this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
89 points (94.1% liked)

Linux

46751 readers
1982 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month 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"