this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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Well tbf I'm using a framework now, but on my last laptop, a 2014 toshiba satellite with an i5 and 4gb of ram, it still started up in less than 30sec. Last time I booted it was when the framework 16s shipped, so not that long ago. What, you running a pentium II with 8 megs of RAM or something?
I had 2 testing devices: one with 4 gb of RAM and one with 8 gb. None of them are as powerful as anything with an i5 but I think they're decent enough.
Well alright, but that's a case of decade+ old hardware that may need something lighter on resources depending on the processor. 4gb of ram is totally enough to boot systemd systems quickly, so the processor may be a bit of your bottleneck there. But that's not exactly unexpected, for something like that you'd likely be looking for a lighter distro over one that is more current, like puppy, antix, slax, something meant for that application, it's just a case of picking the correct tool for the job.
You're totally right here but it only confirms what I said. If systemd wasn't heavier, it wouldn't take longer to boot on any hardware (exceptions are possible though).
Tbf, idk how long those systems would take to boot with a systemd-less OS either, but I bet it's still longer than my systemd-having satellite or framework, because the problem here isn't systemd, it's the ancient hardware. It's like claiming iOS sucks because the OG iPhone can't run iOS 18 well. (It does suck of course due to the walled garden and many other things, but the point is trying to run newer stuff on older hardware is always going to be "slower" because "old hardware.")
I think somewhere deep down you probably know that. Sure, systemd is heavier than no systemd, but also hardware that isn't over 10yr+ old can run it fine and nitpicking about its boot time is ridiculous unless you have that specific need, in which case your need becomes pertinent information to your nitpick.
Btw, I'd be interested in knowing just how long "long time to boot" is, is it even longer than a minute or two, which would be serviceable on hardware that ancient imo?
Now I completely disagree with this. Slower is slower, no matter the hardware. On newest hardware faster stuff still will be faster and power consumption will be lower. Some slowdown can be justified (for example when it's related to critical security or the amount of installed apps) but saying that it's the hardware is completely ridiculous unless the hardware has to emulate unsupported calls or something like that.
Around 90 seconds on the 8 gb machine I'd say. Imo it's extremely long. I don't remember the boot time on the faster 4 gb machine but I remember that using an alternative init system increased the speed to one comparable with my gaming system with an NVMe SSD and Windows 11. And that is on an HDD-only machine. I think it's very impressive.
It obviously also depends on the amount of services activated but the difference was massive so I think installing way more stuff wouldn't slow it down to the systemd level.
Honestly 90sec isn't that bad for old hardware like that, and whether you agree with using the appropriate software for your old hardware or not, it's still a thing. This is a you problem for sure.