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Discussion on: Switching To linux

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jhilgeman profile image
Jonathan H

No, I am saying that the performance -can- drop in Linux if you use it the same way that people often use Windows. People often install lots of things without any regard to the side effects.

For example, I've logged into a less-experienced admin's Linux web server, only to find a bunch of desktop services running that did not need to be installed. The admin had used a package manager to install a graphics library package, which had one dependency that triggered many other dependencies, including the whole X11 system, which was now starting up at boot and taking up valuable resources even though it wasn't even used. The admin was trying out something but didn't end up needing it, but he left it installed and running. On top of that, he hadn't disabled the unnecessary services like Bluetooth, so there were a few of those running for no reason, too.

Performance is not usually killed by one or two major things - it is an accumulation of very small things.

If you know what you're doing with Linux, you won't see performance drop. If you know what you're doing with Windows, you also won't see performance drop.

One last note:

not like windows and android where you can't see those services...

You can see every service and process on Windows. In fact, Windows.10 makes it even easier to see what processes map to which services.

Android tries harder to shield the user from the services but your average user doesn't even bother much with processes anyway. If Linux desktop became mainstream-popular tomorrow, you would see new app stores for Linux popping up everywhere, filled with games and apps that contain ads and their own copies of libraries, and apps that run in the background. And people wouldn't care until their system got slow and then they'd complain that Linux is slow.

My.point was not that Linux gets slow - it's that bad user practices will make the operating system slow no matter if it's Windows or Linux or Mac or whatever.

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oshankkashyap profile image
Oshank Kashyap

I agree with you, sir.
People usually don't care about what they are running inside their machines and complain that the os is slow. Even I use windows. I usually don't feel any hiccups when using it (but It feels slow after an update).

I know that you can kill and see services in Windows. That line was for Android only.
Thanks for your reply
And, sorry for my aggressiveness :)

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jhilgeman profile image
Jonathan H

No worries. Aggressiveness is pretty common when talking about Linux and Windows. :)

FWIW, I think updates are definitely smoother in Linux than in Windows. Windows has had a pretty rough time trying to get them right and it's still not perfect.