Re: Is Linux really faster than MS Windows ?

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On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 11:41:32AM +0530, Parameshwara Bhat wrote:
> 
> On my home computer and office computer, I have logged the time taken upto  
> logging in, it turns out that Ms windows(XP) is faster than Linux. On both  
> computers, dma is turned on.On my home computer, I have SUSE, Fedora and  
> Knoppix (debian) installed and on office computer, only Fedora. I have  
> measured with all the distros and while knoppix is faster of the distros,  
> still it doesn't measure upto Windows in speed. Both fedora and SUSE take  
> about one and a times longer time, evrything else remaining same.
> 
> Any comments ? Or am I missing something ?

You're missing a lot.

#1
Windows simply throws up the GUI screen before the system has finished
booting. not all your services are running yet, in some networked you
can't even login despite the display of the login screen. Linux, as
usual, is more honest. The GUI comes up AFTER everything else is running
and the system is actually ready to work.

#2 
Linux boots up all the subsystems one at a time, waiting for each one
to finish starting up before launching the next one.  This can be fairly
easily parallelized which dramatically reduces boot time.  Why haven't
most distro's done this ?  see #3.

#3
Pain - past Win systems have classically been fragile, bug ridden pieces
of (deleted). In typical operation, (Not IT clean room setups), they
crash frequently and the user has to endure waiting for the system to
reboot before they can resume their work. This fact of life made it
essential that MS do all they could to reduce that waiting time to
more acceptable levels. Frankly, despite the fact that the Win boot up
parallelizes its subsystems start ups, I'm not impressed with the
result.

Linux and UNIX, almost never crashing, have never had a need to improve
in this area.

(Granted, XP is less fragile than its predecessors, how nice, after
only twenty years.)

#4
If you truly want to see how fast a Linux system can boot start here:
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7172642614.html.  This shows you how
to parallelize the boot up process.  Its a simple script modification.
Be warned - its a classic "techie passion" approach.  The first two
thirds of the article is just a nice discussion of how the existing system boot up
works.  Look about two thirds of the way down the article for the 
section titled "Limitations of the traditional services framework"
for the real meat.  Read the first 2/3 for a good education on how a
Linux system starts up!

See
ftp://www6.software.ibm.com/software/developer/library/l-boot/runlevel.zip
for a samples of the scripts he uses.



#5 
A Red "Haring" :

If you are truly interested in comparing the relative performance
capabilities of Lin vs Win on the same hardware, you must look at
something meaningful. That would be the real throughput time of an
application actually running and being used in a real world fashion.

The (apparent and illusory) speed of a boot up time is virtually
meaningless.

You might be interested in these lyrics from "The Who", "Won't get fooled again":

Lines for XP/Gates:

Meet the new boss
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Same as the old boss

Lines for F/OSS: (all doublets as well)

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!


-- 
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.


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