Best/Easy way to set up a quick booting Linux

Question

Hopefully this still falls within StackOverflow's umbrella!

I'm looking to create a quick boot linux laptop for my wife. All it really needs is to be able to do is browse the internet (with flash and video etc.).

Are there any distros that are made for this, or any guides out there that show good ways to speed stuff up? I've read that I should "remove stuff from the kernel that I don't use" but that's a little out of my skill-set.

Thanks!

Answer 1

There are LiveCD-versions of working linux-distros with browser and installed flash, java.

Check out LiveCD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD

you will find links to different flavours with download.

There are also USB-drive-versions.

Answer 2

I believe Xubuntu is designed for low memory footprint/fast booting and whatnot while still having a decent amount of features. Not a Linux user but it just seems to stick out in my head.

Answer 3

Try: Damn Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.

Alternatively, get an Asus motherboard with expressgate - it has an onboard Linux (spashtop) that boots in 3 seconds. Its designed for quick web surfing, IM, music etc whilst still letting you boot into your main OS.

Answer 4

Some guys got an EEE PC netbook booting in 5 seconds running a modified version of Fedora. Might be a good starting point: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

Answer 5

If you're using Ubuntu (or a variant, like xubuntu or kubuntu), there is a package called BootUp-Manager. There's an article about it over at Lifehacker. It lets you check and uncheck things in the startup and shutdown scripts to optimize things (such as turning off checking for new hardware, or whatever)

You may also be able to gain a simple speed-up by going into System->Administration->Services and disabling any services you don't need.

If you'd like to see how much time is being spent on each part, install the package Bootchart, and that should give you a detailed profile of everything that goes on during startup, and let you focus on the most time-consuming parts, and measure your progress as you tune the system.

Answer 6

If you really want it to boot fast, I would suggest creating an initrd containing exactly the software you need to do what you want it to do. The initrd will get read from the disk once as one large file, and then everything will run out of ram.

This is not an easy solution, the easiest solution will be jishi's solution of using a Live CD, but, that won't be the fastest solution.