Mythbusting Linux: Linux is faster than Windows
The question of which operating system is faster is often heard in Windows vs. Linux debates, but unfortunately it is very common that total crap is said or written about it. What is surprising about it that even information sources that you might consider somewhat professional can be totally wrong in their beliefs, or just fail to be objective while passionately debating for the operating system they favour. Couple of days ago I saw Desktoplinux.com making a statement that OpenSUSE or PCLinuxOS 2007 require far less resources than Windows Vista or XP. So which one is really the best performing or least resource hungry?
In making a Windows vs. Linux comparison we have to be distinct that what are we actually comparing. Linux comes in all shapes and sizes, and actually Linux only refers to the kernel itself, while various Windows editions have been released as well. Therefore we are comparing performance of systems designed for similar use cases, focusing on modern desktop Linux distributions in comparison to Windows XP and Vista.
When Linux fans are ranting about Windows XP’s performance, they tend to forget that it was released back in 2001. This means that it works with the hardware of that time,which of course were very modest in comparison to the PCs today. Minimum system requirements were 233MHz CPU and 64 megabytes of RAM. From my first hand experience I can tell that you can run XP on 233MHz CPU, but the 64MB RAM is not enough. 128 MB is sufficient however, I have installed and used XP on several occasions with such hardware.
On system boot the WinXP consumes around 60-80 MB of RAM, and with a little tweaking you can go below 70. Now if we start comparing to modern desktop Linux distributions introduced in 2007, their average memory consumption after system boot to Gnome or KDE desktop seems to be around 120-170 megabytes. No matter how much you like Linux, don’t come telling me that your fancy desktop distro is easier on the resources than Windows XP. Of course there are special light weight Linux distros that can achieve this goal, but that is not the point here.
So obviously Windows XP will fly if you use it with modern powerful hardware. Of course you can make it slower by installing crappy software like Norton’s security suite, and making every possible application to start on system boot and stay lurking in the system tray, but that is your fault and not Windows’. On the other hand, if one has processing power and memory to burn, Linux is much better at making use of these resources, especially RAM. Linux consumes all available RAM for useful purposes such as caching, which improves the performance.
Windows Vista on the other hand is a different story, and I have very little experience using it, as I try to avoid it as long as I can. The system requirements have grown to 800MHz and 512 MB of RAM, but the figures are seriously optimistic. I have installed Vista to a brand new budged PC with 1GB of RAM (can’t recall the CPU speed) and it was crawling. My friend had it running on a HTPC with only 512MB RAM, and I can’t say it was comfortably usable. In order to get fancy 3-D Aero desktop running, you really need a modern and a rather high performing computer. Now if you compare Vista to modern desktop Linux distros, it really makes the latter look good. With Vista’s minimum requirements, you can get nice performance out of Ubuntu, openSUSE, PCLOS or whatever comparable distribution, and you most likely can even enable the fancy 3-D desktop visuals. After system boot you will still have more than half of the 512MB RAM available for the applications.
So definitely Windows XP is less resource hungry than typical desktop Linux of today. On the other hand, Linux can make better use of your system resources if you have plenty. Vista is a different story as it has turned out to be a resource hog, and is easily outperformed by Linux distros.
So what is the verdict - is it true that Linux is faster than Windows? Yes it is, especially when we are comparing the latest editions, which means that we are looking at Vista and not XP.
any linux noob who noticed that xp is indeed faster than the typical linux desktop on its default settings, and bring it up to any linux forum, will be attacked vehemently by the linux mob. sad
“No matter how much you like Linux, don’t come telling me that your fancy desktop distro is easier on the resources than Windows XP. Of course there are special light weight Linux distros that can achieve this goal, but that is not the point here.”
Yes, it is. Your typical, modern KDE 3.5 is more ressource hungry than Win XP, but it is also more feature rich. I am not exactly sure, but wuldn’t a light weight Desktop Environment like Xfce Match the functionality of Win XP? If so, why not compare that one?
I have used Linux since 2001, and I really like to use Linux, and not Windows. At work I have to use Windows (XP), so I also know how that system works. I have also read many articles about how much better Linux is than Windows, how much more secure, how much faster it is and so on. They describe the world in black and white. I tend to get tired by those articles. This one was good, though. More near the truth. With more nuances. TNX!
For a hardened windows installation you need a firewall, an antivirus, a spyware. Because of Windows X security.
Let’s make a measurement with these opts.
Nice review. I’m totaly agree with you. However i think you missed a comparation. You should also compare Windows XP (from 2001) with a Linux distro from the same time period. I used back than, in 2001, on a 333mhz celeron / 128 ram both Linux and Windows. I remember clearly, that linux memory usage (ex. Mandrake 8.2 with KDE @ 1024×768 rezolution, and with aprox. the same set of software installed) was less than Windows XP or Windows 2000 …
There’s a lot of angles to this. Consider that just about every high performance cluster runs Linux. Consider also that google is probably the largest worldwide web application (and certainly crunching more data than any other web application), uses clusters of clusters of Linux servers.
Surely these examples would show that Linux owns the pinacle of “fast” computing.
But you seem to be more interested in “efficient” computing, achieving speed on lightweight hardware. Very well, consider all the routers and tiny appliances running Linux on embedded CPUs with only a few hundred MHz and usually not much RAM either. This might be another definition of “fast” because you simply couldn’t use MS-Windows for such appliance style devices (yes, MS tried hard with WINCE but really it kind of didn’t fly).
Linux has been tried on mobile phones and we know that it can work, remains to be seen whether it will get popular.
Now you also seem to define computing by desktop computing, which is yet another perspective. I’ll agree that to get a typical Linux desktop (with firefox and open office being the biggest RAM hogs) you need at least 128M for it to be usable. This is mostly because those distributions are designed for typical desktop and laptop systems where the entry level is 128M and more commonly 256M or 512M would be expected.
That doesn’t mean you can’t run Linux in less, but it makes sense for RedHat, Novell, etc to optimise their design for the average target market.
If you are interested in low-end computing, then it might be equally reasonable to measure how much bang per buck you get. This leads us into the various $200 desktop PCs and $400 micro laptops that are popping up — all running Linux. Admittedly, the lack of licensing fees make a big difference at the low-end but in the bigger picture, all computing resources come back to money somehow or other.
Thank you for the excellent commentary people, you all bring out very good an valid points. All of the perspectives and angles of this comparison cannot be covered in a small blog article.
Lusepuster:
I have tried WinXP and Xubuntu 7.04 on a Fujitsu Laptop with 900MHz CPU and 128MB RAM. In this environment XP is considerable faster. Xubuntu was rather sluggish, and for example using Synaptic was terribly slow. XP doesn’t fly on that hardware either, but performs basic tasks like web surfing better (Firefox).
wwrreecckk:
It depends how you configure your Windows and what software you use. Norton seems to be able to kill any computer. There are lightweight alternatives for this, and I for an example do not use real-time virus scanning in my Windows nor do I get any spyware on the machine as I usually know what I am doing. But true, an noobish user should have these enabled, and it will slow down the setup considerably.
eddiep:
Valid point, a 2001 vintage Linux would certainly be lighter than a modern distro. However, I didn’t find the Linuxes of that time to be suitable for desktop usage for the average users. Recent distros have finally achieved that goal, and they beat Vista with a huge margin in performance. And of course a light distro like DSL or Puppy perform much faster than full blown desktops like Ubuntu or SUSE.
Tel:
Yes, Linux can be found on many mobile devices. Apple iPhone runs software based on OSX, so it’s a close cousin to Linux and performs great.
Servers are another field on computing but I didn’t want to go there in this article, since there is just nothing to debate about. Linux blows Windows servers away in performance and stability. There are many real-life examples and technical studies that have proven this.
And this is definitely not a Linux-negative article. I just want to rectify some bias that is often seen around the web about Linux vs. Windows. Actually I think WinXP deserves some credit. After all it has lasted as long as 7 years, and after gazillion updates it can be considered quite stable (with good drivers!) and pretty damn good desktop operating system too, especially when the age is considered.
Still I see that the year 2008 will be the year when Linux will deliver a real alternative to Windows, for example in the emerging low-end PC market. Moore’s law has driven us the the point that even the cheapest PC can handle the web stuff and office work, and that is just great for the consumers.
That’s a good article, where you mention Windows XP by default uses less resources, and it is the additional programs that startup and use the extra resources.
You have a point there, and not. What good is Windows XP without a firewall, anti-virus & anti-spyware running?
True, you can get Windows XP running more lightly than a KDE / GNOME desktop environment, but how secure & usable it is, is more important.