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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.

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Linux and being speedy (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

Windows also still runs software unchanged
from 20 or more years ago, while software on Linux has to be constantly updated to use new libraries and APIs, else it's considered "dead" and very soon will no longer run or even compile in its current form.

It has a lot of baggage that Linux doesn't need to worry about. Up until Vista, you could even still natively run 16 bit DOS software from the 80s.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

You could still run 16-bit apps on the 32-bit version of Windows 10! You just had to manually install NTVDM from the optional features dialog. It was completely unsupported by Microsoft, though.

They never ported NTVDM to 64-bit Windows, so it died once Windows because 64-bit only.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

You can run Wine and it will probably work better than on Windows.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

That doesn't really explain why the file explorer compiled for 64-bit computers is slow as balls

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

@independantiste @TimeSquirrel , I could be wrong, but Windows NTFS is also incredibly terrible at reading/writing large numbers of small files. Windows explorer can now be opened in different processes, at least that's some improvement.

Edit: There's a reason why game developers create an archive of the files for the game rather than reading them from the FS itself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

The question really is why do they keep hanging to NTFS? It's like 156 years old at this point, there are so many newer alternatives like btrfs that are faster, support bigger drives and have more features like snapshots

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Not sure about DOS, but Windows 10 will happily run 16-bit Windows software. You have to use the 32-bit version of Windows though - the 64-bit version dropped support.