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by tbrock 3243 days ago
It's better but definitely not "extremely fast".

The mac from 6 years ago does it in 300ms which is still 3-10x faster than what you suggest is the norm for your setup.

The difference between 300ms and 3 seconds is the tipping point for being annoyed when you cannot connect to the first page you visit.

1 comments

You misunderstood my numbers :)

Search "chromebook boot time" on YouTube. Checkout the comparisons between a $200 chromebook from 2013 and a $2000 MBP...

ChromeOS is not a real OS. It's an embedded appliance/cloud OS as a gateway to the web and Google services. Anyone can make a machine boot fast if it has nothing to load.
Just because it's not bloated doesn't make it any less of an OS then any other minimal Linux installation, it is itself built on the Linux kernel - it is just highly optimised for a very select set of software and hardware requirements.
It's gentoo based. Just because its DE is basically just chrome doesn't make it any less of an OS. Hell, you can even run another OS in a chroot on it.

You'll get similar performance if you put your OS on an SSD, and select services that minimize your boot time.

Can I join it to my AD infrastructure? Can I access network shares (NFS/SMB) ? I could list off a million "Can I...?" questions but the fact remains that it's a Google Chrome appliance. The detail that hidden underneath is a Linux/Gentoo base is irrelevant. This is no different than your PS4 which runs Orbis, a stripped down OS based on FreeBSD. It's not a real OS targeted for users who want a complete OS computing experience. It's an appliance with a single purpose built upon parts of an existing OS.