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!
I think both the Windows NT Kernel and the Linux Kernel are solid speedy parts of the OS. The main bloat is what’s on top.
Windows seems to have progressively more bloated phases. Newer stock Windows programs are built from much heavier components.
There’s the Win32 phase, which is super fast and lightweight. Few programs are still alive using this phase, WordPad (RIP) is one of them.
Then there’s the broad Win64 phase, comprised of mostly Win Vista/7/8/10 parts. Word, Excel, and the old Outlook are examples of these programs. Slow upon their inception, they have become considerably faster due to better hardware, but still aren’t very snappy.
And finally there’s the new phase, Windows 11. Horribly bloated and laughably slow when pushed beyond the absolute basics. Examples include File Explorer, Notepad, Teams, and the new Outlook. Notepad is mostly fine, but even File Explorer takes multiple seconds to load basic things on midrange hardware. We all know how bad Teams is, and the new Outlook takes 30 seconds to launch and open an email even on high end hardware.
Much of the modern bloat comes from this latest phase, but somehow other parts of the system have seriously bloated as well, like all of the disk processes on startup and even the Windowing system, which used to be near instant on crappy hardware back in the Win2000 era, now takes up to a second on modern midrange hardware on 11.
Linux has fared better against the onset of bloat than Windows, which is the main reason why it feels much snappier and uses less memory. Despite this, you can still see Linux getting significantly heavier over the years, from the super lightweight Trinity Desktop to what we have now. But, web browsers powering many greedy tabs can easily out-bloat GNOME, to the point where Linux only feels slightly faster than Windows because everything is in a browser.
I agree wholeheartedly and want to add that with Linux systems it’s much easier to clean out the bloat and be left with a usable system. It’s possible on Windows but might as well not be since the bloat is so deeply integrated into the OS and SDK.
Or, to use their proper names, Win32, WinForms, and (shudder) UWP/Metro
I thought UWP/Metro was Win8/10. Win11 is “Fluent”. Perhaps there were 4 phases, not just 3, but my post was already getting too long and the WinForms phase has been pretty much fully conquered by today’s fast hardware.