Mac vs windows - why is windows soooo slow?

I don’t really want this to turn into a heated discussion, Im just
trying to figure out if Im somehow missing any dependencies or tweaks.

I have a very beef dual dual-core computer with 4 gbs of ram, 500gb, and
a really good video card.

Yet, when Im starting/stopping my development server, or clicking
through controller actions, it is very slow.

To give you an idea of how slow, my coworker has an equivalent mac
desktop, which runs things about THREE times fast, thats including
migrations, bootup, controller actions.

Is there something about the ruby interpreter on windows that makes
things so slow.

Aryk

On Oct 4, 8:39 pm, Aryk G. [email protected]
wrote:

desktop, which runs things about THREE times fast, thats including
migrations, bootup, controller actions.

Is there something about the ruby interpreter on windows that makes
things so slow.

Ruby is known for being slower on window than on *nix like platforms.
No idea why.

Fred

Someone with far more technical knowledge of the inner workings of
both Windows and *nix would have to speak, but most people I have
spoken to recommend doing development on even a virtual Linux box
because many of the tools you will use “just work” better on Linux
than they do on Windows.

On Oct 4, 2:44 pm, Frederick C. [email protected]

If you go through Deploying Rails Applications book, the authors go on
record to say that Ruby/Rails is about 3 times slower on Windows than
Unix/Linux on comparable boxes. So your experience is in line with
that.
I have a Windows XP laptop with 4 Gig of RAM and two older laptops
with Ubuntu Linux 7.10 installed on them with only 1 Gig RAM. They
execute Rails code faster than the newer Windows laptop with 4 times
as much memory.

It’s said that rails was not too slow before 1.2.3, however, after
then, the speed especially the startup time became rather slow.

Pratik Naik wrote:

where is it said that

I think he is talking about his own experience, not about the book.

My personal tests: running rake or any ruby is much faster on my old
iBook with Tiger than on my Windows XP box with an Intel Core2Duo E6300.
I won’t even talk about running autotest on my windows box. “Innovation”
as they call it…

where is it said that

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 4:17 PM, swachian [email protected] wrote:

with Ubuntu Linux 7.10 installed on them with only 1 Gig RAM. They
execute Rails code faster than the newer Windows laptop with 4 times
as much memory.


Cheers!

I’ve had much the same experience. I won’t even do development work on
my work box anymore because I am forced to use Windows XP there. I
have a cheap IBM ThinkPad I do most of my developer work with and I
have Ubuntu 8.04.1 loaded onto it.

On Oct 5, 11:04 am, Fernando P. [email protected]

Page 187.

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Pratik [email protected] wrote:

record to say that Ruby/Rails is about 3 times slower on Windows than


Cheers!


Maurício Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) | http://blog.codevader.com/
(en)
João Pessoa, PB, +55 83 8867-7208

Guys,

Thanks a TON for your input. Now I know Im not alone. Im going to look
into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed
issue.

Would I be right in saying that mac’s are on par in speed as unix
running RoR? Thats been my observation, especially with beefier mac
desktops.

Aryk G. wrote:

Guys,

Thanks a TON for your input. Now I know Im not alone. Im going to look
into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed
issue.

Would I be right in saying that mac’s are on par in speed as unix
running RoR? Thats been my observation, especially with beefier mac
desktops.

Also remember that Macs have the fantastic TextMate editor!

On Oct 5, 7:52 pm, Aryk G. [email protected]
wrote:

Guys,

Thanks a TON for your input. Now I know Im not alone. Im going to look
into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed
issue.

You would not be alone in that either. Many people develop Rails on
Macs, I did for a while until finances came into play, but you will
not be disappointed.

Would I be right in saying that mac’s are on par in speed as unix
running RoR? Thats been my observation, especially with beefier mac
desktops.

Yes, I believe you would. Enjoy, but I would recommend maybe trying
out one of the newer Linux desktops as well. There might be a learning
curve, but it would at least give you a free alternative to try out
before taking the plunge.

Ruby is known for being slower on window than on *nix like platforms.
No idea why.

Fred
would still be interested whether this a windows(slow I/O?) or ruby/
rails@windows problem?

Im going to look
into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed
issue.

Yes, please. My apple shares … Oh dear, I don’t even want to think
about it. Some viral marketing definitely helps.

Real man use linux though.

would still be interested whether this a windows(slow I/O?) or ruby/
rails@windows problem?

I’d vote that Windows is the slow component. I was dual booting XP Pro
and Ubuntu 7.10 for a while, and just sourcing a big database in MySQL
was 25 minutes in Windows, 7 minutes in Ubuntu on the same physical
hardware.

Ruby on windows still has to play by the Windows rules, so it may in
fact be slower than ruby on *nix/Mac, but not due to its own faults.

With the release of rails 2.2.2, the speed hit was huge. On my PC,
running rails 2.0.2, it took about 10 seconds to run one of the unit
tests (most of the time loading the environment).

On 2.2.2, it is now taking about 30 seconds, a 3x slowdown. I’m guessing
it’s because rails is now much fatter, so loading everything in is that
much slower.

In contrast, it takes 3 seconds on an ubuntu box running 2.2.2. Sigh…

I’m the one who went on record in “Deploying Rails Applications”. Rails
isn’t slow on Windows - Ruby is. It was horribly slow almost four years
ago
when I started, and it’s slow now, although it’s faster because our CPUs
have gotten faster. I spent a good majority of my Rails career working
on
the Windows platform but have since switched to Mac for most things.
When I
go back to the Windows environment, it’s quite noticeable.

A long time ago, it was explained to me that the compiler used to build
Ruby
for Windows has some limitations. I’m being intentionally vague here
because
I can’t remember who said it so I can’t really back that up, I
understand
that the maintainers of the One Click Ruby Installer are making some
nice
improvements in performance in some of the test releases out there, so
there’s hope.

But to the OP, it’s definitely a Ruby on Windows thing, and it’s a
little
sad because it makes converting people much more difficult, and where it
really hurts is in testing. People stop running rake test:units or rake
spec
because it’s terribly slow.

The situation gets better all the time though, as talented Rubyists get
involved and improve the performance for the Windows users. I personally
find Mac the best environment to work on, but Ubuntu is fabulous as
well.
Sadly enough, even VMWare with an Ubuntu insallation running on top of
Windows runs Ruby faster than Windows itself. VMWare + smb mounting can
be
an interesting way to develop Rails if you can’t move off of Windows :slight_smile:
(Way
more work than it should be though.)

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:56 PM, Ar Chron

Cause Bill and Ballmer are fatter then Jobs :stuck_out_tongue:

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 4:10 AM, Jurket Largit <
[email protected]> wrote:

In contrast, it takes 3 seconds on an ubuntu box running 2.2.2. Sigh…

Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.


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