First thing I did was go and get Bootchart, “a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process”. Bootchart is easy enough to install,  and unpacks at 51mb:

• sudo apt-get install bootchart

Wandered over to the bootchart documentation to see if there was anything special I ought to know about and realized I’m using Ubuntu… none of this is necessary.  Simply install and restart.

• sudo shutdown -r now

Once restarted,  you’ll want to check out /var/log/bootchart for the png files with the bootchart output.  Here’s an example from my 8.04.2 test machine I’ve been working with today.

Ubuntu 8.04.2 bootchart

Ubuntu 8.10 bootchart

Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 bootchart

For added awesome, since I have Dropbox running on my work ubuntu, work XP, and home ubuntu installations I was able to do this to get the .png over to my WinXP while writing this post:

cp /var/log/bootchart/*.png /home/kyle-test/Dropbox/Public

By the time I had turned back to XP Dropbox had already synced, and I was able to right click the uploaded PNG and choose Dropbox -> Public link, send a copy to my friend, and upload here into the post with absolute minimum effort. I’ll also have the file for comparison when I get home and do the same thing on 8.10.

Once I’ve learned enough to sufficiently decode this I’ll make another post explaining what each thing is and what can be configured/removed to make boot times faster.

In a nutshell, my HP dx5150 here at work boots in 30 seconds.

[UPDATE 6-20-09 4:36pm]
Just ran another bootchart on a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2 on my main machine – dropped from 24 seconds to 15, probably due to ext4 being the main filesystem.

[UPDATE 1-28-09 12:28am]
Finally got around to getting bootchart up on the 8.10 installation at home,  this one clocks in at 24 seconds!  Taking a look between the two it seems as if hard drive throughput is my biggest limiter – I only dropped 6 seconds on total boot time and this machine is at least 5 times as powerful as the dx 5150 at work.