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Comment by sgtnoodle | Hacker News Reader

I have a 5950X CPU, a gen 4 PCI-E NVME, and a 6800xt GPU. I normally run linux, but I wanted to play a computer game in VR last night like a jerk. I rebooted into Windows 10. It had at least three pages of full screen pop ups begging me to update to windows 11. I launched Steam. It took about 10 seconds to load, then restarted itself to update, then downloaded about 1GB of game files and did about 5GB of disk IO, over about 5 minutes. Launching VR took about 30 seconds, with at least one error message. The game didn't work with an obscure error message, and so I spent 10 minutes and a reboot updating my graphics drivers. That didn't work, so I tried deleting the game's config file. That didn't work, and so I unplugged all but one monitor. I finally got the game to work, and I had to restart it twice to tweak the graphics settings since I had deleted the config. So, about half an hour of hassle to play a game for about half an hour of gameplay.

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I seldom post on annoyances, but what you wrote is such a similar experience to mine.

Recent experience: I boot into Windows, but it screams for update. Ok, I update. It triggers my bios update - to my surprise, I had no idea an OS can do that. Ok, updating bios. Now Windows want me to update to win 11. Sure, let's give it ago, I waited this long. Message pops up - "Windows can't be updated to version 11 on this machine" or something along those lines.

OK, deep breaths, let's try to play some Dota. I start the game, play with friends aaaand here's the popup that asks me if I want to restart my machine now or schedule it for later - of course, this popup comes at the worst time possible, minimizing the game in the crucial moment and then I remembered - "ah yes, this is why I abandoned Windows, the updates and constant annoyance every week".

On topic - I run PopOS! and it boots below 10 seconds. After reading this article, I'll fiddle to see if it can be lowered.

The best thing about Windows 11 is that it finally pushed me to go to Linux, and I switched to Pop OS. I had played around with Mint 10 or so years ago, so honestly, I was braced for a whole lot of friction and little irritations, missing drivers, hours on stack overflow, that kind of thing. The best way I can describe the actual feeling was like putting on aftersun after getting sunburned. It's honestly bizarre that I can feel the absense of intrusion as the OS just does its thing in the background.

Out of curiosity. Why not Pop and not the latest Mint?

Both are among my favorites. I'd say Pop is good for people wanting something more modern while Mint is ideal for people liking a more traditional UI.

Its always real hard o make these decisions. It was between Mint, Ubuntu and Pop. Pop comes with nvidia drivers, and I liked the window tiling and keyboard shortcuts.

doesn't mint also have the nvidia drivers? typically there's a "drivers" menu in the settings.

Ditto. Windows' disrespect is what finally pushed me to Linux full-time.

Gentoo also boots incredibly quickly. I can't recommend it enough.

Or, if you're sane, Manjaro.

Or, if you're less sane but not insane enough for Gentoo, Arch. :p

I would say NixOS is well worth checking too!

> It triggers my bios update - to my surprise, I had no idea an OS can do that.

Linux can do that too, it's an UEFI trick (it reboots into a capsule loader, which loads the new firmware into RAM and reboots into the current firmware's built-in updater). Try it: "fwupdmgr get-updates" to see if you have an update, then "fwupdmgr update" to reboot and install the update.

Apologies if you're already aware of this, but DoTA is one of the first games Valve ported to Linux, so it should play just fine (some say better) without requiring to boot into Windows.

It works on Linux, but there's constant stuttering when the game starts. I do play it on Linux, however it's easier to boot into Windows when it comes to odd LAN party here and there and playing games with friends without looking into which Proton runtime to use and such :)

Thanks for the heads up, I did know but I appreciate the intent!

Proton is not needed because it's a native version. The stuttering might be due to uncached shaders, which now steam downloads periodically, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Windows has a lot of tasks that are scheduled to run infrequently. Search indexing, checking for updates, TRIM and defragmenting, antivirus scans etc. However if you only boot Windows infrequently, then those tasks will run every time you boot. I've seen this happen many times where someone who uses Windows infrequently is always greeted with a slow computer which encourages them to stop using Windows altogether.

Microsoft should really fix that one of these days.

I use my playstation very rarely. I have almost this same experience every time. Lots of systems seem to want to 'update the world' if you have not used them in a few months.

I have the same experience with Windows. I launch Windows to play the same two games since 5 years, at it regularly fails at that simple task.

Consoles used to be better about this, but now it's the exact same BS. The only console that makes an effort not to waste your time is the switch.

Man, I don't know. I only use Windows for gaming, and I'm as much annoyed by it as the next guy, but I'm always impressed with how fast it boots compared to Linux (Arch with i3). Granted, apart from Steam, nothing's installed. But on Linux, not much is started in the background before I log in, either.

This on a 2013 Xeon 2667v2 (ivy bridge) with a PCIe 3 NVMe.

I run Arch. It seems like, in my case, its startup time is dominated by systemd networking coming up. It's pretty fast though.

I also run Arch. `systemd-analyze critical-chain` shows that the longest Linux step is `systemd-udev-settle.service`. The UEFI step is longer still, and I don't have a classic bootloader, I use efistub.

My network is handled by NetworkManager, so I think it only comes up after I log in. I'm not quite sure what udev is waiting for, but since I don't boot up my computer often enough, it never bothered me enough to go hunting. But it's just surprising to see Windows come up quicker, on exactly the same hardware (dual boot on the same NVMe).

Same here - since upgrading to NVME SSD my boot times were 3-5 sec (!) with Win10, and 5-10 sec with Win11. I think there's at least something they're doing right, and normal Linux desktop has a long way to go still (mine still easily takes 1 min on the same system..)

I think among the three, MacOS takes the crown though - easily takes 5 minutes to boot, at least on an enterprise system.

I dual boot Windows and Linux on my home computer, Windows is quick to start (if I can keep the is reasonably clean) but Linux was still faster.

Got a speedy NVME, and associated speedy hardware, and Windows would come up surprisingly quick, but man Linux was just like a light switch. The longest amount of time was spent waiting for the system to let me choose which OS I wanted.

I wish I could have 2 separate power buttons, which pointed to 2 separate nvme’s, so I wouldn’t haven’t to waste time choosing, and could just boot straight into the desired OS.

Do you remember drive caddies that fit into 5.25 bays?

Hacky way: NVMe extender cable to drive bay. Split to dual connectors. Mechanical setup that acts as an interlock, where you push the desired drive into the connector, and that disconnects the other drive.

Total overkill and probably not practical to make. Fun to think about though.

Your motherboard probably has a header for a chassis intrusion switch, and presumably grub is open source, so you could probably do that with a few hours of hacky coding. Or, you could use an Arduino Leonardo and simply emulate a keyboard that pushes the right sequence of keystrokes at the right time.

wow. my macbook takes about 6 seconds to get to a login screen from a cold boot. maybe you've got some network shenanigans going on due to the enterprise environment?

>It had at least three pages of full screen pop ups begging me to update to windows 11.

Haven't booted into non-enterprise Windows for years (only use it for work) so this comment absolutely sent me. Thanks – needed a laugh

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