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FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

www.theregister.com FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

On AWS Firecracker – but there are other new micro-VM engines around, too

FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds
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[HN] FreeBSD can now boot in 25 milliseconds

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85 comments

  • Still , as with Linux, you spend hours in configuring something that in windows just installs and runs … not saying windows is the best OS , but as all companies … it is less time consuming and everything just runs on it.

    • When was the last time you ran a distro and how awful was the hardware to have this experience? In the past 10 years all of them have been fairly "hit the ground running" for me unless it had something weird like Nvidia Optimus

      • Anything involving Nvidia, really.

        I installed Xubuntu on an old laptop with a Geforce 635M. During installation I checked "Install proprietary drivers". So it installs the current Nvidia driver instead of the correct legacy one for my GPU, even though it obviously would be able to tell which GPU I have installed.

        So then I uninstalled the current one and installed the correct legacy one, but the driver still doesn't work. Took me quite a while that apt remove/install only removes/installs the packages but doesn't actually load/unload the drivers from the kernel.

        So I loaded the legacy driver into the kernel, but it still didn't work. Apparently, the current driver takes precedence, even though it doesn't even support the GPU at all.

        In the end I had to reinstall the current one, unload both drivers from the kernel, uninstall the current driver and load the legacy driver.

        This took me a few hours and I am pretty sure that someone who doesn't have an IT degree would probably just not have a working GPU and that's that.

        Then I spent a few hours to get Optimus to run, but couldn't figure it out. So now this laptop cannot be used without a battery source for any decent amount of time, because the GPU is constantly running and consumes massive amounts of energy just to render e.g. a browser window.

        Edit: And for sure, anyone who says they have ever had difficulties with anything regarding Linux is directly getting downvotes. That's also a big issue regarding Linux. Whenever someone has trouble or asks for help, there's always some helpful fanboy ready to downvote and call you a noob. Funnily enough, these fanboys usually are running Linux for two weeks so far.

      • Not OP, but I recently started switching my personal computer to Linux. First I ran Fedora, now I run Pop!OS.

        I have to say so far my experience was rather mediocre. As a software developer I know a lot about my windows computer and I am very able to handle Linux based VMs.

        When it comes to my personal computer, there is just so much that does not work.

        • Under Fedora the Graphics Driver for nVidia would cause startup problems. I had to restart multiple times to get to the desktop.
        • Pop!OS automatically installed a graphics driver which caused the system to black-screen. I had to uninstall it with a live boot.
        • My mouse is super choppy and if I set it to a high sensitivity, it's so sensitive I can control it at all and I can't switch back to the old value.
        • I have a GoXLR and that only initializes on every third try (reboot). The people working on that are super responsive and friendly, but still, I have to tinker, configure and I am unable to resolve the issues.
        • Fedora would randomly put my system into read-only mode because the boot drive is corrupt. It was not corrupt. This happened with two Fedora installations, but not with Pop!OS and not with Windows.
        • Pop!OS keeps resetting my main screen to a screen that is not my main screen.
        • YouTube Videos are way slower now. I have to wait for 4-5 seconds for them to buffer, but it's the same browser as under Windows (Firefox).
        • Both distros allowed me to use some kind of software store to download and install applications. Those applications did not work in many cases. VS Code could not start since it ran in a sandbox mode. TeamSpeak would not start as well.
        • Don't get me started on gaming.

        I am really trying to like Linux and I will keep it as my OS. But so far, compared to Windows, there is just so much tinkering and McGuyvering.

        I hate to say it, but a modern Windows... Just works. There are several other things I do not like about Windows, like privacy issues, that totally make Linux come up on top, but for speed or ease of use there are definitely worlds between those systems.

    • Kind of hard to believe people still say stuff like this...

      There is plenty of stuff that Linux does much better than Windows, for example containerized service and applications, which is why Windows needs a Linux subsystem at all. It's possible that the main reason you think Linux is bad is that you aren't as familiar with it.

      The biggest downside to Linux remains official hardware and software support, though that's a business economics issue and not a technical limitation.

      I honestly could not imagine a circumstance in which I go back to using Windows or switch over to Mac, because Linux does basically everything I want and then some.

      • The point about the WSL doesn't really hold as a con - the NT kernel is a microkernel so it uses subsystems by design. Iirc there's even a hypervisor running below it by default. Architecturally Windows is absolutely marvelous, they just decided to make about the worst out of it.

        • I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying WSL is a con, I'm saying that the reason Microsoft ships a Linux subsystem is that there are useful programs and things that can be done with Linux.

    • If you like Windows just use it. Don't yuck someone else's yum, bud.

    • I don't know what sort of bubble people live in, or if people convinced themselves that a computer getting slower over time because of OS clutter is normal, but every Windows PC I ever had had shit ton of problems, getting slow to the point of feeling like I have a $100 laptop instead of a $2000 one being the most common.

      And can't say MacOS is much better, at least judging by my gf getting freezes all the time and having to reboot by holding the power button.

    • More context please. There are a ton of things that "just work" on Linux, just like Windows. I have spent hours troubleshooting and configuring things on Windows as well.

      With either OS, time spent configuring and installing things is heavily dependent on the experience of the user and their ability to interpret logs and error messages. With most OS's, configuration and troubleshooting is just a matter of "knowing where to look" combined with understanding how the OS itself works.

      Server services are much easier to configure on Linux, IMHO. Additionally, I find configuration to be much more flexible and (generally) more intuitive than Windows but that is my opinion. However, I have worked with both Linux and Windows since they were created, so I have a good number of years of experience.

      My point is that it really depends on what you are wanting to do.

      (Rant: Deep troubleshooting in Windows has always sucked and the methods to do so have changed a thousand times over the years. It's a royal pain to keep up, TBH. Very rarely have I needed "reinstall Linux" because something was broken beyond fixing.)

      • The guy before isn't exactly wrong.

        Many things that "just work" on Linux are things you just don't do on Windows. E.g. swapping the DE or theming/customizing the whole thing usually works great out of the box. But on Windows you just don't do that.

        On the other hand, getting e.g. legacy Nvidia drivers working correctly and setup so that it automatically switches between the power-consuming dGPU and the power-saving iGPU is a major pain in the rear. On Windows that just works. Mostly Nvidias fault, but to the user who has to deal with the situation it doesn't matter who is at fault.

        And in general, if you come from Windows with a lot of Windows experience and then have to dive into Linux, you mainly notice the things that don't just work on Linux.

        Also, fixing problems in Windows might take you through the registry or arcane wizards. But you hardly ever get into CLI and never into config files. So if you swap over to Linux, where almost any help you find online will go straight into CLI and config files (even if a GUI solution would be available), that can be pretty jarring.

        I've been using Linux professionally for ~15 years and privately for ~5. But I still remeber getting into it very vivdly.

        • Very good points. I remember the drama of trying to get simple things like USB, Bluetooth and even WiFi working on Linux quite a few years ago. However, even though those could be problematic, I did learn a ton about how drivers interacted with various chipsets. That, in turn, led me down the path of how to apply specific patches and build my own kernel modules. It was absolutely a double edged sword.

          It really is a shame that most GPU vendors haven't spent more time developing better drivers for Linux, but in some ways, I feel their pain. (I am leaving out the open vs closed source debate on that.) Windows does provide consistency, through all of its shortcomings. Linux can be very .. eh.. interesting between different distros, for sure.

          But yeah, I didn't rush to downvote the above commenter as they were speaking from their own perspective and experience. No shame in that.

    • It always funny to me to hear this sentence.

      Just look how it is to install software on Windows.

      You need to open the menu and type the browser name(/click on a shortcut), open the browser, search for your software, check you're clicking on the right site and not some scam website, [sometimes you need to go few pages until you end up in the downloading page], clicking on the download button, and.. *if* the download completed successfully.. there's still more..!

      Now installing..

      On Unix-like systems-

      <package-mangager> <install-command> <software-name>.

      Ex: apt install i3. That's it!

    • I don't want to agree with this comment. And in fact I would say most of the time I don't. Most stuff "just works" nowadays. But I do occasionally have to fight with something I wouldn't in Windows. Easily worth it IMO but that's not going to be everyone's take.

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