On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 12:28:38PM -0500, Rob Miracle wrote:
> So in conclusion, given two identical boxes with sufficient memory to avoid
> swapping, the Linux box should smoke the Windows box in number crunching,
Care to prove this? :-)
If the Windows box is swapping, I'd assume that some application other
than the 'number crunching' app is running. Also, why shouldn't the
paging be able to happen while the number crunching is occuring? The
extreme case you described is a case extreme enough, that both swapping
and number crunching should be able to occur in parallel...
"Smoke" is a word I would reserve to "2X or 3X". For the case described,
I'm thinking that the reality is more like 1.01X...
> spitting out web pages, etc.
This is a whole different topic, and much wider. IIS has killed Linux+Apache
in the past "serving static web pages." This is why Linux developers worked
on solutions such as 'tux' to compete. It was embarassing for Linux.
Where Linux "smokes" is really process creation, and inter-process
communication. Apache can easily complete 2X or 3X as many CGI requests
under Linux, than under Windows.
Something to remember, here, though, is that the idea of a web server
requiring a new process to be created for every single HTTP request may
be a silly decision in the first place. Server-side modules for PHP or
Perl "smoke" CGI on a Linux box.
If I had a web site that required performance, I wouldn't bother with CGI.
This puts Windows and Linux under a more equal playing field. As somebody
a lot more comfortable with Linux, and Apache, I would always choose them.
It's not about performance, or reliability, or anything. It's preference,
which to some degree falls into the 'religious' category.
> Windows is going to win when Graphics are
> involved
DirectX vs X, then yes. Windows GUI vs X with extensions including the
shared memory extension - hard to say.
> or if memory is on the thin side.
Linux has traditionally performed much better on slower or less resourced
(including memory) machines. If Windows XP is run on a machine without
enough memory, it really dies - people don't bother installing it. On the
same machines, they can install Linux and 'get by'.
Way too many factors to draw any clear general conclusions on the matter -
that's the opinion I'm trying to push.
Cheers,
mark
--
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