Windows performance question

Based on the following post from Betanews and my own experience, Windows's performance is pretty slow compared to most (maybe all) of the Linux distros I have used. is pretty slow even with a new hard drive, motherboard with 65 gb RAM and Ryzen 7 processor. It also ate my Garuda install (typical). All OS's are on separate drives - not just separate partitions.. For performance reasons I am going to install Lubuntu 24.04 over Manjaro. Comments would be welcome.

@martyfelker

Seems to me you ought to be on a Linux forum of some sort. Windows users/volunteer adivisers are not likely to offer much in comments on the choice of Lubuntu over Manjaro. Good luck, though.

martyfelker said:

Comments would be welcome.

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Okay. I have Win7, Win10, Win11 and Linux Mint Cinnamon on separate computers via KVM. I don't see any issues in operation but I'm not a gamer where performance and speed = more cost. As for Linux, the desktop chosen may affect performance, most distros offer 4 different choices. XFCE appears more like Windows than the others. I have several choices of Linux LiveUSB on Thumb drives for testing. My Linux Mint is on a custom with a Gigabyte motherboard with Core i7 CPU and 16GB RAM and have Win10 on a custom with AMD Phenom II X4 965 CPU and 16GB RAM, others are Dell and HP with Core i5 CPUs, a mix of Desktops and Notebooks. My newest is an HP Notebook with Celeron CPU, inexpensive at $175 but my interest was that it included full year of Microsoft 365 on Win11 Home.

I've got Windows working fast for me.
Manjaro: Install Arch Linux and from the console install LXQt.
Lubuntu will probably work fine too.

martyfelker said:

Based on the following post from Betanews and my own experience, Windows's performance is pretty slow compared to most (maybe all) of the Linux distros I have used. is pretty slow even with a new hard drive, motherboard with 65 gb RAM and Ryzen 7 processor. It also ate my Garuda install (typical). All OS's are on separate drives - not just separate partitions.. For performance reasons I am going to install Lubuntu 24.04 over Manjaro. Comments would be welcome.

Windows 11 slammed for its 'comically bad' performance even on high-end hardware

Just about everyone who has used Windows has at some time complained that it is slow. The sluggish performance of Windows 11 -- in particular the Start menu -- has even been noted by an ex-Microsoft developer who worked on the creation of the operating system.

betanews.com

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Performance doing what? There are all kinds of performance variables as well as the task that matters.

I am sure linux in some areas are faster in some respects just as I am sure windows could be faster in others.

It kinda depends on the user and what you would want to do.

I like Windows 11, it performs pretty well, but my rig is certainly not the latest and greatest. Since we’re on a Windows forum, I’m guessing I can talk about LTSB? I use it probably 80% of the time, and it performs “on my machine” as well as 7, and definitely out performs 11. Again, I like 11, and I’m no gamer, so I’m a happy camper.

Wisewiz said:

@martyfelker

Seems to me you ought to be on a Linux forum of some sort. Windows users/volunteer adivisers are not likely to offer much in comments on the choice of Lubuntu over Manjaro. Good luck, though.

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I agree.

@martyfelker do you even use Windows 11 anymore?

RD Mercer said:

I like Windows 11, it performs pretty well, but my rig is certainly not the latest and greatest. Since we’re on a Windows forum, I’m guessing I can talk about LTSB? I use it probably 80% of the time, and it performs “on my machine” as well as 7, and definitely out performs 11. Again, I like 11, and I’m no gamer, so I’m a happy camper.

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My Win 11 installation runs really really fast for what I do with it. I can game with demanding games and it is snappy and responsive, so I am really happy with it. I should note that beyond turning Copilot off and tweaking the start menu to not show favorites (last apps opened) my Win 11 installations are all virgin out of the box installs. No other tweaks or utilities at all running to make my Windows experience "easier."

With my Linux machines, I actually spend more time keeping them up to date and struggling to get my software running again after updating or even installing new software (some of my apps require significant fiddling to even run properly) than I actually spend time using them, it seems. Linux seems pretty fast from a user perspective when the app actually runs, but I can compile a heck of lot faster on my Windows machine using similar libraries and code.

Just my not so objective experience here, but I think it would be pretty much a dead heat on the same hardware for most non-scientific and programming things. I don't know about gaming though, I haven't tried it on my Linux machines. They are for work.

To make Windows as fast as Linux you must disable all visual effects (Linux has none) and disable all the startup applications except the absolutely necessary (Linux runs almost nothing at startup). Go to Settings, Accessibility, Visual Effects and disable transparency and fades. Also go to Settings, System, Info, Advanced System Settings, Performance and disable anything with "transparency", "animation" and "fade" in the description (uncheck the box). You can leave the shadows in mouse cursor and elsewhere they don't use many resources. Also open Task Manager, go to Startup tab and uncheck all startup applications such as Microsoft Edge or other browsers, Skype, Zoom, and all updaters (Google update) or update reminders. You can manually load any application only when you want it. You can also manually check for updates once a week. You will see great improvement in performance.

Also important: Don't trust Windows update for the graphics drivers. Download the latest appropriate driver for your graphics card directly from nVidia/Intel/AMD. In most cases Windows Update drivers are outdated and have the default settings without letting you tweak them. The official driver has the Graphics Properties (or respective Control Panel) to tweak performance and other settings. You will be amazed with the difference in performance.

install classic theme and 2d window is very fast