Japanese group releases Knoppix Linux CD that boots in less than a minute
Japan's Alpha Systems has released a variant of Knoppix Linux, aptly named Accelerated Knoppix 1.0, that is promised to boot in less than a minute. Knoppix Linux is a self-contained Linux operating system that boots into memory from a CD or DVD. Since it doesn't touch the hard-drive, people have used Knoppix to explore the Linux operating system and even perform system recovery tasks.
Previous versions of Knoppix generally took a fair amount of time to boot up, caused by hardware detection and on-the-fly decompression of the operating system. This faster booting variant optimizes the hardware detection and caches parts of the file system.
Accelerated Knoppix is available for download from the group's website. The group is also planning to release an acceleration kit that will allow other Knoppix developers to make their operating systems boot faster.
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Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.