[R] Performance Difference? Windows vs. Linux

[Spencer Graves]

       Others can discuss the comparative speed.  I recently installed 
Linux on a new quad core computer I purchased.  I found it surprisingly 
easy to learn how to do the things I needed.  Now the hard drive is 
dying on my Vista notebook computer.  In shopping for a replacement, I 
likely will insist on Linux, even if I have to create a secondary 
partition and install Linux myself.


       A friend installed Linux for me, but he has not been available to 
answer all my questions.  For that, Google has been quite helpful.


       I installed Linux, because it offered more flexibility than I 
could get with any version of Windows.  For example, on my dual core 
Vista machine, I can't run two Python sessions simultaneously.  I'm 
doing real time downloads and uploads with an FTP site.  I was doing 
those under Vista, but Windows could not be easily extended to multiple 
applications like that in parallel without paying more for Windows 
Server than I paid for the hardware.  So far, I'm working fine with 2 GB 
RAM under Linux with fewer problems than I have with 8 GB RAM under Vista.


       Hope this helps.
       Spencer Graves


On 3/18/2011 4:39 PM, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:00 PM, Brigid Mooney<bkmooney at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> I'm not trying to start a Windows vs. Linux debate, but I've been
>> using R on a Windows machine for a while, and was recently wondering
>> if R's performance would be faster on a Linux machine.  And similarly,
>> if any incremental increase in processing speed would be worth the
>> time it would take me to migrate my entire system to Linux (including
>> a database that I access via an R package.)
>>
> It would help to know what is your system. A sessionInfo() would be a start.
> Liviu
>
>
>> I don't know how much it matters what R is doing - but I've got R
>> pulling a large amount data from a database, performing many complex
>> computations on that data, and then writing output data to a database.
>>
>> Thanks so much for the input,
>> Brigid
>>
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