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Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

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kevin_thibedeau

This is a Windows problem. I can cold boot and have Firefox up in 30 seconds in Linux.

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An HTML renderer, in only 90,000,000,000 clock cycles? Verily I say, technology has come a long way.

Oh shush, and just go type "lynx" into your beloved green glowing terminal /jk

It's not just an HTML rendering engine. Heck, even a rendering engine is very complex these days.

They don't do this on Linux because there's no unified way to do it on Linux. It also happens on macOS if memory serves me right, but macOS makes it aggravating enough for people to usually disable it because of that (you can't do a silent application launch when logging in on macOS from what I can tell - sole exception being iTunesHelper on older versions - so any browser that sends push notifications opens a new window when you login to the computer, making it obvious and annoying).

There's no unified way to do it in Linux if you target people running bespoke i3 configs or dedicated environments (such as the Steam Deck game UI; the KDE environment will just work, obviously). With GNOME, KDE, and Mate, LXDE, and probably every other normal desktop environment, you can use XDG autostart to launch programs on login (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Autostart).

Even still, there are quick and easy configuration files available online for software like i3 (https://github.com/minad/i3-config/blob/master/autostart) to make them compatible with normal Linux setups.

I don't know why Linux versions of browsers don't do this, but it certainly isn't a technical limitation.

> I don't know why Linux versions of browsers don't do this, but it certainly isn't a technical limitation.

Shh! Don't tell them! They might start doing it.

> you can't do a silent application launch when logging in on macOS from what I can tell - sole exception being iTunesHelper on older versions

You absolutely can, there's ways for apps to launch without adding a dock icon or windows, this is typically done by menu bar apps, but can also be done by daemon-style services, or by apps meant to do global-style UIs (like a lot of the spotlight replacement apps)

Isn't 30 seconds a lot of time just to start a browser?

I like the consistency though, had the same start up time on my Pentium III and Firefox 1.6 nearly 20 years ago /s

Frequently you find people complaining about browser performance have multiple extensions involved and they are suffering from “pluginitis”.

Pluginitis sufferers, however, have very little insight into their condition and frequently react violently when you tell them that your browser starts in just a few seconds.

Back in 1999 my relatives were browsing the web over dialup with 640x480 screens and frequently had more than 50% of the vertical screen area consumer by window chrome, browser buttons, and toolbar after toolbar installed by multiple (now forgotten) web sites such as Yahoo, Lycos, Hotmail, AOL, CNET, etc…. Oddly none of these people saw anything wrong with this.

No no no. If a plugin that blocks cookies and stuff like that manages to slow down a browser it means there's a big design error in that browser.

This has nothing to do with plugins. This is on browsers whose only installed extension is uBlock Origin. I'd hardly consider that pluginitis, since browsing the internet without an adblocker is tantamount to asking for malware these days.

uBlock Origin is a counterexample. It’s the only or very close to only browser extension that I think anyone should install.

The first 26 is the OS getting to the desktop.

...of which 20 seconds is typing in the LUKS passphrase

They said: "cold boot and start the browser." That's two things, not just starting the browser.

> I can cold boot and have Firefox up in 30 seconds in Linux.

You're lucky. That's not my experience at all. I stopped using Firefox in part because it's the only browser that takes more than 2 minutes to start up on my Linux boxes.

Lucky? All of my computers can launch Firefox within seconds, not minutes. That includes one from more than a decade ago. Have you installed Firefox on a spinning hard drive instead of an SSD?

I say you're lucky because I'm jealous. I wish FF worked as well for me. It used to, but something changed a couple of years back that broke it.

It's true that I don't use SSDs. It's also true that no other app (including other browsers) takes such an absurdly long time to start up, so I don't think the lack of an SSD is the issue.

Or, if it is, that means there's a larger problem with Firefox. You shouldn't have to run special hardware to run a browser.

Be ware that cold booting isn't actually cold booting anymore, but more like the suspend feature of old. You need to restart the computer (or pull the plug) to shut it down for real.

It's part of why laptops can't hold a charge anymore.

> Be ware that cold booting isn't actually cold booting anymore, but more like the suspend feature of old. You need to restart the computer (or pull the plug) to shut it down for real.

Not on Linux, which is what the parent poster is using. This "shut down means hibernate, you have to press restart to actually shut down" behavior is a Windows-only novelty.

Although you can configure Linux to do this, if you're feeling masochistic.

I configured my laptop to suspend on lid close. One day it didn't and overheated itself so badly it permanently damaged the screen.

What??

For years, I've been using my laptops connected to external monitors and I/O devices with the lid closed. I've never had any of them get anywhere near hot enough to damage the screen.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame that on Linux as much as it seems there was a hardware fault in the laptop.

I have a desktop with no swap configured. It can only cold boot when off. There is no way to hibernate, suspend, or whatever. Shutdown and long pressing the power button kills everything.

That's kinda scary. Linux assumes you have swap. If you do not, you may OOM with significant free memory because it needs it when swapping pages. Granted, not super common in a desktop setting, but still. Like a 64 Mb swap file is all you need to avoid this.

+1 - I reboot my Mac once a quarter.

Why are people even rebooting?

The only time my windows computer reboots is when the power goes out.

(Also, I highly recommend staying away from windows, Microsoft is getting incredibly intrusive. If my work didn't use windows exclusively, I'd be on linux)

Windows updates! Security updates every month. (Second Tuesday of each month.) It's lovely. Last time I checked the patch notes. Okay, nothing that affects me. Two days later I found my computer rebooted without any nagging or warning beforehand :|

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday

I hope you live in Buenos Aires where the power goes out weekly or else you are running a very insecure computer and are a threat to everyone around you. Unfortunately users like yourself forced Microsoft to require restarts for security updates which make the world a better place but really piss off the non-technical people.

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