On 25/09/2015 11:27, KatolaZ wrote:
> I actually had the impression that servers was what Laurent was
> referring to... :)

Was I? It's possible.
I usually refer to servers because it's the environment I'm used
to; but what I'm saying about boot times, parallelism and so on
is also true for clients, or any kind of machines really.

I think it's a mistake to say "Boot times do not matter".
Additionally to embedded systems, which I've already written about,
virtual machines are now ubiquitous. There are several projects
now that boot Linux in a Javascript virtual machine, in your
browser. I've just used one today:
http://linsam.homelinux.com/extra/s6-altsim/jor1k/demos/s6-rc.html
Lots of companies are now moving their production environments
to Docker containers, which are easier to host and manage than
physical machines. And yes, mobile computing - the future of
client machines is the phone, not the PC, with wildly different
user demographics and habits.

Boot times may not matter to you, on your desktop PC, because
you can make yourself a coffee while your machine boots. It may
not matter to the NOC person managing real servers, because
while one machine is booting, there are a hundred others already
serving. But boot times do matter for the person powering up an
Internet box, a VR machine or any "smart thing". They matter for
the person whipping up a complete OS in a Javascript VM, or
booting a container, or a phone. They will matter in tomorrow's
uses of Linux that we can't even foresee today.

--
Laurent