Re: Operating Systems Linux vs. Windows

[Habil Silva <habil.silva@netc.pt>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Mario Gonzalez <mario.gonzalez@connecta.se>
To: <gameprogrammer@gameprogrammer.com>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 3:00 PM
Subject: RE: Operating Systems Linux vs. Windows


> Hi!
>
> My opinion regarding this issue is that it is all a matter of gaining
> experience and to learn as much as one can about the OS being used...
>
> At work I use NT/Win2000, but at home I use Linux. I must admit that in
the
> beginning, Linux wasn't the easiest thing to learn, but with time, I got a
> certain "feel" for it, and now it is as good as any (if not better) OS
that
> I use, all purposes.
>
> From a programmer's point of view, Linux (or any UNIX-based system) is
very
> good for improving one's programming habits. On Linux you never get away
> with being lazy, for examle if you forget to allocate memory for a char*,
> you'll get runtime segmentation faults (the same code runs ok on win).
Also,
> Linux provides faster execution than windows. I ran my own encryption
> program (without changing the code) on an 10mb file, first on win, then
> Linux. On windows, the execution time was 3.26 mins, and on linux the same
> procedure took 1.10 mins. All of this was run on the same machine (thank
god
> for dual boot), and yes, the algorithm that I use is _very_ heavy.
>

You must be doing something very wrong! I myself have designed an encryption
program and it takes about 10 seconds to encrypt a 15Mb file under Win98,
using an MFC application (I have a Celeron clocked at 487 MHz, and 64 Mb
RAM).
You say that your encryption algorithm is very heavy, but I still think you
should be
able to optimize it a lot, no matter how heavy it is. Because 3.26 mins is
too
much: a throughput of only 53 Kb/s!!

> So, chances are that your programs might get faster and more efficient
> programs on Linux, who knows, provided that you wish to learn it!

In general, Linux isn't that much faster than Windows, or DOS. The DOS
version of Quake ran about 10 fps faster under Windows 95 then under Linux
(console) on a Pentium MMX 200MHz. So I don't believe that Linux runs much
faster than Windows, or DOS.


Habil Silva

PS.: I don't read my mail very often, that's why I'm posting this reply so
late.



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