I have Linux and Windows NT on a dual boot system with a DSL connection and the Linux is faster....

Browsing speed has less to do with the OS than the browser... IE does a lot of work with it's rendering engine... if you're on Linux you're probably using Gaelon or Konquerer or something else that's much more efficient...

For a even comparison you could use Opera on both platforms... and unless your network config is really screwed up in windows they should perform the same

Not quite true. The TCP stack (the thing that actually connects you to the internet) is much cleaner under *nix. Microsoft has come some distance, but the *nix implementations are simply better. There are also multi-tasking reasons why the *nix version of the browser will perform better than the windows equivalent. That said, I agree that opera for example is going to blow the drawers off IE or netscape on either platform. The main reason you'd want to move off IE/windows is virus protection, plain and simple. Microsoft until recently just didn't care about security. Their implementations show it (The way the read mail is an example of how not to be secure.)

Ok guys I have clocked the download & upload speed on both Windows NT 4.0 (fresh install no bugs) and Mandrake Linux by using this web site:

http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

and the Linux is faster by about 200KBs

I did this test several times

Note that this forum is being hosted on FreeBSD Unix/Apache, not winders. Go Outlaw. Yet another great example of Outlaw cost savings!

I don't even know where to start on this.

• Fresh install != no bugs
• Several times on two platforms isn't more than a weak indicator. Simple configuration changes can account for much more than that, as can the client implementation. This is not really an OS test.
• Most folks have a connection < 1 mbps, which isn't going to peg any reasonable machine. Even T1 is only 1.5 mbps. If you want to test throughput do it on a LAN, preferably something like 1 gbps copper.

Certainly Linux has advantages, and the new release (coming soon to a ftp site near you!) will erode several places where Windows has clear advantages over Linux in the realm of socket connection processing, but this sort of thing is way more interesting to the folks who are doing web servers and such. Client side stuff is going to be more about 'perception of speed', not reality.

And Windows presently allows more efficient processing of some sorts for network connections. This is being fixed in the next release of Linux, and the patch is available, but not everything in Linux-land is roses.



All operating systems and most applications contain bugs and vulnerabilities. Linux has two huge advantages:

• An army of developers who are willing to issue fixes quickly, and
• A smaller user base, which makes Linux a less interesting target for virus writers.

No magic there. I do AV and security software development BTW.

EDIT: Fixed a bug.

[This message has been edited by charlie (edited May 06, 2003).]