Repost "Question"

[Centurian]

Hey all,

This is a repost since the original was deleted during the server upgrade.

BTW this isn't a which is better post. I am seriously asking why it is this way.

I keep seeing people say how slow windows is compared to linux. So I decided to make some tests myself.

Computer
Celeron 600
Socket 370 M754LMR Motherboard
128 meg of ram
nVidia video card
C-media sound card
Mandrake 8.1
Windows 98 SE

Startup from Lilo Boot Manager
Linux Time = "1 minute 51 seconds" with user auto-login active booting to KDE.
Windows 98 Time = "13 seconds"

Starting Mozilla
Linux First time used since boot = "48 seconds"
Restarts = "27 seconds"
Can't find a "Quick Launch option under Linux"
Windows First time used since boot Not using "Quick Launch" = "11 seconds"
Restarts = "3 seconds"
Windows First time used since boot Using "Quick Launch" = "5 seconds"
Restarts = "1 second"

So am I doing something severly wrong in Linux or absolutely right in Windows or are these expected results?

Any clue?
BTW, I was also wondering why everytime I go out drinking with my friends, I come home, and my ass is sore?

Later
Centurian

[saquarrier]

commenting out some options in your boot scripts /etc/rc.d/ might help you boot faster and use less ram while your running.  Most people don't need apache running on their desktop for instance.

[badkarma]

http://www.acl.lanl.gov/linuxbios/

but I think the 3 seconds on the front page is referring to a linux system without XFree86 running.

plus the list of supported mainboards is rather short (and no ASUS7M266 support damnit    )

getting a lot of RAM helps a lot too with general linux use because the kernel tries to load as much as it can into memory, usually when I'm compiling something I have 0 HDD activity because all the files just get loaded into memory (and seeing I have 1Gb DDR RAM the kernel can do a lot of caching, and does too, it's not unusual for me to have the whole 1Gb in use (with about 10-20% user data and the rest cache))

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: BadKarma ]

[greydys_will]

quote:Originally posted by Centurian:
Hey all,

This is a repost since the original was deleted during the server upgrade.

BTW this isn't a which is better post. I am seriously asking why it is this way.

I keep seeing people say how slow windows is compared to linux. So I decided to make some tests myself.

Computer
Celeron 600
Socket 370 M754LMR Motherboard
128 meg of ram
nVidia video card
C-media sound card
Mandrake 8.1
Windows 98 SE

Startup from Lilo Boot Manager
Linux Time = "1 minute 51 seconds" with user auto-login active booting to KDE.
Windows 98 Time = "13 seconds"

Starting Mozilla
Linux First time used since boot = "48 seconds"
Restarts = "27 seconds"
Can't find a "Quick Launch option under Linux"
Windows First time used since boot Not using "Quick Launch" = "11 seconds"
Restarts = "3 seconds"
Windows First time used since boot Using "Quick Launch" = "5 seconds"
Restarts = "1 second"

So am I doing something severly wrong in Linux or absolutely right in Windows or are these expected results?

Any clue?

Later
Centurian

Well try doing this on your Windows box:

Attempt to burn a cd.
Play mp3's on winamp.
Compile an application using one of the dreaded Windows compilers.
Surf the net.

After the Windows box locks up and requires you to force a reboot by pushing the reset button, try the same thing on a Linux box.  You will soon be convinced about why do people rave about Linux's performance superiority over Microsoft products.

[Centurian]

Hey saquarrier,

I had only necessary items in the boot scripts. And no I definitely was not running Apache.  

Hey BadKarma,

Thanks much for the link and the tip on ram.

Hey Will,

I did not say Linux was unstable (like windows is) I said it was slow on that computer.  

Thanks to everyone who has posted. I have done quite a bit of research on it since I posted this and have come to the following conclusions.

1. The motherboard is only partially compatible with Linux.
2. The sound card is barely compatible at all (anything more than a beep would not work).
3. The video card nVidia Aladdin TNT2 is not directly compatible have to use a generic driver for it to work.  
4. That machine is a built for Windows 98 computer and it runs very slowly (although quite stable) under Linux.
5. I really don't like Intel processors. Have always used AMD up until the 600.

After learning the above it showed me how powerful Linux really is. If it can run stable (even if it is slow) with the above marks against it then it is a very solid OS.

Solution : I bought a new computer one that is 100% compatible with Linux quaranteed. Got it at www.linuxcomputersystems.com

When it arrives hopefully the middle of next week I will have a decent computer again.

Athlon 1600
256M DDR
Asus Geforce MX200 32M

If that isn't enough I will just add some more ram.  

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

Great, I think you will be happy.  I've got the Athalon 1600 and Soyo Dragon motherboard w/512MB of RAM and that bugger just *screams*.  I've got the Geforce II.  Did a full RedHat 7.2 install and it detected everything, start to finish in about 10 minutes and 20 seconds and only one boot.  Of course your install may go faster as I have an older slower hard drive in this box (upgraded everything but the HD, CD, and Monitor).

You should have plenty of RAM as long as you aren't going to do a lot of VMware stuff (256 is surely enough to do it but depending on how much RAM you want to give to your guest OS or how many virtual machines you want to run it could get into swap).

I have one problem with people making claims about Linux and not needing a lot of memory.  Sure, Linux *can* run in a little amount of memory but for Desktop work I would never run it with less than 256MB.  Linux isn't the fastest when you start swapping, especially on slower processors, but as long as you can feed it enough RAM it blows pretty much everything else away. Now for several server functions (dedicated DNS server, sendmail server, lightweight web server etc) 64MB or even 32MB is plenty because you don't need to run Xwindows or any graphical apps which is where the memory gets eaten.

Now I don't know how it will compare to Windows as far as how long it takes to boot but I personally think this is a stupid comparison anyway, mainly because I never turn any of my machines off (except for my laptop), and the BIOS checks take just as long as the actual Linux boot on my fast machine.  

The only place I can see where bootup would really matter is on embedded devices (PDAs etc) and they don't boot up from from the beginning like a desktop version of the OS does anyhow, they have a ROM image and when turned on bring up a desktop immediately by loading a RAM image of the system in a running state from ROM. You don't monkey with the boot sequence on embedded devices so you can do this.

This is much the same as when you do a "suspend" on a laptop (or a suspend on a Virtual Machine in VMware) and the amount of time it takes to get the system back up to a fully running system at a desktop is directly related to the amount of time it takes to load the RAM and Video memory images from disk. May take 10 seconds on a desktop with a 512MB RAM image but on an embedded device with only 16MB of RAM and the image to be loaded is stored in ROM it is nearly instantaneous.

And speaking of never turning my machines off, I have had several machines with multi *year* uptimes without a shutdown or reboot. In fact my current main Apache/sendmail/pop/imap/DNS/more multifunction server has been running since I installed it, next week will be it's 1 year anniversary (uptime command shows 359 days right now).  It was originally installed with RedHat 6.1 but I have continually upgraded everything and have never had to reboot it (haven't upgraded the kernel).  It runs about 20 web sites and domains, is the mail server for around 50 people, is the network monitoring server and intrusion detection server (IDS) for the ISP where it resides and it has never been rebooted.  In fact, two days ago I noticed it has a failed hard drive and this will get replaced without having to reboot the server as soon as I mail one over to the location where the machine resides (running hardware RAID 5 with 5 drives).

In case you haven't noticed, I am a satisfied Linux user.....

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Centurian]

Hey VoidMain,

Thanks, the more I learn about Linux the more I wish I had started using it about 12 years ago rather than dos.

Regarding reboots I reboot both computers here at least once a day when running Windows. With Mandrake on the 600 it ran slow but very stable. Did not have to reboot it at all when running Mandrake.

Hopefully I will be a satisfied Linux user now with the new comp.  

Later
Centurian

[voidmain]

Let me know how it goes, and I will certainly be glad to help if you have any questions.  Now for a riddle:

Why doesn't Windows have an "uptime" command?

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Centurian]

Hey VoidMain,

Thanks    

Microsoft's response to your riddle is "What's Uptime"

Later
Centurian

[ January 27, 2002: Message edited by: Centurian ]

[jtpenrod]

"I have one problem with people making claims about Linux and not needing a lot of memory.
              Sure, Linux *can* run in a little amount of memory but for Desktop work I would never run it
              with less than 256MB."

I did. I installed Mandrake on a Dell OptiPlex GXa with 32MB of RAM, even though Mandrake said it requires at least 64MB. I used the KDE desktop with no problems. Sure, I couldn't open all the desktops and fill them with apps - start one too many and memory would run out, causing that last app to close. However, this was at worst a minor inconvenience as the system itself wouldn't crash. My only real problem was in using Konqueror. Now *that* would really slow up and swap so much the HD sounded as though it was grinding a pound of coffee. Netscape, OTOH, presented no problems whatsoever.

[voidmain]

Hmmm, what was the speed of your processor and what kind of disk bandwidth did you have?  I should have rephrased my memory thing.  Linux will run pretty good on a low end Pentium with lots of RAM and it will run on a 1600 with ata100 and little memory fairly well but performance is greatly reduced on slower machines if apps have to swap.

[badkarma]

and if you really want to speed up your KDE use the object prelinker, bewarned though, you'll need to compile KDE yourself which is not quite easy for the casual computer user  

http://leon.bottou.com/objprelink/

still haven't had time to do it myself though, so I can't tell you about the exact increase in speed but I heard good things about it.....

[jtpenrod]

quote: Hmmm, what was the speed of your processor and what kind of disk bandwidth did you have?

It was a Pentium II (232MHz). The HD had just a tad over 2.0GB. As to the actual BW, I'm not sure, however, it couldn't've been all that high. This was a 6 year old Dell and 32MB of RAM and 2.0GB on the hard drive was something in those days. I'm surprised it ran Mandrake at all, let alone at how well it worked.

[badkarma]

Hmm ... I did a comparison between the Linux and Windows version of Return To Castle Wolfenstein, here are my specs and results:

Athlon 1400Mhz @ 1553Mhz
Asus a7m266 mainboard
1024Mb ddr ram
NVidia geforce 3
c-media soundcard
suse 7.3
windows xp

windows xp first time start up:
25secs
linux first time startup:
8secs
windows restarts:
12-13secs
linux restarts:
2-3 secs

The 23.11 nvidia drivers are a bit buggy under windows (had some artefacts with wolfenstein under xp, which was quite ugly) while they work perfectly under linux, so framerate under linux is a lot better (technically it's the same but I have anti aliasing on under linux, if I turn that off it's a lot faster then under windows    )

oh, allmost forgot, under windows it takes 20 (!) seconds to close RTCW, under linux it exits  instantly.

[ February 01, 2002: Message edited by: BadKarma ]

[voidmain]

Hey can you blame XP?  It was probably confused by all that memory. (-;