What is the operating system that routinely runs the fastest processors

Question

Someone said that Linux is the fastest and or most powerful operating system that is much more powerful than any other operating system and not sure where to look to discredit her. Is there a way to determine what operating system routinely is the fasted or most powerful operating system and is chosen over its competition for best processor and maybe architecture routinely each year?

Solution 1

When you talk about most powerful, the traditional citation is the TOP500 list of the 500 fastest supercomputers.

As you can see on that page, 482 of the top 500 systems are running some variant of Linux. So in a narrow sense she is correct.

Solution 2

Unfortunately for your argument, Compared to Windows, Android and IOS, Linux is clearly "the fastest" operating system. Most powerful is subjective, but there is a strong argument to be made on that basis as well.

This is evidenced by substantial community support for lightweight Linux variants to make unusably slow Windows systems quite useable again. I could pick some sources, but really, there are so many of them a quick google "lightweight linux vs xp" will reveal pages of listings.

I do note that comparing Linux to Android is a false comparison as Android runs on top of a Linux kernel.

If you start looking at Distributed computers, variants of Linux are generally used as the building blocks - for example, Amazon EC2 is made of Linux servers.

Answering your question about "best processor" and "architecture", Because Linux is an open source kernel, it has been compiled to most - if not all non ancient architectures, and is relatively easy to port to any new ones.

I'd suggest that Windows is prettier, easier to get "end user" support for, has more desktop applications (it pretty much rules the desktop), but Linux is ubiquitous outside this environment - there is a good chance that even the router you are using to connect to the Internet runs Linux.

Comments

[RetroCoder]

True. But that would mean most Linux boxes use less powerful sub systems as secondary devices. End users running other devices will want a faster chip close as possible to a high end chip with the most features to be competitive.

[davidgo]

If I understand your comment, not at all. The linux kernel is extremely modular, so the appropriate modules are just added. There are no doubt specific cases where other OS's are faster then Linux (accelerated graphics drivers where source code is not released for example), but I can find and point out a lot of stuff which is better (or only) supported under Linux. An interesting annecdote - where Nvidia deliberately cripples its Linux driver because its faster then Windows can be found at theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2299098/…

[RetroCoder]

What I meant is that Windows, iOS, and Android are more developed for teams of designers, developers, executives, user base and customers. Linux comes onto the scene more as a large scale data center or to test clusters of devices or as a potential competitive jib to keep the big 3 or 4 trying to maintaining their competitive edge. So Linux is more of a cost savings high scale platform for an extreme scenario where the others are for the mainstream consumer market. It usually rare to see a Linux box evolve to a faster chip.