Is Linux really faster than MS Windows ?

[john bray]

On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 11:41 +0530, Parameshwara Bhat 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.
> 
> 

i'm not sure that i particularly care about bootup speed that much.
however, i have noticed that in xp, it seems to only partially boot up,
and let you login during that period.  it gives the appearance of having
booted very quickly.  but, i've noticed if i login quickly, not
everything works.

so, my conclusion has been that while windows has the appearance of
booting quickly, it's sort of a fake thing -- so i've learned the hard
way to delay logins for a while after the login screen shows up.  a
while being several minutes.  but, when linux allows me to login, it
seems completely booted up and works fine.

john