Windows Performance Vs Linux Performance

[Gerowen]

I've been a Linux user for a little less than a year now. I love Linux, it's free, secure and full of free programs. It's also full of features that Windows doesn't have, but I've noticed something. Windows XP seems to run about twice as fast as Linux, regardless of which distro I try. Even Firefox runs quicker and smoother in Windows. My system stats are in my signature, could anybody tell me "why" Windows just seems to run faster? I got the original Doom working under Dosbox in Linux the other day and IT LAGS!!! What kind of computer lags when running the original Doom? In Windows it runs so flawlessly my computer almost beats it for me. Is there a reason for this? I have noticed Windows runs even faster after I installed Linux on the second hard drive alone and quit using both of them at once, guess that removed a lot of bottlenecking. Anyway, ideas anyone?

[thagame]

same here, thats normal for windows to run better.

system:

amd64 3200+

1gb ram

2 x 250gb hdds (250 for windows , 250 for gentoo linux)

ati x1300xl pci-e 512mb video

[Tomoko]

DOSBox is an emulator, so a game like Doom is going to run slower in it. I agree though, I've found XP performs better than any of the distros I've tried.

[Eternally1027]

I've been a Linux user for a little less than a year now. I love Linux, it's free, secure and full of free programs. It's also full of features that Windows doesn't have, but I've noticed something. Windows XP seems to run about twice as fast as Linux, regardless of which distro I try. Even Firefox runs quicker and smoother in Windows. My system stats are in my signature, could anybody tell me "why" Windows just seems to run faster? I got the original Doom working under Dosbox in Linux the other day and IT LAGS!!! What kind of computer lags when running the original Doom? In Windows it runs so flawlessly my computer almost beats it for me. Is there a reason for this? I have noticed Windows runs even faster after I installed Linux on the second hard drive alone and quit using both of them at once, guess that removed a lot of bottlenecking. Anyway, ideas anyone?

Drivers. Companies get nothing for developing drivers, so they often only develop drivers for the contexts where they are needed the most. Video Cards are a shining example of this. Video Card Developers, namely ATI and NVidia, are far too...we'll call it busy...to write good, optimized drivers for the Linux operating system. They write good drivers for Windows, however, Windows and Linux are very, very different. So they must then write a NEW driver for Linux.

Also, Games are designed with Windows in mind. They use Windows programming languages, Windows APIs (DirectX, etc.), and they are playing by Windows users. Windows has much better drivers due to market share. If Linux had 50% market share, it would have great games and the drivers to push the equipment along top notch speeds.

And Finally, this is a little bit on a limb for me, but I'm assuming Dosbox has something to do with it, too. Dosbox is software running to EMULATE software, to power software. It's the same concept of VMWare. An operating system in VMWare is not nearly as fast as if you were running the actual operating system. When you add software layers to complicate things, as you must do to run most games in Linux, things slow down drastically.

[_I am Reptar]

My ubuntu seems just as fast, if not faster than my XP system.

[Julius Caro]

On my dad's computer Firefox under linux seems A LOT faster than in windows in every aspect. Never realized why.

But in my slow-a** PC, windows is more responsive. I can't really say "it's faster". When it comes to open applications, both take ages and suck hard. (My PC is early-2001..) But Linux (specially under Gnome) is less responsive. When writing, characters take longer to appear, when moving things, clicking on things.. I always have that feeling that it is in fact slower.

KDE is more responsive than gnome, I can't really say it's slower than windows. But it still doesnt catch up with it when it comes to responsiveness.

[tmahmood]

Linux in Graphical mode might be slower in comparison to windows cause The X is a separate process that runs over Linux kernel and the Windows GUI is built into the kernel (Which causes a lot of security flow) again Linux uses Window managers which is another separate process. so you can guess why Linux would get slow. But My FC4 installation with KDE runs as fast as Windows XP & My Ubuntu installation is also a lot faster. And X org people are working for a new X that will be Hardware Accelerated so We'll have a lot of Eye Candy & Improvements in Speed

[Barney T. Administrators]

same here, thats normal for windows to run better.

That is just not true! Speed is really a product of computer hardware (CPU, RAM, video card, hard disk read / write speed). I can assure you that all of the distros that I use is equally (if not more) are as fast as Windows. I mean Fedora, SuSE (32-bit and 64-bit), Mandriva, Ubuntu, Kanotix, Knoppix, or any of the other distros that I have tried. The same goes for the BSD distros that I have tried. For a computer with hardware that is light, you can surely use less processes and lighter Window Managers (like Flux, Enlightenment, etc). Less eye-candy and resources drained.........by not using resource hogs like Gnome or KDE.

Gaming in Linux has a long way to go. You can blame that on the "non-support" of Linux by the manufacturers. Other than that, Linux can be tweaked to run as fast as any distro out there (including Windows).

Barney

Edited February 4, 2006 by barneyt

[markwolfe Veteran]

Yeah, you really can't use a blanket statement that "xxx is faster than yyy" when you compare the two OSes. You need to be very specific, as there are many different tasks, and configurations that can be done. And Linux is extremely flexible when it comes to configuration, and comes in a wide variety of initial default setups (varies by distro).

Any machine code should execute at basically the same speed on either x86 machine (I will limit consideration to this platform, as it is impossible to compare the performance between the two on SPARC or other platforms that Windows does not support).

In Linux, the system is designed to be able to run any X GUI that you would like (or none, if you don't need or want one). Linux seems to make better use of RAM by not pushing as much into swap as Windows does. Disk fragmentation doesn't seem to affect drive performance on the various *nix filesystems, like it does for FAT and NTFS. You don't have registry bloat, nor need to run anti-virus and anti-spyware as part of daily operation.

In my experience with RedHat and Fedora, I would agree that a default RH/FC install is more sluggish than a default plain-vanilla XP install. However, over time, the above Windows-specific issues will tend to slow down your system as you run, or if you add apps. Red Hat and Fedora also typically (and I have always thought that this was a stupid decision) have several server daemons running by default (sendmail, etc). These need to be shut off (which also brings it more inline with a typical XP install, which does not run a mail server by default).

Again, these items I bring up are tied to Fedora, and not representative of "Linux" as a whole.

In the end, I have Fedora running on a 1200MHz box that runs circles around my wife's XP on a 2GHz box. I choose Linux for the long-term health and speedy operation of my PC. :yes:

[Gerowen]

Could you tell me what processes in Fedora Core are unnecessary? I took sendmail of the startup list and I was wondering what others there may be.

[markwolfe Veteran]

Some of that will depend on what you do with your box (printing, different networking apps or needs, etc.)

Try posting the output of /sbin/chkconfig --list | grep 5:on to see everying set to run in runlevel 5 (X GUI running). You can send the output to a file by doing

/sbin/chkconfig --list | grep 5:on > services.txt

You can find out what each item is by doing a man xinetd, for example and read up to see if it is something you might need.

I am not an expert in this by any means, but I was able to remove a few things that I knew I didn't use.

You can stop a service by using Fedora's 'service' command: /sbin/service sendmail stop

However, you will still have it set to run on next start into runlevel 5 (or reboot) unless you also change it through chkconfig, like this:

/sbin/chkconfig --level 123456 sendmail off

which will make it stick for every boot.

[Gerowen]

I like KDE because it's full of tools and really easy to navigate. I've managed to improve performance to a degree by knocking off some of the visual prettiness and setting up a custom look that is less draggy on the memory, all 640 megs of it, lol. Here's the services.txt contents:

acpid			  0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
anacron			0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
apmd		   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
arptables_jf   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
atd				0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
auditd		 	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
autofs		 	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
bluetooth		  0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
canna			  0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
cpuspeed	   	0:off	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
crond			  0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
cups		   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
cups-config-daemon	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
gpm				0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
haldaemon		  0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
hpoj		   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
iiim		   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
ip6tables		  0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
iptables	   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
irqbalance	 	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
isdn		   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
kudzu			  0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
lm_sensors	 	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
mDNSResponder	  0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
mdmonitor		  0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
messagebus	 	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
netfs			  0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
network			0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
nfslock			0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
nifd		   	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
ntpd		   	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:off	5:on	6:off
pcmcia		 	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
portmap			0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
readahead		  0:off	1:off	2:off	3:off	4:off	5:on	6:off
readahead_early	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:off	4:off	5:on	6:off
rpcgssd			0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
rpcidmapd		  0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
sendmail	   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
smartd		 	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
sshd		   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
syslog		 	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
sysstat			0:off	1:on	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
wine		   	0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
xfs				0:off	1:off	2:on	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off
xinetd		 	0:off	1:off	2:off	3:on	4:on	5:on	6:off

[markwolfe Veteran]

Well, you still have sendmail set to run every time you boot (except singleuser mode).

Do a yum remove sendmail for one thing, unless you plan as setting up a mail server. ;)

I think that the rpcxxxxx daemons are for remote procedure calls. Check the man pages to be sure. You probably don't want those, either...

Also, do you use wine to run Windows apps at all? You have it running as well, though I don't think it takes up much resources, but every bit probably helps.

EDIT: Also, also, you might verify that you are set up to use DMA mode to your drives. /sbin/hdparm /dev/hda for your first hard drive on primary ATA channel.

Edited February 5, 2006 by markjensen

[Barney T. Administrators]

Well, you still have sendmail set to run every time you boot (except singleuser mode).

Do a yum remove sendmail for one thing, unless you plan as setting up a mail server. ;)

I think that the rpcxxxxx daemons are for remote procedure calls. Check the man pages to be sure. You probably don't want those, either...

Also, do you use wine to run Windows apps at all? You have it running as well, though I don't think it takes up much resources, but every bit probably helps.

EDIT: Also, also, you might verify that you are set up to use DMA mode to your drives. /sbin/hdparm /dev/hda for your first hard drive on primary ATA channel.

I'd listen to Mark... he really is a Linux superstar............

Barney

[markwolfe Veteran]

I'd listen to Mark... he really is a Linux superstar............

Linux Superstar? :ermm: Huh?

(Yup, it still says noob in my member title, and will never say "superstar") :p

[Mathiasdm]

Damn, there must be something wrong with my glasses :blink:

On-topic: what about DMA? I don't know much about it, but I hear it's often the cause of things being slow.

[markwolfe Veteran]

DMA? There is a HOWTO for that in our *nix HowTo & FAQ section.

You can check your drive settings by /sbin/hdparm /dev/hda as I said a few posts ago. Look for "using_dma = 1 (on)". There are other adjustments (to modes, etc) that I believe are in the HowTo.

Do a quick throughput check by using -tT to check drive performance cached and uncached.

[Deron Dantzler]

Sure, I've always heard that Linux is better performance wise. I'm sure this is the case for server applications where a GUI isn't necessary. However, on the user end I'm not sure this is the case. When I use Linux I notice that while the kernel seems to be very stable when you run a GUI on top of it like KDE or Gnome (which your ordinary user will want to do), I find both interfaces to be unstable and quite easy to lock up. I know this post isn't about raw performance but it is relevant to the conversation.

[raskren]

Linux in Graphical mode might be slower in comparison to windows cause The X is a separate process that runs over Linux kernel and the Windows GUI is built into the kernel (Which causes a lot of security flow) again Linux uses Window managers which is another separate process. so you can guess why Linux would get slow. But My FC4 installation with KDE runs as fast as Windows XP & My Ubuntu installation is also a lot faster. And X org people are working for a new X that will be Hardware Accelerated so We'll have a lot of Eye Candy & Improvements in Speed

The Windows GUI is not, nor has it ever been built into the kernel. It is a process that runs on top of another, just like Linux.

In Windows 2000/Xp the graphics subsystem is a kernel-mode process. Perhaps that's what you're referring to.

[markwolfe Veteran]

Sure, I've always heard that Linux is better performance wise. I'm sure this is the case for server applications where a GUI isn't necessary. However, on the user end I'm not sure this is the case. When I use Linux I notice that while the kernel seems to be very stable when you run a GUI on top of it like KDE or Gnome (which your ordinary user will want to do), I find both interfaces to be unstable and quite easy to lock up. I know this post isn't about raw performance but it is relevant to the conversation.

I haven't used KDE in a few years. I recall a couple of crashes, which were annoying. Seemed to be that it was the same app both times.

Software bugs are bound to happen. More so, as the system becomes more complex. Integration of components into the OS (I'm thinking WMP&IE in Windows here) brings more issues, as "assumptions" are made on how these two apps interrelate. When something minor changes in any one part, it can have a disasterous effect on the system as a whole. The "butterfly effect", if you will. Linux systems are designed to be modular. Have a problem with "firefox" in your KDE installation? Use "epiphany" or "konqueror" or "dillo" as your browser. No assumptions are made about what browser the user has, so the risk of bugs due to assumptions is close to nil. The coders don't write code to any idiosyncracies of a "locked-in" application.

You are right, though, that a post on stability isn't what the thread is about. If you do want stable, Debian is known for their "stable" repos. Yeah, the software is a bit older, but has stood the test of time and many millions of computer-hours (computing man-hours?) of operation.

For me, I find XP (which has been running on my wife and kids' PCs for years) to be unstable and prone to problems requiring a reboot. An anectdotal point, which carries little or no weight at all.

[Gerowen]

I just put Mandriva 2005 LE on my laptop which has a 1.7 Ghz Intel Pentium M processor and 512 MB of 433Mhz DDR2 SDRAM, and it actually does run a lot faster than Windows, even with all the animations and pretty gui effects of KDE turned on. I guess it's just my desktop's processor.

[fungusman]

I also found that windows runs much faster than linux, i spose its like what that other guy said about the drivers.. shame though cos linux is a nice operating system.

[d3nuo]

I use Ubuntu (gettin ready to install Kubuntu in a sec) alongside my windows distro.. I have to say my ubuntu (dapper) is rock solid and very very quick.. opening firefox and consequently using it is much much faster and more responsive. The overall system speed seems to be much better than windows overall.. although windows runs by no means slow for me.. the only think keeping me to windows is 5.1DDL soundcard drivers (lack thereof for linux) and programming in VB.net and C/C++ (specifics to windows gui) for my college classes. I really love the feel of linux and it's very very customizable. It's come a long way since I remember buying redhat8 in walmart..

[Barney T. Administrators]

Damn, there must be something wrong with my glasses :blink:

On-topic: what about DMA? I don't know much about it, but I hear it's often the cause of things being slow.

:rofl: ! That was really clever!

Barney

[hotdog666al]

Ive used Ubuntu Linux on this box (AMD XP 3000+) and it ran noticeably slower than windows.

I am not a windows fan, Infact, I hate windows. I'm more likely to support linux, but sadly in my case windows won.