> So to me this really looks like it applies neither to servers nor desktop.
It applies to both. We need desktops to boot up fast, because you said it yourself, sometimes they just need to. And no one likes waiting around for their machines to boot. Can you imagine the volume of complaints about long boot times that would come in to large-scale distros from annoyed users? That alone makes it a high priority.
And on top of that, we need servers to boot up fast, because nowadays they're virtualized and started/stopped constantly when services are scaled up and down. Can you imagine trying to scale up a fleet of servers and waiting a couple of minutes for each one to boot?
It applies to both. We need desktops to boot up fast, because you said it yourself, sometimes they just need to. And no one likes waiting around for their machines to boot. Can you imagine the volume of complaints about long boot times that would come in to large-scale distros from annoyed users? That alone makes it a high priority.
And on top of that, we need servers to boot up fast, because nowadays they're virtualized and started/stopped constantly when services are scaled up and down. Can you imagine trying to scale up a fleet of servers and waiting a couple of minutes for each one to boot?