speeding up boot time (was: knoppix-autoconfig fully con...)

Hi all,

what would be really nice to save some boot time: A "skip hw detection and read hw config from file instead" option. Many people use Knoppix on the same machine all the time and could re-use hw configs.

A propos speeding up boot time:

It would be great to see the ideas (especially starting services in parallel) from 
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-boot.html?ca=dgr-lnxw04BootFaster
taken to reality. I think Knoppix would be the ideal system to implement the suggestions from there because Knoppix is more a "fixed"/"frozen" system than anything running from HD.

As for shutdown: 
Why not speed it up using "shutdown -f"?

Right now, I can't play around with it myself as I am on vacation but perhaps someone does.

Greetings,
probono