[clug] "Why switching back to Solaris might be a good idea"

[Daniel Pittman]

Michael James <michael at james.st> writes:
> On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:16:55 pm Jason wrote:
>
>> I took some time the other day to look at my bootchart output and found
>> enough fluff to cut the time from a ridiculous 85 seconds down to a not
>> pleasant 60s without too much difficulty
>
> Solaris had normal and reconfigure boots years ago.
> root> touch /reconfigure; init 6
>
> Most reboots do not involve finding new hardware.

Actually, these days they do, especially for laptops: more and more
devices are connected to a "discovery" bus, not a "fixed" bus.  Examples
of this are the USB and IEEE1394 devices that need discovery to operate.

In my current laptop, two fixed devices (BlueTooth, Fingerprint Scanner)
are USB connected; in other laptops there are significantly more.

It is also common, as with some of the new netbook machines, for PCI
Express HotPlug to be used to implement, for example, the wireless "kill
switch", since this allows the part to be entirely powered down.

USB internal connections are becoming more common for "desktop"
hardware, also; a number of "dual tuner DVB" cards, for example, have a
PCI and a USB tuner on the same carrier.

> Does the inherent time to probe everything make it worth going back
> there?

We no longer live in a world where fixed probing is a viable option for
most machines — there is only dynamic probing possible.  So, no, this
isn't really a viable solution.

Regards,
        Daniel