I did some checks on the start-up time of the three operating systems I have on my MacBook. They are fairly equivalent in terms of functionalities. I could use either one to get the job done.
| Comparision of start up times between different operating systems on same hardware | ||||
| Operating System | Startup time | WLAN WPA Start up | Total | Shutdown time |
| MacOSX | 20 sec | 5 sec | 25 sec | 10 sec |
| MS Windows XP | 54 sec | 10 sec | 64 sec | 15 sec |
| Ubuntu Linux 7.04 | 70 sec | 35 sec | 105 sec | 50 sec |
| Test conditions: - MacBook Intel Core Duo 2 Ghz, 2 Gb RAM - All operating systems set for automatic login with the user account |
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The job is not that difficult to handle. Mainly it consists of web browsing, e-mail and general documents. I have Firefox,Thunderbird and OpenOffice on all platforms. In the case of MacOS, I use NeoOffice instead. It nicely integrates with the Aqua GUI and does not require to load X11 to work, like the official OpenOffice version.
Further, with MacOS, I can close down the lid of my laptop and know it will work when I reopen it. With Ubuntu, I have a 50% chance (risk ?) to need to reboot and loose whatever work I was doing.
I guess I have a good reason to boot MacOSX more than the other two.
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The problem with Linux, is not a problem with “linux” but with Linux Distro’s in general. If you know how, you can build your own distro that is much much faster, or tweak your existing one.
The Linux Distros have very very bad habits often, somewhat like Windows but worse in some ways, about starting everything you don’t need, and may never need, all at once, before you can actually hit your desktop. OSX on the other hand, doesn’t have a lot of processes started by default, and doesn’t block the desktop from loading because something isn’t done in the background.
There are some slow downs that are application specific – like the WPA startup – which can’t be fixed manually, without improvements in the software itself, which means Linux still loses in startup times for a 1:1 comparison, but usually it can be gotten to be better than windows at least, on average. But apart from custom hacks of bizaare nature, I have rarely gotten Linux to go from power to Desktop + applications in equal time to OSX. A sad state imo, since in other technical areas Linux is superior, and it could be so much better than it is…