Is it true that Linux is more efficient than Windows

Forget Mac.

I just noticed that when I’m running Ubuntu (a Linux Distro) my PC is cooler than when it is running Windows.

I also render faster on Ubuntu than on Windows.

I have no problems with virus on Ubuntu

I have driver issues on Ubuntu

i think so, but apparently Unity (the window manager ubuntu uses) is really slow, and ubuntu has loads of junk installed, so i would switch to Lubuntu (yes there is an L in there!), which uses LXDE wm (much faster apparently) and is very stripped of installments. look at the ‘a new OS designed specifically for blender’ thread. right now i use lubuntu, and even though i have a really bad laptop (1.66ghz, 1g ram) blender works fine (though sometimes sticky). hopefully that helps :slight_smile:

There’s not really a short answer to it.

Windows is an efficient system where hardware is concerned. It used to be that the hardware requirements for running graphical applications was actually higher on Linux systems. I had an old P3 (dual boot) that could run Blender in XP but had segmentation faults when I tried to run it in Hardy. This seemed to be because of memory allocation as I was using integrated graphics at the time.

Base line CLI Linux can just about be run on a digital watch but as features are added it becomes more demanding of the hardware. Considering that drivers are reverse engineered and may not be as efficient due to the license constraints that complicate the task, the results will vary on different hardware configurations.

Proprietary systems (OEMs and box models) with Windows might be a little more heavy with what is referred to as “bloatware”. It’s proprietary software that is added to the package with partners to bolster the price point. Custom and home builds tend to be lighter on the software side and therefor pretty efficient as there is likely less running processes.

I cant really say that Linux distros are more efficient than Windows in general but in a number of cases (and I’m not sure what that number is) they seems to be. It would probably be best answered by a developer that has worked on a wide range of projects.

I’d suggest using a Task Manager tool to see what else the Windows system might be doing at the time. It’s very hard to make any sort of side-by-side comparison between the two environments because they are really not comparable at all. Is <Linux | Windows> categorically <more | less> “efficient” than <Windows | Linux>? I really don’t think that such a question can be meaningfully posed.

One thing that I definitely do find to be true, though, is that renders in all environments seem to be more efficient when run from the command-line; not graphically. Blender doesn’t need to “put on a show” for you in order to render something. I literally do things with Unix “makefiles,” and to me it does seem to be faster that way.

so i guess linux can be faster than windows, but can also be slower than windows

Isn’t Mint the go-to OS now if you want to be serious about Linux, because it seems like they have a much better direction than Ubuntu.

I have heard before that Linux can be a bit faster, but installing apps. are a different story. Sure, some like Blender are easy to install and use, but that’s just because the developers took the effort to make everything into a nice, tidy package so you don’t have to hunt for the required dependencies and perform other tasks.

sometimes installing is a pain, but usually not. apt-get usually work, if not then .tgz’s and makefiles are just as easy, and most packages will have either. not so easy when you have to get the entire dependency tree my hand (i did that for wings3d once, huge pain)
mint is probably faster than ubuntu, but it also has some junk installed, so i think Lubuntu is the “cleanest” to start from

One of the issues with Linux being faster for cycles rendering for example was that windows version of blender was built with an older version of visual studio, that isn’t so much an issue any more; you would have to compare the two. I haven’t compared for well over a year so no idea what has changed.

Well, Microsoft has been catching up by removing a lot of the old cruft for Windows 8/8.1, so that along with a VS2012 build would allow Windows users to get close to the speeds of Linux in terms of rendering.

Has Microsoft not decided to ship Metro with the desktop OS or remove the start button, it would be really digging into the current marketshare of Win7 (which itself is lighter-weight than XP).

My Experiences:

Installation:


Windows 8:

  • Download and get key from Microsoft Dreamspark through my university. Yay! Free and legal, though it expires after two years.
  • MASSIVE Download (Over a DVD I seem to recal, though I can’t remember?)
  • Installation takes about an hour from putting the ISO on a flash-drive and booting from it. I then have to enter a product key character for character
  • Then I have to install drivers, racking up to nearly another gigabyte of storage, and taking another 2-3 hours

Total size: more than 30 Gb. (with some applications)
Time to get to usable condition: 4-5 hours (including download)
Memory usage after boot: 2gb
Battery Life: 5 and a half hours

Windows 7:
- Download and get key from Microsoft Dreamspark through my university. Yay! Free and legal, though it expires after two years.

  • MASSIVE Download (roughly a DVD)
  • Installation takes about an hour from putting the ISO on a flash-drive and booting from it. I then have to enter a product key character for character
  • Then I have to install drivers, racking up to nearly another gigabyte of storage, and taking another 3-4 hours because my machine isn’t officially supported for windows 7

Total size: more than 30 Gb. (with some applications)
Time to get to usable condition: 5-6 hours (including download)
Memory usage after boot: 1gb
Battery Life: 3 hours, as the dual graphics setup never got working properly due to not being properly supported on windows 7.

Linux Mint:
- Download the ISO from the linux mint homepage

  • Download is just over a gigabyte, and can take advantage of torrent software for faster downloads without worrying about legal problems
  • Installation takes less than fifteen minutes. Plug in the drive, enter your username, location on planet earth, and a few other things, wait a couple minutes and it’s done
  • On boot, only a single driver is missing, which is fixed with an hour or so of internet searching.

Total size: 7gb (with all my normal apps)
Time to get to usable condition: 1-2 hours
Memory usage after boot: 1gb
Battery life: 6 and a half hours! Yes, it’s increased, and I did actually test it for this long!

Arch Linux:

  • Download the ISO from the homepage
  • Download is 600mb
  • Installation takes 10-30 minutes, but is rather complex
  • Then you have to set everything up, Desktop Environment, any applications you want, a network manager, drivers etc.

Total size: ~2gb
Time to get to usable condition 5-6 hours
Memory usage after boot ~300mb
Battery Life: 5 hours (never found out how to completely turn off both graphics cards from here)

Day to day use:

***Windows 8:
Boots fast with quick boot enabled, (but slow without it), interface feels slow and multitasking is rather hard with metro apps on my laptop screen. Got a couple of BlueScreens from my graphics drivers, but on the whole everything worked well.

Windows 7:
Boot time is in the middle of the two options for Win8. Interface is easier to work with than windows 8 an less disruptive to workflow. Never crashed for me, despite ‘less supported drivers.’ Battery life was not so hot though.

Linux Mint:
By default this comes with the XFCE interface, which I quite like. Nice that it supports multiple workspaces. I actually loaded a different window manager to it called i3wm, which is tiling and runs uber fast. Some people hate tiling managers though. Very few (uh, none that I can think of actually) crashes, though you do have to reboot to switch between graphics cards. Boot time is about the same as windows 7.

Arch Linux:
This one I also ran with i3, which again is a workflow that I like. A little less stable for me, though that is probably just my graphics drivers playing up.

Number Crunching:

***I don’t do much rendering, but I do play a couple of games, so here are my experiences:

  • A 10% FPS increase from Windows 8 to Linux Mint running Wine (With a game called Talon. Ran at about 260 FPS on Linux)
  • A 30% increase from Windows 8 to an identical version of the same game on Linux Mint (Descent Rebirth, sourceport from 1995 game. Runs way up in the hundreds)

So there you go. That concludes me for now.
All this was done last year. I now have only a single OS on my laptop: Linux Mint with i3wm as a desktop environment.

Mint is still a Ubuntu derivate, which is in turn a Debian derivate. Most know anyways.
While there is a Mint flavor based on Debian too, it’s not too actively maintained.

So the new dog in the kennel is tanglu linux.

Looks very promising, direct Debian derivate, a rolling distribution based on debian-testing and meant to be an OOTB experience.
So far I like it, but V1.0 is still a bit hands-on as they are still resolving the “firmware” and “proprietary-driver”-issues the licenses struggle with.

So far it installs easy like Mint but feels less “dirty”

So there are other Ubuntu variations? Lubuntu, Xubuntu, etc. :smiley:

I may be able to deleted those junk files.

Short answer: yes
Long answer:
Linux’s advantage is that you can make it “exactly” as you want it. Being forced into linux, I loved in the first week! So fast!
With a bit of looking around, you can find the distro for you. OK, maybe that was not so long, but I’m bored right now…

lubuntu boots crazy fast, 10 secs on my extremely crappy computer. mint takes like 45 seconds :slight_smile:
i you want to look through different distributions, go to www.distrowatch.com. awesome site (but not as good as ba of course :D)

atom, about deleting junk installments, try this in a terminal:
sudo apt-get remove <insert package to remove here, without the greater-than and less-than symbols>

you will have to type roots password there (because you are screwing around with stuff thats not yuors, basically)
then to completely wipe the package:
cd /var/cache/apt/archives
rm <package to remove, again no greater-thans or less-thans>

ps: ubuntu was originally designed as an education thing, NOT a speedy distro, which is why it has all that junk

Most Linux distributions comes bare bone. No bells, no whistles, sometimes not even a real graphical UI. In general everything is much more spartanic than at Windows, no matter if it is debian or suse or any other distro. No wonder it boots much faster than Windows. It doesn’t have to load this much.

I personally find Linux at the desktop slower and much more cumbersome to use. I have spent hours and days of searching to find out how to change simplest things. While the same steps were very intuitive to use in Windows, and done with one click. I have found myself again and again at the console for the most basic operations. I mean you have a graphical UI. And then you can only change stuff like a config at the console by Nano because you need root, and it is not allowed to log in as root at the graphical UI? How crazy is this? There is a reason why Windows dominates the desktop …

The more crucial question besides performance and comfort is: does the OS run my needed software. A OS is no end in itself. And when i cannot run my software, then i don’t need this OS. Now let’s have a look at the software market, where 95% of all desktop software is Windows software. And then let’s decide if it is really wise to switch to Linux at the desktop.

Linux can be used as a desktop system. But i prefer Windows over Linux at the desktop for more than one good reason.

if you have the source code, linux will run practically anything, unless you dont have the hardware. but fi yuo dont have the hardware, no os is going to help. i use linux all the time, as a desktop system. never had any trouble. actualy, i think most linux distros are not that bare bone, or they have a package manager at least. about your nano problem, you can use any editor, and if you have a package manager just get a desktop or wine (a windows emulator) and stop complaining! if you have a problem then google it.

sdfgeoff: i tried i3 and love it! when i run top to see the programs which are eating the cpu, i3 isnt usually even on the list while openbox (my old wm) is nearly always on it (although its usually only using less than 1% cpu). so i3 seems to perform well. also i like the ‘multi-desktop’ system and tiling :slight_smile:

if you have the source code, linux will run practically anything, unless you dont have the hardware. but fi yuo dont have the hardware, no os is going to help.

This is nonsense, sorry. It has nothing to do with hardware.

Nobody is going to edit the source code of a OS to run a software. I’m a user, not a OS developer. And even when i would have the skills, not everybody has years left to reverse engineer software and to do the adjustments at the Linux source code just to get a specific software to run at Linux that runs fine at Windows. I definitely miss that time, i have better things to do.

That Linux does not run anything can be seen at WINE. It does run some Windows software fine. But most of the Windows software will run flawed or even not at all.

actualy, i think most linux distros are not that bare bone, or they have a package manager at least.

I didn’t mean stuff like Package manager. With bare bone i mean that Linux just provides the absolute basic interface without any graphical gimmicks or extra options. Ubuntu tried to change this to some degrees, but it is still not as comfortable as Windows.

This goes this far that the standard file explorer usually cannot be set to display images or be displayed as a list like in Windows. There are simply no options to change the look. One look must be enough for all needs. This can also be seen at the mentioned config files. Text files that you need to edit in the bash instead of a useful graphical text editor, where you have to search yourself to death, where you have lost when you don’t know the term you are looking for. This is the 21.st century, we have buttons, we have checkboxes, we have tooltips, at least outside of Linux. In Linux we have the bash. Text based like 1980, pre windows era!

Here the good old Open Source problem strikes back. Ignore the UI, function is everything … . No, it is not. The graphical UI is important. Usability is important. And that’s where Linux fails most of the times compared to Windows. The users doesn’t like that really. They have long voted with their feet. Last time i checked it was around 1-1.5% Linux at the desktop. And i don’t even want to know how much of those 1.5% uses Linux as the main OS, and not the secondary OS.

about your nano problem, you can use any editor,

I think you haven’t understood the problem. With things that requires root privilegues like configs you are limited to text editors that runs in the bash. Because at for example Ubuntu or Debian the desktop login as root is forbidden. And you need root privilegues to edit configs. Means you have no other way than to change the configs in the bash by what is available there. Nano for example. Which is a painful task. You cannot run graphical text editors like Libre Office in the bash.

The bash is a UI relict from the eighties of the last millenium. But you still have to use it regularly in Linux. This is acceptable for a server, the bash saves resources here compared to a graphical desktop UI. But this is not acceptable for a desktop pc.

If you imagine how Windows became popular, it would be simply because non-technical users found it better and easier to use. Windows having stronger marketing strategy, having precise standards (not essentially the best) for devices and software, and making software developers more willful to develop for it, thus became the dominating operating system of the simple users.

Unfortunately Linux is very difficult and requires lots of technical expertise for the side of the user to setup and configure and use. Just joking!!! 10 years ago this would be correct to say, but currently each and every release out there keeps getting even better and even more user friendly than ever.

I have tried recently Elementary OS and I think that is a big win.

In all fairness to f3l1x, I don’t think he was talking about the OS source, but instead the application source. In that case, what he’s said is basically true. And in that case, all regular users don’t have to mess with the source… just one user/developer. Then everyone else can run a binary as expected. Of course, sadly, most commercial applications haven’t come with source code in decades.

This is highly dependent on the distribution you choose… and the desktop management system you choose within that distro. The blanket statement you’re making is as out of date as your reference to the terminal and text files.

Of course, I’m also saying this as someone who likes text files and who is faster with most file operations using the terminal than a file browser. To each their own.

You can absolutely run LibreOffice from a terminal as root (best case, use sudo… worst case, use su). Though LibreOffice is probably a bit heavy-handed for editing a simple text file (even in Windows, you’d use Notepad or Wordpad instead of Office). And with tools like gksudo it’s absolutely possible to run any graphical application as root without touching the terminal at all. Granted, Ubuntu disables the root user by default (horrible idea, IMO), but Debian and most other distributions certainly don’t.

It’s unfortunate that your experience with Linux as a desktop didn’t work out for you and that you chose a distribution that wasn’t adequately suited to your needs. But, it’s certainly not for everyone. Neither is Windows. Neither is Mac OS.

But… this is quickly turning into a versus thread. Let’s get back to the OP.

Linux can be more efficient for some things than Windows. Generally speaking, it often does number crunching jobs and memory access somewhat faster (if only marginally). However, some people have a hard time finding a desktop environment that works for them… or they may have driver troubles, so they may lose time on setup and configuration. It would be a fair bet (albeit a gross generalization) to say that Linux is more efficient with computer time, but without experience, it’s less efficient with people time.