9 ms·

It's Windows, but Lenovo bloatware doesn't help. I've never really used Windows as a daily driver until I had to do cross-platform development for PhotoStructu

It's Windows, but Lenovo bloatware doesn't help. I've never really used Windows as a daily driver until I had to do cross-platform development for PhotoStructure[1]. My windows box is a recent XPS 15 with an m.2 SSD and core i7. My Mac is a 10 year old 17" MBP. My linux box is the cheapest core i5 I could get 2 years ago with an mSATA SSD (not m.2). Here's this morning's CI job timings (running the same 2K tests that exercise a reasonable mixture of CPU, process management, and disk I/O): Windows 10 (XPS 15): 2384 passing (2m) Done in 134.95s. Mac (10 year old MBP on 10.11): 2365 passing (2m) Done in 108.12s. Ubuntu (i5, LTS 18.04): 2365 passing (1m) Done in 74.16s. I'd suggest backing up your HD, making a USB stick with OEM Windows 10, and reinstalling just Windows (with no Lenovo bloatware): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4000735/windows-10-reinstall https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4000735/windows-10-... [1] https://blog.photostructure.com/introducing-photostructure/ https://blog.photostructure.com/introducing-photostructure/

chipperyman573 8y ago
FYI reinstalling windows, even with a fresh OEM USB, does not guarantee it will be a fresh copy of windows if there is bloatware living on the BIOS https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150812/11395231925/lenovo-busted-stealthily-installing-crapware-via-bios-fresh-windows-installs.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150812/11395231925/lenov...
- josteink 8y ago
  All vendors caught doing this has been shamed into rolling out a BIOS-update without the embedded crap ware. That said, this is really a Windows-feature being misused by OEMs and as a user I would be interested in having a way to disable it.
Goz3rr 8y ago
Just saying i5 or i7 is kind of meaningless, because it can be anything between a laptop dual core to a desktop octa core these days. What's in the 19 additional tests Windows is running? Is the Linux box a laptop as well? I'm personally having trouble believing the Core 2 Duo in your MBP outperforms a modern i7, even after potential Windows overhead.
- mceachen 8y ago
  > Just saying i5 or i7 is kind of meaningless Yeah, agreed, but these are single-core tests and even the max clock speed of intel chips doesn't seem to correlate exactly with performance. Here's more CPU details, though: My XPS 15 is HT 4-core Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz. The MBP is https://apple-history.com/mbp_17_mid_10 https://apple-history.com/mbp_17_mid_10. HT dual-core i5 ("Arrandale") @ 2.53 GHz. It's slow AF. The ubuntu box is HT dual-core Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz > What's in the 19 additional tests Windows is running? The 19 additional tests are windows-specific path validation unit tests, and take ~10ms total. > Is the Linux box a laptop as well? No, it's on a 3 year old cheapo mini ITX mobo. > I'm personally having trouble believing Me too. I've nuked and paved this box a couple times, thinking it was bad interactions with cygwin or MSYS or minGW. CPU bound stuff (like ffmpeg transcoding) is closer across windows and linux, but opening files and forking processes on Windows is just hella slow (even on my desktop windows machines).
  - TickleSteve 8y ago
    If you're using Cygwin or Msys.... theres your problem. They're notoriously slow emulations of posix syscalls that don't translate well to Windows. Fork & fs operations, certainly.... nothing to do with Windows itself.
    - masklinn 8y ago
      > Fork & fs operations, certainly.... nothing to do with Windows itself. Both of these operations are known to be very slow specifically in windows. The former's the reason why windows has always strongly favored thread-based concurrency (whereas unices tend to favor process-based concurrency)[0], the latter is well know of NTFS, it deals especially badly with lots of small files. [0] even excluding making the entire thing blowing its gasket as Bruce Dawson triggers with appalling regularity, in fact in one of his posts he specifically notes in the introduction that windows is notorious for its slow file and process operations: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/making-windows-slower-part-2-process-creation/ https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/making-windows-...
    - 8y ago
potrebitel 8y ago
Sort of did that for a brand new X1 Carbon: 1.created a usb bootable image from MS's tool to install new windows 2.installed from scratch 3.the windows setup only put essential Lenovo stuff - hotkeys and thermal management. 4. ??? 5. Profit [1] It made a real difference to disable the automatic windows updates and run them manually. There were no bloatware installed on my unit. [1] A joke from the memes, its all good otherwise.
x0n 8y ago
Are you running the CI on windows 10 under WSL, or native?
- mceachen 8y ago
  Native. I uninstalled WSL and am not running any VMs on my CI box, just to make sure Windows isn't busy doing anything else.

chipperyman573 8y ago

FYI reinstalling windows, even with a fresh OEM USB, does not guarantee it will be a fresh copy of windows if there is bloatware living on the BIOS https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150812/11395231925/lenovo-busted-stealthily-installing-crapware-via-bios-fresh-windows-installs.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150812/11395231925/lenov...

josteink 8y ago
All vendors caught doing this has been shamed into rolling out a BIOS-update without the embedded crap ware. That said, this is really a Windows-feature being misused by OEMs and as a user I would be interested in having a way to disable it.

Goz3rr 8y ago

Just saying i5 or i7 is kind of meaningless, because it can be anything between a laptop dual core to a desktop octa core these days. What's in the 19 additional tests Windows is running? Is the Linux box a laptop as well? I'm personally having trouble believing the Core 2 Duo in your MBP outperforms a modern i7, even after potential Windows overhead.

mceachen 8y ago
> Just saying i5 or i7 is kind of meaningless Yeah, agreed, but these are single-core tests and even the max clock speed of intel chips doesn't seem to correlate exactly with performance. Here's more CPU details, though: My XPS 15 is HT 4-core Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz. The MBP is https://apple-history.com/mbp_17_mid_10 https://apple-history.com/mbp_17_mid_10. HT dual-core i5 ("Arrandale") @ 2.53 GHz. It's slow AF. The ubuntu box is HT dual-core Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz > What's in the 19 additional tests Windows is running? The 19 additional tests are windows-specific path validation unit tests, and take ~10ms total. > Is the Linux box a laptop as well? No, it's on a 3 year old cheapo mini ITX mobo. > I'm personally having trouble believing Me too. I've nuked and paved this box a couple times, thinking it was bad interactions with cygwin or MSYS or minGW. CPU bound stuff (like ffmpeg transcoding) is closer across windows and linux, but opening files and forking processes on Windows is just hella slow (even on my desktop windows machines).
- TickleSteve 8y ago
  If you're using Cygwin or Msys.... theres your problem. They're notoriously slow emulations of posix syscalls that don't translate well to Windows. Fork & fs operations, certainly.... nothing to do with Windows itself.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    > Fork & fs operations, certainly.... nothing to do with Windows itself. Both of these operations are known to be very slow specifically in windows. The former's the reason why windows has always strongly favored thread-based concurrency (whereas unices tend to favor process-based concurrency)[0], the latter is well know of NTFS, it deals especially badly with lots of small files. [0] even excluding making the entire thing blowing its gasket as Bruce Dawson triggers with appalling regularity, in fact in one of his posts he specifically notes in the introduction that windows is notorious for its slow file and process operations: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/making-windows-slower-part-2-process-creation/ https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/making-windows-...
  - 8y ago

potrebitel 8y ago

Sort of did that for a brand new X1 Carbon: 1.created a usb bootable image from MS's tool to install new windows 2.installed from scratch 3.the windows setup only put essential Lenovo stuff - hotkeys and thermal management. 4. ??? 5. Profit [1] It made a real difference to disable the automatic windows updates and run them manually. There were no bloatware installed on my unit. [1] A joke from the memes, its all good otherwise.

x0n 8y ago

Are you running the CI on windows 10 under WSL, or native?

mceachen 8y ago
Native. I uninstalled WSL and am not running any VMs on my CI box, just to make sure Windows isn't busy doing anything else.