Is Linux really faster than MS Windows ?

[Rob Miracle]

Steve Fink wrote:
> This is more than likely a swapping issue.  Check both your OS's and see
> which one swaps the most.
> 
> XP will tend to boot up swapping unless you have a boatload of RAM.

Exactly.  Windows doesn't use a fixed swap space by default.  It 
dynamically allocates hard drive space as its needed.  Windows file 
systems, even NTFS get slow as they fragment.  Unix systems are much 
less subject to fragmentation.  So a fragemented drive, which for a 6gb 
drive on XP with a bunch of patches that has seen some use, the paging 
is going to beat the hard drive hard.   Unix uses a seperate fixed 
paging/swap partition.  The swap file system is placed in an efficient 
location on the hard drive.  So page reads and writes are rather fast 
regardless of the drive age and file fragementation.

Most experienced windows people who have been around Windows for years 
have learned to change the default behavior of Windows virtual memory 
from dynamic to fixed, though with NT/2000/XP, Microsoft made it a bit 
harder and more hidden to change to fixed.

Try defragging the windows drive, then allocating a fixed paging size. 
That should help out the windows drive quite a bit.

Rob