After doing some google-fu, I’ve been puzzled further as to how the finnish man has done it.

What I mean is, Linux is widely known and praised for being more efficient and lighter on resources than the greasy obese N.T. slog that is Windows 10/11

To the big brained ones out there, was this because the Linux Kernel more “stripped down” than a Windows bases kernel? Removing bits of bloated code that could affect speed and operations?

I’m no OS expert or comp sci graduate, but I’m guessing it has a better handle of processes, the CPU tasks it gets given and “more refined programming” under the hood?

If I remember rightly, Linux was more a server/enterprise OS first than before shipping with desktop approaches hence it’s used in a lot of institutions and educational sectors due to it being efficient as a server OS.

Hell, despite GNOME and Ubuntu getting flak for being chubby RAM hog bois, they’re still snappier than Windows 11.

MacOS? I mean, it’s snappy because it’s a descendant of UNIX which sorta bled to Linux.

Maybe that’s why? All of the snappiness and concepts were taken out of the UNIX playbook in designing a kernel and OS that isn’t a fat RAM hog that gobbles your system resources the minute you wake it up.

I apologise in advance for any possible techno gibberish but I would really like to know the “Linux is faster than a speeding bullet” phenomenon.

Cheers!

  • digdilem@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    4 months ago

    Windows has an entirely different set of objectives. The coders have to layer on so many services that are insisted upon by marketing that no matter how optimised they make the kernel, it’s always doing to be a little boat carrying far too much cargo.

    There’s also a lot of fairly reliable rumour that the Windows codebase is very messy. Evolved and complicated, supporting many obsolete things and has suffered from different managers over the years changing styles and objectives. We don’t know for sure because it’s proprietary.

    But that said, I use both and find each good for different things. Windows is much more stable than it used to be, and speed is adequate for most things, largely because we’ve become used to buying better hardware every few years.

      • digdilem@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        4 months ago

        That is of course where Linux shines - you can have an up to date operating system on 12 year old hardware that is secure, usable and responsive In fact, it’s the only option.

        I was actually talking about the royal ‘we’ - generally we have become trained to buy new shiny things. Computers, phones, tvs, every few years. Marketing works, folks. Apologies if it rubbed a bit raw for you.

        You’ve accidentally triggered a core thing with me. I’ve done the poor thing, I have actually had zero money and no way to pay rent. I’ve had pretty much nothing at one point in my life. Although I’ve got some spending money now after 35 years of working too hard for it, that never really leaves you - if you’ve been truly poor, then you’ll always be looking for money off deals when buying food, and you’ll always be several steps behind the latest hardware just because it doesn’t feel right to spend that much. The laptop I’m typing this on was one I found in a skip. It’s a HP pavilion about 8 years old. Runs just fine on Debian.

  • Nate@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    This is just a theory, I don’t have knowledge of the inner-workings of either Linux or Windows (beyond the basics). While Microsoft has been packing tons of telemetry in their OS since Windows 10, I think they fucked up the I/O stack somewhere along the way. Windows used to run well enough on HDDs, but can barely boot now.

    This is most easily highlighted by using a disk drive. I was trying to read a DVD a while ago and noticed my whole system was locked up on a very modern system. Just having the drive plugged in would prevent windows from opening anything if already on, or getting past the spinner on boot.

    The same wasn’t observed on Linux. It took a bit to mount the DVD, but at no point did it lock up my system until it was removed. I used to use CDs and DVDs all the time on XP and 7 without this happening, so I only can suspect that they messed up something with I/O and has gone unnoticed because of their willingness to ignore the issues with the belief they’re being caused by telemetry

    • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
      3·
      4 months ago

      I had a USB with a faulty sector. Windows 10 froze for hours when I plugged it in. I got an error similar to “loading ctrl alt del interface failed”