5 ms·

My work laptop runs windows. 16 core 3.4GHz I7, pretty respectable. It should be, it's brand new. C++ compilation takes more than twice as long as my Linux ser

My work laptop runs windows. 16 core 3.4GHz I7, pretty respectable. It should be, it's brand new. C++ compilation takes more than twice as long as my Linux server from 2010. It's got two 16 core Xeon 2600-something processors at 2.6GHz. GCC doesn't even fully load the processors, it's something like 70% average and still runs twice as fast. Fortunately, the exact details of my job have changed and I can switch to Linux soon. If my work machine still can't compete with my server, I can just slap distcc on it and use my server as a remote compile node. Might do it anyway, the compile is 'only' five minutes on my server, if I can combine these machines it'll likely halve again.

baz00 3y ago
That'll probably be NTFS shafting you. It's terrible at handling small files. Trick I found was to fire up a Linux VM and do your compilation in there.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  Also Windows file handling in general. It's incredibly flexible, allowing an arbitrary number of drivers to log or modify every disk access. That's great if you want real-time antivirus software, transparent file encryption (without encrypting the full partition), data-loss prevention software, advanced file syncing etc. But it also makes workflows that access lots of small files very slow. Instead of a VM you can also use WSL2, assuming you put the files in the linux file system instead of accessing the host file system. (Yes, technically that's also just a fancy VM running in Hyper-V; but it's a more integrated experience than e.g. VMWare)
  - distract8901 3y ago
    Yeah, granted the server is running a zfs pool on 7 mechanical SAS drives. But the windows machine has an nvme drive so I thought it'd even out. Looking into compiler optimization, I can tell it's a very deep rabbithole that I'd rather stay away from if at all possible
- distract8901 3y ago
  I actually hadn't even thought of that. I'll have to see what performance on a VM is like these days, maybe it'll be enough to do my normal daily work? Last time I tried that was back in the windows 7 days and VMs were almost unusable.
  - baz00 3y ago
    If you provision the whole disk up front i.e. reserve space then it'll be near native. That applies to Hyper-V, VMWare Workstation and VirtualBox VMs. WSL this is not necessarily the case. I don't use WSL for a number of reasons including that.
StillBored 3y ago
I don't run windows seriously anymore, but on small tablet level devices i've used recently, disabling everything in the "security" menus will significantly speed up windows. In particular disabling MS defender (or whatever its called this week), will provide a massive increase in disk speed as its not longer scanning every single thing your reading off the disk. This isn't so much NFTS but all the filters/etc that windows now comes with. In the past you would only get this behavior if you installed norton/mcafee and let it turn IO problems into CPU bound ones, but now its mostly unavoidable on windows. While your linux machine probably doesn't even have an always on virus scanner available.
- distract8901 3y ago
  Last time I ran windows on my personal machine, I saw the same thing. Unfortunately my work machine has workgroup policies that prevent even temporarily disabling Microsoft McAfee

baz00 3y ago

That'll probably be NTFS shafting you. It's terrible at handling small files. Trick I found was to fire up a Linux VM and do your compilation in there.

wongarsu 3y ago
Also Windows file handling in general. It's incredibly flexible, allowing an arbitrary number of drivers to log or modify every disk access. That's great if you want real-time antivirus software, transparent file encryption (without encrypting the full partition), data-loss prevention software, advanced file syncing etc. But it also makes workflows that access lots of small files very slow. Instead of a VM you can also use WSL2, assuming you put the files in the linux file system instead of accessing the host file system. (Yes, technically that's also just a fancy VM running in Hyper-V; but it's a more integrated experience than e.g. VMWare)
- distract8901 3y ago
  Yeah, granted the server is running a zfs pool on 7 mechanical SAS drives. But the windows machine has an nvme drive so I thought it'd even out. Looking into compiler optimization, I can tell it's a very deep rabbithole that I'd rather stay away from if at all possible
distract8901 3y ago
I actually hadn't even thought of that. I'll have to see what performance on a VM is like these days, maybe it'll be enough to do my normal daily work? Last time I tried that was back in the windows 7 days and VMs were almost unusable.
- baz00 3y ago
  If you provision the whole disk up front i.e. reserve space then it'll be near native. That applies to Hyper-V, VMWare Workstation and VirtualBox VMs. WSL this is not necessarily the case. I don't use WSL for a number of reasons including that.

StillBored 3y ago

I don't run windows seriously anymore, but on small tablet level devices i've used recently, disabling everything in the "security" menus will significantly speed up windows. In particular disabling MS defender (or whatever its called this week), will provide a massive increase in disk speed as its not longer scanning every single thing your reading off the disk. This isn't so much NFTS but all the filters/etc that windows now comes with. In the past you would only get this behavior if you installed norton/mcafee and let it turn IO problems into CPU bound ones, but now its mostly unavoidable on windows. While your linux machine probably doesn't even have an always on virus scanner available.

distract8901 3y ago
Last time I ran windows on my personal machine, I saw the same thing. Unfortunately my work machine has workgroup policies that prevent even temporarily disabling Microsoft McAfee