Windows vs Linux Real World RAM and Disk Tests

andlinuxheadsh5 Windows vs Linux Real World RAM and Disk Tests Forget fear, uncertainty and doubt. How do Windows Vista and Linux really compare against each other? It’s one thing to talk about the familiar applications available to Windows users contrasted with the rich suite of free open source apps for Linux, but something totally different to actually compare the loads of the two operating systems as they perform functionally identical tasks.

For this test I have two laptops. Unfortunately they’re not strictly equal, in fact the Windows Vista system has an edge. It is an ASUS VX2 Lamborghini with 4GB RAM, an Intel Core 2 T7400 CPU running at 2.16GHz and a windows experience index of 4.7. The version of Windows is Windows Vista Ultimate with service pack 1 – and all other updates applied as at the time of writing. The hard drive is a Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM disk and the video card is an nVidia GeForce Go 7700.

I’m also running Red Hat Fedora 9 on a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop. Both are 15” models, and the Dell also has 4GB RAM. It is less powerful with an Intel Core 2 T5600 CPU running at 1.83GHz (and a cache of 2MB, half that of the T7400.) The Dell contains a Toshiba MK1234GSX hard drive which also runs at 5,400 RPM but contains only onboard video, specifically an Intel 945GM chipset with 8MB of “stolen” memory. Fedora has been updated to include all the patches available as at the time of writing.

Let’s first compare the two systems at rest

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