| XP faster than Linux? Not so fast! |
Dec. 23, 2005
In a recent so-called Desktop Linux versus Windows XP shootout, writer George Ou declares that "Microsoft handily beat the open source platform." The basis for this judgment? "OS boot time and application load times" on two different PCs. Oh, dear. This isn't right at all.
First, using OS boot times as the only real comparison between operating systems is a lot like comparing cars by how long it takes you to get from 0 to 60. Yes, it's a measurement, but by itself it doesn't say much of anything.
The very nature of the test itself is really pretty meaningless, anyway. Two machines do not a benchmark make.
I used to help write and run benchmarks at Ziff Davis Labs, now a branch of Veritest. The very idea of saying anything about operating system performance based on two machines load time wouldn't be taken as anything but a bad joke.
Let me give you an example. Back in 1999, I ran the first tests that showed that Samba and Apache on Linux ran rings around NT 4's file serving and IIS (Internet Information Server) web server.
We ran those tests with a maximum load of 32 workstations. Thirty-two systems was our bare minimum -- I repeat, minimum -- for testing an operating system or a serious application.
That said, in my experience with hundreds of XP and Linux desktop systems, I'd say, yes, XP does tend to boot faster than some Linuxes. I wouldn't bet on it against, say, Xandros or SimplyMEPIS, but yes, I'm sure it does boot faster than Linspire or SUSE 10.
Of course, give me a few minutes to tweak either one, and I can have either one zipping by XP. But, that's not really the point.
You see, with Linux, I don't have to buy or install anti-virus software or anti-spyware software. Nor do I have to join the "every second Tuesday patch-of-the-month club" or reboot every time I make a significant change to my operating system.
Heck, I can even update my entire GUI without rebooting. Try that with … oh, wait -- you can't really get another GUI with Windows, can you?
And, last but not least, in my experience, without any pretense of benchmarking behind it, I find that most applications run just as fast on Linux as they do on Windows.
Thinking of applications, Ou goes on to try to bolster his case by comparing the load time for Microsoft Office 2003 on Windows to OpenOffice.org 2.0 on Linux.
This doesn't measure anything meaningfully. It's a classic case of apples and oranges.
For starters, you're not comparing operating systems at all, you're comparing the loading time of two office suites. How fast they load has a good deal to do with the applications themselves, not with the operating system.
That said, Office does make good use of Windows to load quickly. I, however, don't see this as a good thing at all.
Office loads quickly, because it -- like far too many Microsoft programs -- makes use of Microsoft's built-in integration between its applications and its operating systems using shared libraries, and its eternal confusion between data and programming code found in everything from DDE to OCX to ActiveX.
This is Microsoft's eternal Achilles' heel. By integrating applications and operating systems at a deep level, Microsoft assures that any security hole has the potential to have profound effects on the entire system.
As it happens, Ou and I talked about this very point a few weeks back. His response?
"A lot of those issues have been resolved. IE on SP2 is very protective about ActiveX, and Vista will be even more protective."
Yes, Windows is better than it used to be, but the fundamental flaws that come from an operating system that was never, ever meant to work on a network are still there.
Every month we see it yet again. Just last week, Microsoft finally fixed a hole in Internet Explorer that could be used by remote attackers to execute malicious code.
Guess what? These application holes could maul XP SP2 systems. What a surprise!
If you look closer, you'll see that one of the most important holes starts when, to quote Microsoft, "Internet Explorer tries to instantiate certain COM objects as ActiveX Controls."
ActiveX? Who would have thought of that?
You can trust Windows if you want. I don't.
For me this gets at the real heart of the entire Windows vs. Linux question.
Yes, sometimes Windows may be faster, and sometimes a Windows application will be faster. At other times, a Linux desktop will be faster, or a Linux application will run more quickly. But every day, and every time, Linux provides a more stable and secure desktop.
And, that's the kind of desktop I want. Your usage may vary.
 About the author: Ziff Davis Internet senior editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about technology and business since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the
way.
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