3 ms·

I've been using this for years until early 2009, when I formatted my laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 and started running Windows in a VM. IE was still important back th

I've been using this for years until early 2009, when I formatted my laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 and started running Windows in a VM. IE was still important back then and I needed to check web sites with it. I was running Rails and other web frameworks inside colinux. I switched after I made sure that everything I was running in Windows for my work did run well in Linux. I remember that those very same programs run faster in Ubuntu than in Windows. The most notable improvement was GIMP's starting time: many times faster.

selfhoster 2y ago
I would run Ubuntu 2006 in a VMware Workstation VM then after a few months, wiped the system, installed Ubuntu 2006 then Windows in a VM (I think VMware Workstation was available on Linux Desktop then, otherwise I don't recall what I ran Windows in but it was in a VM), so very similar to your case.
card_zero 2y ago
> GIMP's starting time: many times faster I think what you discovered is that GIMP is written primarily for Linux, rather than that Windows is shit. I mean Windows is shit, but that's coincidental. GIMP for Windows probably loads slowly because it "has to" load GTK and all its components like Cairo, but on Ubuntu these things were loaded already when the desktop started up. I put "has to" in quotes, because it could have been rewritten to use Windows APIs, but that would be, you know, a rewrite. And GTK was made for GIMP. So like a lot of ported Linux programs it's basically going to bring half the Linux desktop with it so that the devs don't have to leave their comfort zone, and as a result it loads slowly. (And then the next one, Inkscape maybe, will also load slowly, since it loads its own versions of the same things.)
- Doxin 2y ago
  In my experience a lot of the difference in performance of Windows vs Linux in programs which are designed for Linux is in the file system. Linux is really good at handling a bazillion tiny files. Windows is really not. I'm sure that in bulk both systems are roughly as fast, but when loads of small files get involved Linux absolutely smokes windows.

selfhoster 2y ago

I would run Ubuntu 2006 in a VMware Workstation VM then after a few months, wiped the system, installed Ubuntu 2006 then Windows in a VM (I think VMware Workstation was available on Linux Desktop then, otherwise I don't recall what I ran Windows in but it was in a VM), so very similar to your case.

card_zero 2y ago

> GIMP's starting time: many times faster I think what you discovered is that GIMP is written primarily for Linux, rather than that Windows is shit. I mean Windows is shit, but that's coincidental. GIMP for Windows probably loads slowly because it "has to" load GTK and all its components like Cairo, but on Ubuntu these things were loaded already when the desktop started up. I put "has to" in quotes, because it could have been rewritten to use Windows APIs, but that would be, you know, a rewrite. And GTK was made for GIMP. So like a lot of ported Linux programs it's basically going to bring half the Linux desktop with it so that the devs don't have to leave their comfort zone, and as a result it loads slowly. (And then the next one, Inkscape maybe, will also load slowly, since it loads its own versions of the same things.)

Doxin 2y ago
In my experience a lot of the difference in performance of Windows vs Linux in programs which are designed for Linux is in the file system. Linux is really good at handling a bazillion tiny files. Windows is really not. I'm sure that in bulk both systems are roughly as fast, but when loads of small files get involved Linux absolutely smokes windows.