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by Traster 2321 days ago
Whilst its always interesting to know whether the operating system is bottle-necking performance (as some versions of windows clearly do). I've never experienced a situation where I've actually had a performance reason to choose between Linux/Windows. For me it has always been "This thing I'm doing is linux only" or vice versa so operating system isn't a real choice.

Do people actually make decisions like that? I guess if you're doing some python based data analysis it could make sense.

2 comments

It was a motivating factor for me when I originally started to look into Linux back in high school. It stopped being relevant for me when my focus shifted to preferring software freedom/transparency (and this is what ultimately pushed me into using Linux as my daily driver instead of "that cool operating system that actually runs decently on my old machines").

Now that Linux gaming is somewhat viable, performance is back on the forefront of my mind; it's fun to know that my (first-gen) Threadripper machine runs significantly better when I install Slackware on it instead of Windows.

> I guess if you're doing some python based data analysis it could make sense.

I think you answered your own question. ;) Any CPU heavy tasks really. If you can squeeze an extra 20% performance boost over Windows, running Linux would a pragmatic and economical choice.