3 ms·

I run headless Alpine Linux (a minimal distro) in my homelab and it’s fast AF. The lag in Windows Explorer is sad when something like cd folder/folder is instan

I run headless Alpine Linux (a minimal distro) in my homelab and it’s fast AF. The lag in Windows Explorer is sad when something like cd folder/folder is instant in Linux.

prodigalknight 4mo ago
To be fair, cd folder/folder is also instant in a command line in Windows, it's just the GUI aspects that are slow. Comparing Windows Explorer to a terminal is comparing apples to oranges.
- bayindirh 4mo ago
  I don't think so. Windows is a GUI first OS, and Linux is a CLI first (or even CLI native) OS. You can't open a command line window in Windows without loading more than half of the desktop stack. In that sense, when a terminal (running on a desktop environment) in Linux is faster than Windows Explorer, it's a shame. When a big file explorer like Dolphin drives circles around native file explorer of Windows, that's a big ole embarrassment.
  - pjmlp 4mo ago
    Explorer used to be fast, when it was a pure Win32/COM application. Then came the rewrite to adopt WinUI elements, and WinRT as well,.....
    - bayindirh 4mo ago
      I know. I used to spend countless nights on older Windows versions, you know, when I was young(er). Now I know better and don't use that thing as a daily driver for... 20 years now? :D
sgarland 4mo ago
I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a difference in speed on the terminal between distros. Shells (or more accurately, plugins / frameworks - I recently gave up oh-my-zsh in favor of zimfw for that reason), yes, but not the terminal itself.
marginalia_nu 4mo ago
I really don't understand how you can even create software that feels as bad to use as Windows Explorer. It's like it's barely attached to reality. There's this weird floaty delay in everything. You copy a file, or did you? You're not sure. It hasn't updated yet. Oh, now the copy dialog appears with this progress bar that isn't showing progress. The dialog just sits there. Is something happening? I don't know. Many seconds later the dialog closes. But it hasn't showed up in the window yet... oh, now it did! How is that even possible, especially with modern hardware? Like you'd almost have to build the file explorer around like a sqlite-based message queue with a 1500ms poll interval to get performance characteristics like this. Absolutely insane feats of architecture astronautism are no doubt required for this to happen.
- fuzzfactor 4mo ago
  >I really don't understand how you can even create software that feels as bad to use as Windows Explorer. I was wondering how bad a sign it was when the decline in performance between Windows 95 and Windows 98 was detectable in many ways, but nobody was complaining because it was not always noticeable on PCs that were 3 years newer. You had to figure Microsoft developers had way better PCs than that, and didn't have any clue at all. Turns out my suspicions were correct, it was the insidiously ignored ramp-up to exponential amounts of sluggishness as time marches on. You know, like a snail without a shell :(
- gmm1990 4mo ago
  It’s probably got phone home a few times to to make sure they’re measuring user engagement
- BoingBoomTschak 4mo ago
  Wild theory for fun: this is on purpose to condition people in order to seamlessly switch to OneDrive as whole data drive. At least your description matches some the pain I get using NFS + lf.
  - marginalia_nu 4mo ago
    Well yeah, it kinda feels like you're using NFS, and the server you're connecting to is in orbit around mars and is using a pringles cantenna to get its wifi signal back to earth. Like the vanilla file explorer experience is way worse than anything I've come to expect with stuff like CIFS and SMB.

I run headless Alpine Linux (a minimal distro) in my homelab and it’s fast AF. The lag in Windows Explorer is sad when something like cd folder/folder is instant in Linux.

prodigalknight 4mo ago

To be fair, cd folder/folder is also instant in a command line in Windows, it's just the GUI aspects that are slow. Comparing Windows Explorer to a terminal is comparing apples to oranges.

bayindirh 4mo ago
I don't think so. Windows is a GUI first OS, and Linux is a CLI first (or even CLI native) OS. You can't open a command line window in Windows without loading more than half of the desktop stack. In that sense, when a terminal (running on a desktop environment) in Linux is faster than Windows Explorer, it's a shame. When a big file explorer like Dolphin drives circles around native file explorer of Windows, that's a big ole embarrassment.
- pjmlp 4mo ago
  Explorer used to be fast, when it was a pure Win32/COM application. Then came the rewrite to adopt WinUI elements, and WinRT as well,.....
  - bayindirh 4mo ago
    I know. I used to spend countless nights on older Windows versions, you know, when I was young(er). Now I know better and don't use that thing as a daily driver for... 20 years now? :D

sgarland 4mo ago

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a difference in speed on the terminal between distros. Shells (or more accurately, plugins / frameworks - I recently gave up oh-my-zsh in favor of zimfw for that reason), yes, but not the terminal itself.

marginalia_nu 4mo ago

I really don't understand how you can even create software that feels as bad to use as Windows Explorer. It's like it's barely attached to reality. There's this weird floaty delay in everything. You copy a file, or did you? You're not sure. It hasn't updated yet. Oh, now the copy dialog appears with this progress bar that isn't showing progress. The dialog just sits there. Is something happening? I don't know. Many seconds later the dialog closes. But it hasn't showed up in the window yet... oh, now it did! How is that even possible, especially with modern hardware? Like you'd almost have to build the file explorer around like a sqlite-based message queue with a 1500ms poll interval to get performance characteristics like this. Absolutely insane feats of architecture astronautism are no doubt required for this to happen.

fuzzfactor 4mo ago
>I really don't understand how you can even create software that feels as bad to use as Windows Explorer. I was wondering how bad a sign it was when the decline in performance between Windows 95 and Windows 98 was detectable in many ways, but nobody was complaining because it was not always noticeable on PCs that were 3 years newer. You had to figure Microsoft developers had way better PCs than that, and didn't have any clue at all. Turns out my suspicions were correct, it was the insidiously ignored ramp-up to exponential amounts of sluggishness as time marches on. You know, like a snail without a shell :(
gmm1990 4mo ago
It’s probably got phone home a few times to to make sure they’re measuring user engagement
BoingBoomTschak 4mo ago
Wild theory for fun: this is on purpose to condition people in order to seamlessly switch to OneDrive as whole data drive. At least your description matches some the pain I get using NFS + lf.
- marginalia_nu 4mo ago
  Well yeah, it kinda feels like you're using NFS, and the server you're connecting to is in orbit around mars and is using a pringles cantenna to get its wifi signal back to earth. Like the vanilla file explorer experience is way worse than anything I've come to expect with stuff like CIFS and SMB.