for when you're installing updates that require it. Also no one specifically mentioned cold booting.

[QUOTE=RautaPalli;40980346]... except measuring cold-boot times in that way is pointless, since you'll never be doing one in Windows 8 except for when you're installing updates that require it.[/QUOTE] It's still cheating, so long as we are talking about cold-boot times. I don't ever really [I]have[/I] to reboot, so can I claim ~5s to start up from suspend? I mean, a lot of things turn off still, so its basically a cold-boot.

[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;40980496]It's still cheating, so long as we are talking about cold-boot times. I don't ever really [I]have[/I] to reboot, so can I claim ~5s to start up from suspend? I mean, a lot of things turn off still, so its basically a cold-boot.[/QUOTE] The difference there is that suspend still uses power. Hibernate (or hybrid boot) doesn't. One actually SHUTS DOWN the computer and one doesn't. I don't see the point of comparing the cold-boot between the different OSs in this way since you'll be doing it very rarely on Windows. When talking about day to day usage you should compare the time between hybrid boot and the fastest boot method Linux has that doesn't have negative side effects and uses no power. Even if that turns out to be full cold boot Linux would still probably win :v:

I'll try shutting down fully today and time it just for you guys :D However I can tell that my debian partition boot time is super fast, especially considering it's on a normal platter drive.

[QUOTE=sabreman;40981585]I'll try shutting down fully today and time it just for you guys :D However I can tell that my debian partition boot time is super fast, especially considering it's on a normal platter drive.[/QUOTE] You can do a full shutdown without turning the hybrid boot feature off completely by doing shutdown /s in the command prompt. Or just select restart, it does it also.

How do you guys boot so fast? I suppose I should actually time my boots. One thing I notice is that with Ubuntu, I have a ~15 second delay after booting and logging in before I can actually use my system -- there's some post-booting initialization that Ubuntu needs to take care of, I guess. But on Arch, I can begin using the system immediately after boot (though, then again, I haven't configured my Arch partition much).

[QUOTE=smlance;40981908]How do you guys boot so fast? I suppose I should actually time my boots. One thing I notice is that with Ubuntu, I have a ~15 second delay after booting and logging in before I can actually use my system -- there's some post-booting initialization that Ubuntu needs to take care of, I guess. But on Arch, I can begin using the system immediately after boot (though, then again, I haven't configured my Arch partition much).[/QUOTE] The reason is Arch doesn't do anything unless you tell it to, and this is it's greatest feature, imo :v: I can check my processes list and tell you exactly why everything is there and what it is doing; try doing that in Windows or Ubuntu.

From cold boot I'm loading Windows in 20 seconds. My Monitor takes 4 seconds to turn on. I'll record a video later.

[QUOTE=whatthe;40982631]From cold boot I'm loading Windows in 20 seconds. My Monitor takes 4 seconds to turn on. I'll record a video later.[/QUOTE] How long does it take with hybrid boot? I'm just curious, I haven't really benchmarked it myself. You have to do shutdown and start the computer manually, restart is always a full cold boot.

You can also hold shift down while shutting down to override the default and actually power off.

[QUOTE=Rayjingstorm;40983025]You can also hold shift down while shutting down to override the default and actually power off.[/QUOTE] Note that it does actually power off with hybrid boot, it is not the same as sleep/suspend. It doesn't keep anything in the memory, it hibernates the kernel.

Linux newbie here. Quick question for you guys. I've been having some trouble with my audio from a game and I'd like to turn it down, while not turning down skype in the process. Is there a way to do this? I'm running Lubuntu

So I just timed my boot times (completely turning of win8), I started timing when I hit the power button and stopped when I saw the desktop (both debian and windows are using auto login) Windows 8 (on an SSD): 20s Debian (on Platter disk): 42s if you don't count post time, you could subtract 6 seconds from each. [editline]10th June 2013[/editline] Windows 8 from it's normal shutdown state was 12s [editline]10th June 2013[/editline] Also: I remember from the 4 months when arch was my only os, that boot time was like 8 seconds or something really crazy (I had it on my SSD obviously). It was so fast that I would press the power button, look away, look back and it was booted.

My friend's laptop boots Arch off an SSD in about 7 seconds. It can do a full power cycle in about 9.

[QUOTE=RautaPalli;40983098]Note that it does actually power off with hybrid boot, it is not the same as sleep/suspend. It doesn't keep anything in the memory, it hibernates the kernel.[/QUOTE] And yet it's [B]STILL[/B] not the same as a complete system shutdown & then afterswards, start-up.