Is Linux really faster than MS Windows ?

[Brian Mury]

On Sat, 2005-05-03 at 10:39 -0500, mark at mark.mielke.cc wrote:
> For Linux being more stable? As soon as I add certain modules into my
> kernel, the required reboot time drops to about once a week - not
> really much better than a Windows box - the Windows box which also has
> such modules installed into the kernel, causing an equivalent problem.

Which modules?

> On the other side, I've found that Windows manages to beat Linux for
> certain frequent operations that a desktop user would perform, such as
> "time to launch a web browser". Internet Explorer launches very
> quickly.  Those who are aware will claim that this is a trick -
> Windows has already loaded much of Internet Explorer by the time the
> user clicks the button to launch an actual Internet Explorer
> window.

This is, of course, only true for IE. Other browsers start quite a bit
slower. Try comparing the startup times of a non-MS browser on Windows
and the same browser on Linux.

> Fact is, though, desktop users don't care.

Very true.