How responsive is your Linux machine compared to your Windows machines?

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I dual boot a couple of my systems because I don't have enough computers to run everything I need to run in my lab. What I've found to be pretty consistently true is that Debian outperforms my Windows machines in general responsiveness. By that I mean by how quickly the given machine will react when given a task to do.

I run a full Debian desktop environment on the fastest machine in my lab, along with the following daemons: Postgresql, MySQL, ProFTP, SpamAssassin, CUPS, and an SSH server. On the same hardware I run an install of Windows 2000 Pro. That's it. No servers running the in the background to use up resources, no nothing. Just the desktop OS.

Now, my wife has accounts in the Windows domain and on the Linux machine. She logs into either one depending on which OS I happen to be booted into at the time she needs/wants to use the computer. I asked her the other night how she likes Linux and what really surprised me was her response. She said so far her best-liked feature of Linux was, and I quote, "how fast it is". The responsiveness of the Debian OS, even with 6 servers running in the background consuming resources, is so much noticeably faster than Windows 2000 with nothing else running that my wife, a non-geek, prefers to work, and play, in the Linux environment. And this is while booted into Gnome, which many Linux users say is so bloated it consumes too many resources and slows down the machine.

So, those of you who dual boot machines, what has been your experience along these lines?

One caveat to the above statement about my wife. On second thought I may have to reconsider my wife's "geekiness". As she is beginning to play the Linux games that come installed with the full Debian desktop install she is starting to kick butt and take names where a lot of these games are concerned. After just a couple of times of playing some of the rather complex games she is getting very good. I had played one of them several times and hadn't "beaten" the game yet, and she beat it the session she played it and started moving on to harder levels almost immediately.

She got so excited at beating one the other night that I hadn't beaten yet she hurt her knee running up the stairs to tell me about it.... She really got off on beating me at something. It was great to see that smile on her face.... I keep telling her she's smarter than she thinks she is and now she's starting to prove it....

 

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have to admit that linux does seem to run a lot faster than xp imho...

 

I don't duel boot but my Simply MEPIS (KDE) desktop, is faster on an old Celleron 700 than XP is. It is still not fast enough though

My wife usually beats me at games too. She is a demon on Minesweeper!

Funny enough, I was trying to fathom out last night why a new laptop I had recently sold would not connect to any wireless network. I had had a couple of beers though. After about 20 minutes of playing around with the settings, doing a repair etc. I gave up and said I would look at it in the morning when I was sober enough. She started checking all the fine print in the spec, whilst I looked at her rolling my eyes. Then she piped up with "It says here that if you press the function key and F1, it will toggle the inbuilt wireless module on and off". Two minutes later I was surfing the net

We make a good team, there is nobody that I can't learn something from!

Pete

 

Does SimplyMepis come with Shisen-Sho? My wife was beating it on the 3 dimensional level last night, and last night was the first time she had seen the game!! I can't believe how good she is at developing a strategy for boards of that complexity.

 

No Freddy, well not by default.

 

It's a pretty cool little game. It's a standard KDE game so I figured it might come with SimplyMepis.

 

The simply answer for me is yes.

My main computer is my Toshiba Laptop. I dual boot Ubuntu with XP.
It not only boots quicker but seems to do everything quicker!
I find that although XP gets to the desktop in about the same time it is still loading files and therefore not ready to use.

 

I run RedHat V8 and Windows 2000 on the same machine. Windows wins every time.

 

Come on Windows, any more bets

 

in general windows os's take up a lot more resources and take a more powerful machine to run well. Linux is pretty good as a business/Work PC but I'm also a gamer so I'm stuck with windows for now. I've tried Linux in many flavours but growing up with windows I find it hard to ajust though I do find it is faster in general than windows.

 

One of the reasons I stopped using Redhat was because it seemed so sluggish to me.

I did a little research and Redhat 8 runs the 2.4 kernel. I thought it would probably have been running the 2.2 kernel from as slow as it is. What I see that's significant in that is that when I first tried the Debian release code named Woody it was running the 2.2 kernel and the performance seemed to be about equal to that of Win 2K pro. Once I upgraded to the 2.4 kernel Debian has always been faster than Win 2K. Once I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel there hasn't been any real comparison at all. The performance jump between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels wasn't nearly as great as it was between the 2.2 and 2.4 kernels though. That one was so noticeable it just jumped out at me immediately. Program starting times dropped by close to 50% with that upgrade on Woody.

I can even tell the difference between a "stock" kernel and a custom built kernel performance wise. Rolling your own makes a significant difference when you build it specifically for your own hardware.

I am not now running a "home rolled" kernel on any of my machines. I just haven't been taking the time to build one every time.