[JoshTriplett]

On a modern laptop running Linux, the three slowest things in the boot are:

- The firmware

- The bootloader timeout

- Waiting for the user to type the encryption passphrase

Everything else takes almost no time at all. So, if you can eliminate 5 seconds from the boot process in the normal case, without eliminating your ability to debug the system in the unusual case, that's a win.

[pm215]

But how often do you boot a modern laptop in the first place? I feel lke the time I save in not waiting those 5 seconds occasionally is all going to be spent again in the minutes wasted having to look up how I stop the instant autoboot (or failing to stop the autoboot and having to reset and try again) the first time I need to actually interact with grub...

[JoshTriplett]

Every time you update the Linux kernel, among other things.

Or, if you're working on speeding up virtual machine boots, in which case you skip the bootloader entirely and use the kernel's EFI stub.

[simonask]

Every time it runs out of battery power.

"I never let that happen." Cool.

[Zardoz84]

if you use the TPM storage, you can avoid typing the encryption passphrase

[JoshTriplett]

That doesn't provide the desired security, unless you also then carefully lock down the system so that the TPM doesn't provide the key if the software has changed. That's theoretically doable but challenging, with many failure modes in both directions: not being able to get into the system, or someone being able to get into the system when they shouldn't.

[lofaszvanitt]

.