Is Linux really faster than MS Windows ?

[Gustavo Seabra]

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 11:41:32 +0530, Parameshwara Bhat <pbhat at ongc.net> wrote:
> 
> On my home computer and office computer, I have logged the time taken upto
> logging in, it turns out that Ms windows(XP) is faster than Linux. On both
> computers, dma is turned on.On my home computer, I have SUSE, Fedora and
> Knoppix (debian) installed and on office computer, only Fedora. I have
> measured with all the distros and while knoppix is faster of the distros,
> still it doesn't measure upto Windows in speed. Both fedora and SUSE take
> about one and a times longer time, evrything else remaining same.
> 
> Any comments ? Or am I missing something ?
> 
> Parameshwara Bhat.

There's a good ananlysis fo the FC3 boot process here:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-November/msg01374.html

One thing that seems to make a difference is that, although it's
generally claimed that linux file systems don't need defragmentation,
the files are scattered throughout the HD. In windows, as you defrg,
it puts the more commonly used files on the beggining of the HD, which
makes boot faster. (Note that the author of the post in the link above
made some tests and could reduce the boot time considerably by
reorganizing the files in the HD.)


-- 
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Gustavo Seabra                 Graduate Student
Chemistry Dept.         Kansas State University
Registered Linux user number 381680
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If at first you don't succeed...
                              ...skydiving is not for you.