azogar Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 i have installed ubuntu onto a notebook and am gobsmacked at how much quicker downloads are than my other vista/xp systems? why is this?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happyhaddock Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 i have installed ubuntu onto a notebook and am gobsmacked at how much quicker downloads are than my other vista/xp systems? why is this?! Modern Linux distributions are very well configured for optimal network performance. The question should really be on why others aren't. Please see Enabling High Performance Data Transfers Various tuning parameters for Vista are covered here Speedguide.net page and the same site covers other operating systems. A lot depends on where you are downloading from - i.e. the round trip time for datagrams - and the TCP receive window in use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 less people downloading it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 On vista and 7 have a look into 'network autotuning' and turn it off. Also might be worth a look at your mtu values. Just google it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pl1 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 It shouldn't be, probably as live distro cd's probably have a lot less fluff loaded to take up time. Maybe you have spyware or sommat stealing bandwidth. Who knows? On a damged xp install I once noticed a Firefox install doubled the download speed, but a re-image soon restored everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Habeas Domus Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 its mostly virus scanning - the network connection is the same (presumably) and the hard drives arent spinning any faster so: Windows - download file, virus scanner locks file from executing, read all virus signatures into memory, compare all the signatures with all the different sections of the file taking into account they often swap around the order of things, if all OK unlock file from executing > fininshed vs Linux - download file > finished Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azogar Posted February 7, 2011 Author Share Posted February 7, 2011 thanks for the replies some more info would have helped i guess! i took an acer aspire one notebook and put ubuntu onto it (there is no hdd on these) vs. a siemens laptop running vista and various desktops running xp my Internet connection is totally wireless - i have a huwaei e160 mobile broadband (three network) coupled with a huwaei d100 wireless router (so basically i am sharing the e160s broadband throughout the house on an internal wireless network) when i play flash video on youtube - it always stops on the windows machines whereas it runs smooth on the ubuntu os and of course downloads are far quicker - someone mentioned the av aspect and as far as i am aware ubuntu has no av built in so maybe there is something in that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_duke_of_hazzard Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Could be larger tcp buffers. I tweak the tcp buffers for maximum throughput on my linux installs at home. Speeds up torrents a lot. Could be all sorts of other things though. Even some kind of "intelligent" packet-inspecting windows firewall "feature" for all I know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sledgehead Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 I think the answer is simple : microsoft programmers are sh!t. Did you know they recommend 192 Gbytes of RAM for Windows 7 Professional? And that's called progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AteMoose Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Just solder it! ( wrong thread cross pollination) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mish Mash Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Did you know they recommend 192 Gbytes of RAM for Windows 7 Professional? And that's called progress. Nope, that's the memory limit, the maximum amount of RAM that Windows 7 (64 bit) can "see". LINK With addled thinking like that, you just have to be a Mac user. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinker Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Wow, so much wrong thinking in this thread it`s frightening. Downloading a file is at trivial operation for any OS, the limit will be your line speed and the capacity of the sending server. I have Ubuntu, XP and Win 7 on this PC and they all download at the same speed. Maybe the OP could give us a link to a file and tell us how long it takes to download, I suggest XP SP3: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?FamilyID=5b33b5a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&displaylang=en Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_duke_of_hazzard Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Wow, so much wrong thinking in this thread it`s frightening. Downloading a file is at trivial operation for any OS, the limit will be your line speed and the capacity of the sending server. I have Ubuntu, XP and Win 7 on this PC and they all download at the same speed. Maybe the OP could give us a link to a file and tell us how long it takes to download, I suggest XP SP3: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?FamilyID=5b33b5a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&displaylang=en What are your sysctl settings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azogar Posted February 8, 2011 Author Share Posted February 8, 2011 Wow, so much wrong thinking in this thread it`s frightening. Downloading a file is at trivial operation for any OS, the limit will be your line speed and the capacity of the sending server. I have Ubuntu, XP and Win 7 on this PC and they all download at the same speed. Maybe the OP could give us a link to a file and tell us how long it takes to download, I suggest XP SP3: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?FamilyID=5b33b5a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&displaylang=en OK - i will do this when i get back from the dentist is it worth downloading the file at the same time i.e. a race? or should i time the windows machine and then time the ubuntu os? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Ayatollah Buggeri Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Wow, so much wrong thinking in this thread it`s frightening. Downloading a file is at trivial operation for any OS, the limit will be your line speed and the capacity of the sending server. I have Ubuntu, XP and Win 7 on this PC and they all download at the same speed. Snap, plus Vista and a 'Hackintosh' installation of Mac OS 10.6.6. Vista is significantly slower than the four other operating systems at doing anything, downloading included, but the others are all much of a likeness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azogar Posted February 8, 2011 Author Share Posted February 8, 2011 OK - i will do this when i get back from the dentist is it worth downloading the file at the same time i.e. a race? or should i time the windows machine and then time the ubuntu os? ok - just about to start the race vista vs ubuntu - both systems running firefox 3.6.13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azogar Posted February 8, 2011 Author Share Posted February 8, 2011 i stopped both downloading after 10mins as there was no clear winner (which makes me look like an idiot! yes) however, there is definitely still an issue with watching youtube videos, where the 'download' stops on the vista and the page needs to be refreshed. this is not happening on the ubuntu os? also, i did make my original observation on downloading much smaller files, so i will setup a race on this parameter as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.hpc Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I think the answer is simple : microsoft programmers are sh!t. Did you know they recommend 192 Gbytes of RAM for Windows 7 Professional? And that's called progress. My Virgin 50mb downloads ridiculously fast on Windows 7, maxes out no problem. My suggestion: Error lies somewhere between keyboard and chair. Still, at least Linux doesn't get hacked. Oops, wrong again! http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10544 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
'Bart' Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 i stopped both downloading after 10mins as there was no clear winner (which makes me look like an idiot! yes) Nothing like a computer for doing that. I have both a Vista and and an Ubuntu 10 machine (laptop). When I get a chance, probably tomorrow, I'll try downloading stuff on both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Snap, plus Vista and a 'Hackintosh' installation of Mac OS 10.6.6. Vista is significantly slower than the four other operating systems at doing anything, downloading included, but the others are all much of a likeness. As I said - check out Network Autotuning. If you have it on, turn it off. Massive difference! as per http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/12/15/vista-tcp-window-scaling-auto-tuning-may-slow-down-network-performance/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinker Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Playing Flash (from Youtube) is a computationally intensive task. If you have a newish graphics card you should make sure you have the latest version of the Flash player as it can offload some of the processing onto the GPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azogar Posted February 8, 2011 Author Share Posted February 8, 2011 here we go (i knew i was't going mad!) i just downloaded the latest mp3 podcast from http://radio.goldseek.com/ (straight forward download not streamed) it takes twice the time on the vista laptop - both running the latest version of firefox?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_duke_of_hazzard Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Now here is a question about Linux (Ubuntu) server. Why, when I type my username, then press return, then my password, then return, do I occasionally "beat the computer" and manage to type some of my password before the "password" prompt comes up? Given the power of modern computers, how can my "flying-two-fingered-typing" possibly beat a computer's ability to do a line feed, a carriage return and type the letters Password: on a black and white text screen? I use five or six computers and I beat them all, often on a daily basis. EDIT: Sorry to hijack your thread p.p. - I've just seen you've returned with the problem, back in reality, full force! The keyboard driver in the kernel stores your typing in a buffer ready for when the application is ready to read from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azogar Posted February 8, 2011 Author Share Posted February 8, 2011 .../.. EDIT: Sorry to hijack your thread p.p. - I've just seen you've returned with the problem, back in reality, full force! no worries - i have loads of ubuntu questions as well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the_duke_of_hazzard Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 I don't start typing until the first question Username: comes up. Then I type my username, press return and instantly start typing my password and press return. What I end up with is something like this: Username: username paPassword: ssword Then it says I've failed and asks me to go again. Ah yes, I think login programs are different in that they demand that you wait. The program will print "Password:\n", disable echoing to terminal, clear the line buffer buffer and await input. Why I don't know; probably for some security reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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