Linux geeks have managed to get their favourite operating system to boot up in five seconds.

At the Linux Plumbers Conference Arjan van de Ven, Linux developer at Intel and author of PowerTOP, and Auke Kok, another Linux developer at Intel's Open Source Technology Centre, demonstrated a Linux system booting at superfast speeds.

Using an Eee PC, with solid-state storage, the two developers beat the five second mark with two software loads: one modified Fedora and one modified Moblin.

The projector could not sync fast enough for the audience to see the super fast boot up so they had to hold the pc up for the audience to see.

Arjan told the crowd the secret was not to attempt to save time but to set yourself a target of five seconds. They said they didn’t cheat and do what Microsoft does, by putting up the desktop while booting services behind the scenes. 

But the "done booting" time did not include bringing up the network, but did include starting NetworkManager.  The fastest they have managed the same boot up with a conventional hard disk would take 10-seconds.  X

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