On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 12:15 AM, Daniel Dalton <d.dalton@iinet.net.au>wrote:
I'm running debian testing with gnome 3.4.
The first time I start my GUI on a particular boot be it at boot up via gdm, invoking the gdm init script manually by hand after logging into the console or by using startx it takes an incredibly long time for the gnome-shell to load and become ready.
Yeah Gnome-shell is not quick at startup, but nowhere that slow. I'm running Gnome 3.6 in Ubuntu 12.10 and it does take longer to load (more than Unity and KDE 4.9) but not by a large margin.
I have auto-log in enabled and it takes about 50-60 seconds from the point I start gdm or startx until the gui is ready to use. I'm using a core I5 2.4 GHZ machine with 4 GB of ram so there is a bit of power.
Are you using a machanical hard disk? If yes, that has much more to do with the speed of loading things than your CPU and RAM. Throw in a SSD in there and you'll be amazed by the difference. On my 3.5 year old Phenom II box but with a SSD, gdm + gnome-shell barely take 15 seconds to completely load. Cheers -- Aryan