[R] question about performance on different operating systems

[Philippe Grosjean]

Objet : Re: [R] question about performance on different operating
systems


>Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:

> In my experience R under Windows is about 10-20% slower than Linux on the
> same box. We know about 5% of the difference (polling vs interrupts) and
> th rest seems to be down to compiler quality (yes, they are both i686 gcc,
> but still not too similar compilers often giving different answers).


It depends of course also which tasks are running behind the scene, and
Windows is installing a lot of stupid utilities to "make thinks easier". For
instance, by default, the system regularly checks the CD-rom drive(s) (every
second or so) to detect if a new CD-rom is inserted and to possibly run an
autoexecutable on it. In comparison, on Linux, you have to explicitly mount
the CD. If someone install Adapted DirectCD to write directly on CD-R(W), it
further look at the CD-writer at regular intervals. The same for Iomega
utilities for the Zip/Jaz drives, etc, etc, etc.

Anyway, it is a fact that Linux is faster than Windows on the same box.
However, a 10-20% difference between systems seems acceptable to me. On the
other hand, if R is 10 times slower under MacOS 9.1, it is important to
know. In this case, there are chances that its performances are quite
similar to Linux under MacOS X. If this is the case, I believe it is
critical to warn the user and avise him to install R under MacOS X
preferrably on a Mac box.

Philippe Grosjean


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