tux-icon.pngThe 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.

Windows XPWhen 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.

openSUSE CompizWindows 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.

Windows Vista AeroSo 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.

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