Windows Performance Vs Linux Performance

[Riz360]

On my older box, Linux seems to launch things painfully slow compared to windows. I guess I also read this article recently:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=140

Same with my P3 Box.

Windows is pretty fast on it, Linux is very slow, not just loading but generally. Sluggish performance with apps etc.

[Barney T.]

I've seen some other fairly typical situations. One being accidently filling the root directory and the system not booting properly. The kernel upgrade failing and the system not being able to boot. These are easy problems to fix, but if you're new to Linux you probably wouldn't know where to start.

Yeah, but this guy is talking about his sister screwing up the system (I assume she is a plain user). She would not have access to the root folder and most certainly not have write or execute permissions.

I would think that this would of be concern to an inexperienced administrator......... :shifty:

Barney

[markjensen]

I guess that some distinction must be made between Linux user and a Linux administrator.

A Linux user is incapable of any real harm. However, a poor admin can wreak unholy destruction. ;)

[Barney T.]

I guess that some distinction must be made between Linux user and a Linux administrator.

A Linux user is incapaable of any real harm. However, a poor admin can wreak unholy destruction. ;)

I think that this is what is the crux of the matter....... thanks!

Barney

[fungusman]

I think that for someonw who uses a computer occasionally windows is the best option as its simple.

I am a windows fanatic and although it loads faster i still find linux to be more stable.

However.

I think that the main problem with people who use computers occasionally is that they dont know what they are doing, they will go online download a load of free games and smiley central and before you know it that super fast windows machine is running dog slow.

Whereas people who have linux generally have a level of technical know-how (if they didnt they would have chosen windows) and are therefore less likely to screw it up.

I guess that some distinction must be made between Linux user and a Linux administrator.

A Linux user is incapaable of any real harm. However, a poor admin can wreak unholy destruction. wink.gif

Damn right... and a windows admin cant do that?

If for some reason you really need a blazing fast boot, replace sysvinit with initng on any distro. You'll already be browsing with firefox when windows hasn't even shown the login screen.

Im actually loving this, thanks man :D

[ichi]

Damn right... and a windows admin cant do that?

A windows admin, yes, but windows doesn't default to that.

Also windows doesn't provide any mean to automatically download all your software from reliable sites and perform a crc check to ensure your software has not been tampered with, so even if the user had root priviledges and decided to install some useless packages, those would not harm the system and could be removed in a clean way.

[Dolfhin]

My Ubuntu machine is quite fast and that is withouth any tweaks. Got to love initng though :p

[fungusman]

even if the user had root priviledges and decided to install some useless packages, those would not harm the system and could be removed in a clean way

I did not know that... this is intrigueing, thanks for the info

[Angelox]

Here's a Linux observation which may or may not help you;

For a long time, I noticed Firefox or Konqueror would start up, then just hang for a while with a message on the bottom status-bar "Looking up whateversite.com"- this problem made windows OS seem much faster than Linux. This was so on my server and on my clients ( I have a home LAN). Even at boot up, Linux would hang on any internet-related issues (such as time sync). After some digging around, I realized there was a little file in etc called "resolv.conf" which apparently attempts to create a DNS search order, and for some reason , always places "localhost" (or what ever you call the machine you are one) first.

If you don't have a dns server set up on your local machine, this is what makes the lag. I fixed my problem by setting up a dns server and pointing all the other machines in the LAN to it. Now my Linux is just as fast or maybe even faster than windows.

Edited March 19, 2006 by Angelox

[Cameron Guy]

The fastest Linux you can get is SUPER SUSE a derivation from OpenSuse:

http://en.opensuse.org/SUPER

YOPE is another great performance distro:

http://www.yoper.com/

[Pry]

I can say one thing for Linux (I use Ubuntu now): I got a feeling that the OpenGL applications (read: games :whistle:) such as Quake3 or UT2004 are running way faster under Linux on nVidia. :D And it shows the pure performance IMHO.

As for the other things, I'm sure Linux can be optimized to boot and run much faster. And it'll be by default out of the box someday...

Edited June 15, 2006 by Pry

[dwntwn]

I wont bore people with why I think what I think.. However, for my games and apps, Linux out performs Windows hands down.

Cheers.

[PricklyPoo]

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.

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.

There goes my wig :p That was sure over my head...

[Tek]

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?

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

Sorry if I'm repeating what others have already said, but I only just spotted this thread.

You can't expect Linux to be secure or fast out of the box. You need to configure it before this will happen. Anyone who complains about performance while running a generic kernel should learn the art of reconfiguring / recompiling. After that, disable a few of the services that a lot of distros enable by default, but not a lot of people use.

If you think your system is secure, think again. There are steps you can take to make it more secure, like enabling iptables, and setting up some rules. Can anybody name a distro where iptables is enabled by default? (This is a genuine question, I don't know of any.)

Edit: RE: Dosbox.

Doom was very advanced in it's time. It required some fairly decent hardware. Dosbox is a software emulator. Did you really expect to get good performance? You should check out the Linux port of Doom.

[Phixion]

Those experiencing slow response in Linux - I seriously recommend installing the latest video drivers. I have an nvidia and before installing the drivers I noticed all the same things... lag when scrolling through my MP3 list, long loading times, ghosting when dragging things around etc. All works great now and I can safely say that theres no noticable difference in loading times.