3 ms·

”Almost any computer running Linux will operate faster and be more secure than the same computer running Windows.” Mostly not true in my experience. Microsoft

by nikanj 7y ago

”Almost any computer running Linux will operate faster and be more secure than the same computer running Windows.” Mostly not true in my experience. Microsoft has teams doing boring whole-system benchmarking and holistic optimization. No similar central authority for performance exists on Linux. A feature-equivalent KDE Desktop runs like a pig compared to Windows.

pjc50 7y ago
Depends what you're doing - NTFS is considerably slower for many operations.
- sedatk 7y ago
  > NTFS is considerably slower for many operations such as?
  - sz4kerto 7y ago
    Opening many small files. That's a design decision by the way - opening a file on NTFS involves a whole bunch of stuff like letting "filters" to be injected between the program and the OS. This is what makes virus scanners and on-demand cloud storage like OneDrive work. It's a good model for some use cases (eg. above), and not as good for others (compiling C++ projects).
haolez 7y ago
There is a team at Microsoft doing optimizations and there is another team adding ads and whatnot.
zarkov99 7y ago
Really? KDE runs pretty well on my aging machines. Do you mean just animations and other graphical stuff?
- jdnenej 7y ago
  Linux also has the benefit of multiple configurations. You can get Linux to run on much older hardware using more baisc DEs
dijit 7y ago
You're going to have to back that up; like, a lot. Aside from the few obvious things (OpenOffice being beastly and MS Office being C++ && h/w acceleration being disabled in browsers by default) there's a lot in linux that makes it largely outperform windows in equivelant tasks. Opening files, reading from network, multi-threading, even rendering 2d windows with Wayland are demonstratively faster than on modern Windows.
- sz4kerto 7y ago
  Generally UI is smoother on Windows due to the really mature desktop compositor that's light-years ahead of eg. Xorg. WDDM is actually a very good display driver model, UI crashes are really rare nowadays compared to eg. Linux (and this is not just driver quality). So Linux is definitely faster for my development tasks, but slower when I'm scrolling in the browser.
  - dijit 7y ago
    I’d urge you to check out the latest gnome and Firefox or chrome with video acceleration enabled. The latest gnome uses wayland/mutter which is lightening fast for compositing the UI.
- nikanj 7y ago
  How do I back up ”In my experience”? Take an older PC, install either Windows 7 or Ubuntu, perform typical PC tasks like browsing the internet, using Excel, etc. I have no problem with your experience differing from mine. Targeted microbenchmarks might say a lot about the difference between NTFS and ext4, but none of that really matters to me. I care about performance I can see, not performance I can measure.
saagarjha 7y ago
> Microsoft has teams doing boring whole-system benchmarking and holistic optimization. Facebook and Google do too and you can see how well that’s working out for their properties. Skipping bloat is a lot better than keeping it in and trying to optimize it.
Symmetry 7y ago
My impression was that nobody ever got a raise at Microsoft for performance improvements, just new features. I'm not sure if that's true now but it certainly used to be.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  I was going to give Direct3D 12 as a counter-example, but of course, that's a new feature.
temac 7y ago
Windows has a notably very slow VFS, and less than stellar internal locking in some cases (including process creation/destruction). That makes for example compilation jobs sometimes WAY more slower than on Linux.
qball 7y ago
>Microsoft has teams doing boring whole-system benchmarking and holistic optimization. Their UX and QA teams, on the other hand, are absolutely nowhere to be found. They've arguably been on a permanent vacation since the release of Windows 8. - I can't yet re-open all my windows that I had open when I shut down my computer in Windows (by the time I've logged in on my KDE system all of the windows I want are already open and ready for use, much like they do on a Mac). - I can't open an Administrator command prompt with a single button when navigating a file structure in Windows. In Dolphin I always have a console as part of the window. - I have to accept updates when Windows thinks it's time for me to accept them, and also have to deal with telemetry. These updates have undesirable effects on the system because they can flat out uninstall programs, and re-install some programs you may have removed. - Ads for Office, Candy Crush, and some other things are pre-installed. - The search in the Start Menu is non-deterministic and does a bunch of other stuff I don't want it to do by default, like searching the web. Open applications do not clearly show they're open (they act like the OS X dock) by default, though to be fair it was Windows 7 that introduced that default feature. - I only have to search one Control Panel for settings, and the themeing options are better in KDE. Dark mode wasn't done as lazily as it is in Windows and the visual theme of the system is far superior. In my experience, Linux boots up and runs faster than Windows does, but even if it was slightly slower the performance hit would honestly be worth it simply because the system is so much nicer to use and its development actually bothers to align with user goals.

by nikanj 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

Depends what you're doing - NTFS is considerably slower for many operations.

sedatk 7y ago
> NTFS is considerably slower for many operations such as?
- sz4kerto 7y ago
  Opening many small files. That's a design decision by the way - opening a file on NTFS involves a whole bunch of stuff like letting "filters" to be injected between the program and the OS. This is what makes virus scanners and on-demand cloud storage like OneDrive work. It's a good model for some use cases (eg. above), and not as good for others (compiling C++ projects).

haolez 7y ago

There is a team at Microsoft doing optimizations and there is another team adding ads and whatnot.

zarkov99 7y ago

Really? KDE runs pretty well on my aging machines. Do you mean just animations and other graphical stuff?

jdnenej 7y ago
Linux also has the benefit of multiple configurations. You can get Linux to run on much older hardware using more baisc DEs

dijit 7y ago

You're going to have to back that up; like, a lot. Aside from the few obvious things (OpenOffice being beastly and MS Office being C++ && h/w acceleration being disabled in browsers by default) there's a lot in linux that makes it largely outperform windows in equivelant tasks. Opening files, reading from network, multi-threading, even rendering 2d windows with Wayland are demonstratively faster than on modern Windows.

sz4kerto 7y ago
Generally UI is smoother on Windows due to the really mature desktop compositor that's light-years ahead of eg. Xorg. WDDM is actually a very good display driver model, UI crashes are really rare nowadays compared to eg. Linux (and this is not just driver quality). So Linux is definitely faster for my development tasks, but slower when I'm scrolling in the browser.
- dijit 7y ago
  I’d urge you to check out the latest gnome and Firefox or chrome with video acceleration enabled. The latest gnome uses wayland/mutter which is lightening fast for compositing the UI.
nikanj 7y ago
How do I back up ”In my experience”? Take an older PC, install either Windows 7 or Ubuntu, perform typical PC tasks like browsing the internet, using Excel, etc. I have no problem with your experience differing from mine. Targeted microbenchmarks might say a lot about the difference between NTFS and ext4, but none of that really matters to me. I care about performance I can see, not performance I can measure.

saagarjha 7y ago

> Microsoft has teams doing boring whole-system benchmarking and holistic optimization. Facebook and Google do too and you can see how well that’s working out for their properties. Skipping bloat is a lot better than keeping it in and trying to optimize it.

Symmetry 7y ago

My impression was that nobody ever got a raise at Microsoft for performance improvements, just new features. I'm not sure if that's true now but it certainly used to be.

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
I was going to give Direct3D 12 as a counter-example, but of course, that's a new feature.

temac 7y ago

Windows has a notably very slow VFS, and less than stellar internal locking in some cases (including process creation/destruction). That makes for example compilation jobs sometimes WAY more slower than on Linux.

qball 7y ago

>Microsoft has teams doing boring whole-system benchmarking and holistic optimization. Their UX and QA teams, on the other hand, are absolutely nowhere to be found. They've arguably been on a permanent vacation since the release of Windows 8. - I can't yet re-open all my windows that I had open when I shut down my computer in Windows (by the time I've logged in on my KDE system all of the windows I want are already open and ready for use, much like they do on a Mac). - I can't open an Administrator command prompt with a single button when navigating a file structure in Windows. In Dolphin I always have a console as part of the window. - I have to accept updates when Windows thinks it's time for me to accept them, and also have to deal with telemetry. These updates have undesirable effects on the system because they can flat out uninstall programs, and re-install some programs you may have removed. - Ads for Office, Candy Crush, and some other things are pre-installed. - The search in the Start Menu is non-deterministic and does a bunch of other stuff I don't want it to do by default, like searching the web. Open applications do not clearly show they're open (they act like the OS X dock) by default, though to be fair it was Windows 7 that introduced that default feature. - I only have to search one Control Panel for settings, and the themeing options are better in KDE. Dark mode wasn't done as lazily as it is in Windows and the visual theme of the system is far superior. In my experience, Linux boots up and runs faster than Windows does, but even if it was slightly slower the performance hit would honestly be worth it simply because the system is so much nicer to use and its development actually bothers to align with user goals.