Friday, October 19, 2007

Windows Programs Sometimes Run Faster On Linux Than XP

A popular myth among old linux users is that they need to dual-boot because their fav windows program does not work in Linux. I tell them, there's wine and cadega and they tell me the performance of these are slower than Windows... and this post is to break this myth!!

Recently, after my openSuSE 10.3 review, I asked a friend to start using Linux instead of Windows. And the old debate again came up. I opened a rar file using WinRar using Wine and even to my surprise, the file opened 5 secs faster in Linux than Windows XP (a 700Mb file ==> Windows XP took 46secs and Wine on openSuSE took 41secs)... I didnt really expect that much of a difference, but it actually did and I was pleasantly surprised. I tried another 1Gb file and there was a 6sec difference... Your results may vary, but it does say something... Doesn't it??

Not that every windows program works faster in Linux using Wine, but atleast some do. People who dont play games, can really be happy with the performance that Wine gives on Windows programs.

I found these benchmark on Wine's site. I haven't tried all those programs, but then there may be some truth to it. I'll also try the comparison on Vista and analyze the results. Don't believe me or the wine's benchmarks blindly, you'll be pleasantly amazed...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This is certainly interesting. I'd have to give 7.10 a try.

Anonymous said...

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise really.

At the very least I can imagine that Windows has some serious legacy suff to support whereas WINE has less similar issues...at least I remember for NT in the book ShowStopper the team buying tons of software to test and fix compatability issues.

adaykin said...

It took you 46 seconds to open a rar?? 700 mb isn't really that big. Unless you have an early 90's processor and RAM I kind of doubt the validity of this claim. I can do it in a second or two with mid 90's hardware.