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Memory Management, Windows vs Linux

12722 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  error10, 
S
I am truely afraid of what I am about to ask.

I wish for an unbiased, is at least equally biased, comparison of memory management between Linux and Windows. I realize that different version of Linux handle things differently, but specific distro comparisons are acceptable.

I just hate reading articles like this one. I stopped reading when the guy compared browsing, but did not even use the SAME BROWSER. I find it difficult to find an unbiased view here.

Please, try to keep this civil. Off topic posts will be reported.

EDIT:
As an example, I know that with C you have better control over memory management than C++, even though C is less popular.

Linux manages the page file differently, something like using a separate partition? And Windows, by default, uses a fragmented memory "block" on the same partition. Pros and cons?
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Phaedrus2129
I believe that distros like Debian and Fedora use less memory overall than Vista or 7, perhaps on par with XP. However, they scale better with smaller memory amounts than Windows does. Ubuntu is a little memory wasteful, not as bad as Vista, but worse than XP probably.

Windows Vista and 7 use "prefetching" to set aside memory for specific programs that you use often to use. This lets programs load faster; and they do.

Basically if you have 2GB of RAM or less than Linux will probably feel faster than Windows to you. If you have 4GB or more than Windows will feel faster.
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error10
Yes, he should have compared Firefox on one platform to Firefox on the other. To be somewhat fair to the guy, most Windows users use IE, so comparing IE to Firefox on Linux makes sense in that context. It also seems that he was using different boxes for the test; the Windows box was more powerful than the Linux one, and Linux (and Firefox) still came out better in his test.

What do you want to know about memory management?
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jackeyjoe
so far with ubuntu i have found that it uses significantly less memory with all of the flashy stuff than xp/vista/7 with/without the flashy stuff. Although this is on a very old notebook (but has 1.5gb ram) i don't need more than 512mb with ubuntu while all the windows OS's needed more than that to run smoothly.

I haven't tested it on my rig so i can't comment on PC's with newer hardware but as i've found with my old laptop it will run ubuntu very comfortably (ram wise) while windows tends to struggle a bit more with smaller amounts.

EDIT just reread my post and noticed that i didn't state if it felt faster.

Well from what i've found with my laptop, it seems very zippy compared to windows but this could be different with newer hardware, maybe someone knows more about it can give you some insight on how it differs with newer hardware.
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S
Well, to the above posts, I wish to know why people think using RAM is bad, per se?

Is it that Windows is fundamentally flawed/wasteful, or is there more pre-fetching going on, which essentially boosts performance?
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error10
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun View Post
Well, to the above posts, I wish to know why people think using RAM is bad, per se?

Is it that Windows is fundamentally flawed/wasteful, or is there more pre-fetching going on, which essentially boosts performance?
Windows swaps memory out to the pagefile even when there's no obvious good reason to do so. That much of the article was quite true. Linux does not.

Both Windows (since Vista) and Linux (since forever) use any available free memory as a giant disk cache.

Windows also has SuperFetch which is supposed to load your commonly used applications into memory before you start them, making it quicker to start them. Linux has a similar program, called preload, which you can install. Preload actually predates SuperFetch by a couple of months. And, unlike SuperFetch, it works.

Using RAM is not bad, if you use it intelligently.
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S
And this is somewhat expected, although not that much time has passed, I see several reasons why Linux is "better" or Linux "has a program for that."

I wish to see a general comparison, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of each. I find it difficult to believe that Linux beats Windows hands down. There must be at least one facet of memory management Windows does better.
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jackeyjoe
Quote:

Originally Posted by error10 View Post
Windows swaps memory out to the pagefile even when there's no obvious good reason to do so. That much of the article was quite true. Linux does not.

Both Windows (since Vista) and Linux (since forever) use any available free memory as a giant disk cache.

Windows also has SuperFetch which is supposed to load your commonly used applications into memory before you start them, making it quicker to start them. Linux has a similar program, called preload, which you can install. Preload actually predates SuperFetch by a couple of months. And, unlike SuperFetch, it works.

Using RAM is not bad, if you use it intelligently.
this
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error10
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun View Post
And this is somewhat expected, although not that much time has passed, I see several reasons why Linux is "better" or Linux "has a program for that."
Much of Linux memory management is in the kernel, of course, which means that it applies regardless of which distribution you're using.

However, each distribution makes its own choices as to which components they automatically install on every box, which are optional installs, and which aren't offered at all.

This is one major thing that differentiates Linux from Windows: it's possible to get a highly customized distribution that will do virtually anything, or a distribution which will do general stuff for total noobs.

I'd honestly like to be able to tell you that Windows does some bit of memory management better than Linux, but I just plain don't know of anything applicable.
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