Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sat 17th Mar 2007 00:26 UTC
During my 8 years of Linux on and off usage I have tried more distros than I have chocolate bars. Each one of my previous encounters meant that I had to spend at least 2 days configuring before I have a desktop that I was somewhat comfortable with. With Ubuntu Feisty Fawn's latest test beta --for the first time ever-- this was not the case. I was up and running with all the niceties I wanted within 2 hours.
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Member since:
2005-07-07
well, there are indeed a lot of relevant differences. For one, Gnome uses more memory compared to KDE (approx 25%) so KDE would be more performant on that system. Still, it might need swap - and XP is even less memory hungry, so it works even better at 256 mb. Also, Qt, having a company & money behind it, has better painting performance than GTK. Then there is the linux kernel - versions after 2.6.18 (if I'm right) have a new IO scheduler, giving better performance. Last, as you said, Linux apps use more libraries than a comparable windows app (more duplication on windows, decreasing mem usage of 1 app, increasing it if you start many apps - windows still is a single-app-single-user OS...). And the linux dynamic linker is slower as well, giving longer startup times (a lot is being done in this area, btw). Last, GCC is slower than the compilers used with windows.
Yes, linux has several big disadvantages to windows, in the performance area. But those disadvantages lie in a few area's, and it's better in most areas. Fixing the few problems will speed up linux beyond Windows - and these area's are being fixed, that's why every new linux release (+ libs + X + KDE/gnome combined) is faster than the previous one, while MS can't pull that off.