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Thread ID: 86736	2008-01-27 04:35:00	Linux Provides The Illusion Of Faster Speeds	SurferJoe46 (51)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
634339	2008-01-27 04:35:00	Check my thoughts out . . but beat me with a small stick if you don't see it this way . Windows XP or ME or ANY of the more-hacked OPSYSs have to run a gawd awful amount of security to keep them safe and sane . I know . . it's potential flame fuel here . . but the overhead of the necessary protection . . . (can you say: "Norton/Symentec or running IE or AOL or . . whatever?) . . . to keep M$ systems secure and running . . . . somewhat cripple even 2Gig RAM and a hot single-core processor or even 10,000 RPM swap file areas . Since the base of Linux users is still relatively small and therefor not the big gorilla in the woods, the blackhats like to go where they can reap the most reward and hits and damage . . . ergo: Windows . Maybe it's also because Linux is more likely safer to run in a cleaner mode because the "Administrators' rights thing in Linux requires a password to add anything including malware . Linux people SHOULD be more intelligent than that! To get speed back, go out and buy a new giga-core system with Vista SP-3000+ and 60 Trillion byte-sized RAM . Do this each and every year as the new models come out and your system sinks into antiquity and out of sync . That's why I say that L-based systems just present that illusion of speed . . . it's the overhead .	SurferJoe46 (51)
634340	2008-01-27 04:39:00	Dual booting linux/windows on both my desktops, Linux takes longer to boot, everything else seems to be the same, except Firefox under Linux hangs on certain sites to the point the screen goes into black and white.....so that slows down the user experience. Can't test under heavy load, which is games and video editing, for obvious reasons.	Metla (12)
634341	2008-01-27 05:50:00	It all depends on how you have things configured. If you have set up & tuned correctly, GNU/Linux systems can leave Windows in the dust. If it's set up badly, it'll be slower. It all depends how you have your system configured.	Erayd (23)
634342	2008-01-27 06:16:00	An example (real world) would be nice.	Metla (12)
634343	2008-01-27 07:00:00	You won't find a real-world example out of the box. As far as efficient systems are concerned, I'm talking about things like a properly set up gentoo install, or a very customised debian. Generally this means machine-specific tweaks. Out of the box, you'll find that most 'mainstream' distros will show a similar performance to XP (32bit) for most operations, although Linux swap management is a lot better - so if you are doing things that use a lot of memory in XP, Linux will usually perform the same task faster because it doesn't swap unless it absolutely has to. Windows seems to love swapping half of everything.... 64bit distros don't really have anything to compare to - 64bit XP doesn't feel very 'complete', and Vista is too top-heavy to compare fairly to the above example.	Erayd (23)
634344	2008-01-27 07:08:00	Yeah, Im still not quite following you, once you do these machine specific tweaks, what is sped up? (ignoring boot times) On all my installs launching "lite" apps open and are usable right away, heavy apps take a few seconds, and doing crap like encoding is entirely dependant on hardware. Folder content all displays as I open them.... I'm also ignoring Vista, Its crap, Isn't worth comparing against anything but a smelly turd.	Metla (12)
634345	2008-01-27 08:04:00	It depends how far you take the tweaks, and what exactly you do. You can speed up a lot of memory-related stuff by tweaking compile options in the kernel, you can speed up boot times by tweaking the kernel, bootloader & init scripts, you can speed up raw computational tasks by compiling programs without unneeded hooks (although tasks involving a large amount of raw math, such as video encoding, will actually see the least improvement from tweaking), disk-heavy tasks can be optimised by DMA & cache optimisations, compiling programs without unneeded features will give a huge reduction in ram footprint and help improve launch times, compiling software for your specific CPU will increase performance for just about everything, various TCP/IP & ethernet optimisations can drop CPU usage on the network stack and increase power-efficiency, compiling a tickless kernel will give a huge increase in power-efficiency, etc etc... There's way more than that, but I'm hoping you get the general idea. If your hardware is specced way higher than you need, obviously you won't notice much (because things are so fast anyway that you can't see the difference between fast and faster). If you're running it on a 500MHz P3 with 128MB ram then you'll notice a huge difference due to the limited resources available. It all depends on what you're trying to do with it. Oh and if you do a lot of video encoding, consider switching to a 64bit version if your hardware is capable of it. In my experience it's around twice as fast as doing it in 32bit, using exactly the same system.	Erayd (23)
634346	2008-01-27 08:14:00	well, I'm the kinda guy that doesn't accept claims without some real world proof, such as recorded comparisons. And to say Linux is faster then Windows and then follow it up with that, Is like me saying Holden is Faster then Ford, Then turning at the drag strip with a fully worked V8 race car to put against your family wagon. That aside, I was holding back with exactly the same point you made regarding the hardware, If You have enough grunt to then the OS (unless seriously flawed) becomes quite meaningless. as for video encoding,I'll look into it, But small tasks only take a few seconds to a few minutes, Large tasks I set to do before going to bed so I don't think its worth ditching my OS for. But the next Linux I get I'll get the 64-bit version. I had presumed a newly released distro would recorgnise the CPU and configure itself to suit.	Metla (12)
634347	2008-01-27 09:01:00	Recorded comparisons are pretty meaningless in this field as the results vary wildly depending on the *exact* platform and configuration you are running. Regarding your V8 comparison - it's perfect, with one exception - the family wagon can't be tuned. Windows is closed-source, so you're stuck with (more or less) what comes out of the box. You will note however that nowhere have I stated that Linux is faster than Windows in an un-tweaked state. As I said above: Out of the box, you'll find that most 'mainstream' distros will show a similar performance to XP (32bit) for most operations.Superior performance can be gained with extensive tweaking, but can often be hard to quantify - at the end of the day if your machine does what you want it to do, who cares if the OS running it is working to its maximum potential or not? All that really matters is that it does what you ask of it in a reasonably timely manner. The 32bit/64bit releases are generally on separate disks for most distros - you probably installed Ubuntu with a 32bit disk. If you want encoding numbers... two-pass h.264 DVD rips of the same DVD to a 700MB file ran at ~42fps on 32bit, and ~90fps on 64bit. Ripped with the latest CLI version of Handbrake (0.9.1) on a C2D E6550, 800MHz A-Data DDR2 memory. Note that I have a highly tweaked 2.6.24 kernel. Most apps I just use whatever's in the Debian repositories, as they're generally more than fast enough for what I need.	Erayd (23)
634348	2008-01-27 09:16:00	Recorded comparisons are never meaningless, Unless taken out of context. What I meant was in comparison to before and after tweaking, On the same system,doing the same tasks, meaning Linux standard vs Linux tweaked. And not to prove anything, Just because I find some crap interesting. The whole Linux vs Windows XP issue to me is quite meaningless, If your hardware is lacking, then run software to suit (though if your keen on tweaking for speed, thats good too) , If you have plenty of grunt under the hood, Then everything happens rapidly anyway....But, we have already been over that, and anyone with intelligence would agree.	Metla (12)
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