Ok, I'll keep this simple.
Last night I was transferring stuff of my fileserver that is being transformed into a webserver (Linux/Apache) to my laptop (the only box of mine with a burner).
On the laptop (XP, 2.5G CPU, 512Mb ram, 7200rpm HDD, fastest graphics in the house (but can't remember what exactly), I had Trillian and Netscape 7.2 running, as well as a windoze explorer window. That was all.
The server (Mandrake 10/Gnome, 300Mhz CPU, 190 MB Ram, Nvida Geforce 2 (IIRC) w/ 32Mb ram, several older slower 5400(?) HDD's) was ul'ing the files to the doze box, transferring files to a couple of 'staging areas', doing a file search, handling some printing and also had Mozilla running (but idle).
The doze box was really sluggish under it's load. 25-30 seconds for an IM to send on Trillian, and maybe another 5-10 seconds for the screen to update. Going back to the web page displayed behind the IM window - anything up to 30 seconds, and anything up to another 20 for the page to respond to input.
The Linux box, otoh, was at most 5 seconds to display anything. Starting a new task was a bit slow, but the disk activity was high so that would, I expect, cover the very slight sluggishness.
So.. Why is my new expensive machine running XP so much slower than an old pile of junk I was considering dumping?
Windoze XP? :thumbdwn: :fu:
Linux? :thumbup:
:thumbup:
...
I went to linux for the server because of stability and security. I'll probably switch the laptop over to it because of that and, having tried Knoppix out on it, SPEED!
[Oh, and before anyone asks - my nick was given to me due to my physical characteristics in '91, and does not relate to the Gnome desktop)