This is a set of small programs for testing startup costs using perf. Yes, this is mostly pointless, but it was fun to do it and to look at the numbers. You'll need lots of packages installed to make all of the programs to work. They should all be available in (Debian) Sid: - java: openjdk-6-jdk openjdk-6-jre-zero icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm gcj-4.6 - python: python2.6 python2.7 python3.2 pypy - etc. Main target is "make log", and it is recommended to run in in single-user mode, and with an idle system. For consistency, also force the make run on a single CPU (this might make things a tad slower, but the results should be more stable).