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Comment by Aurornis

2 days ago

Most systems do not have 5 minute POST times. That’s an extreme outlier.

Linux runs all over, including embedded systems where boot time is important.

Optimizing for edge cases on outliers isn’t a priority. If you need specific boot ordering, configure it that way. It doesn’t make sense for the entire Linux world to sacrifice boot speed.

I don't even think my Pentium 166 took 5 minutes to POST. Did computers ever take that long to POST??

  • Look at enterprise servers.

    Competing POST in under 2 minutes is not guaranteed.

    Especially the 4 socket beasts with lots of DIMMs.

  • Old machines probably didn't, no, but I have absolutely seen machines (Enterprise™ Servers) that took longer than that to get to the bootloader. IIRC it was mostly a combination of hardware RAID controllers and RAM... something. Testing?

  • Physical servers do. It's always astounding to me how long it takes to initialise all that hardware.