milosz wrote:
> I just want objective information.  I already have a system running on
> XP with 3 TB of FLAC files.  I don't have endless amounts of time to
> fiddle with machines, there's other stuff to do, so I was trying to find
> objective information to answer a question for myself:  "would it be
> worthwhile to re-do my server in Lunx?"

Probably, as it will take a half hour or so, and you can see for 
yourself. No need to do a destructive install, just set it up to dual 
boot and see.

> poster that Squeezecenter XP vs. Linux benchmarks exist.  I couldn't
> locate any, and so then people started getting pissed off that I even
> asked.....

I am not pissed off an you, sorry if you thought that. But in fact, you 
are searching for an answer that is easier for you to answer than it is 
for you to find in the forums.

Benchmarking is hard, very hard.


> I get a sense that with a fairly fast machine like the 4-core 2 gHz
> that I am using differences would be somewhere between "trivial" and
> "noticeable," but not really enough to justify the work it would take.

I ran SlimServer (the earlier version of SqueezeCenter) on a Pentium-3 @ 
500 mhz with one GB of ram. Ran it for years. It worked fine. That was 
using Mandriva, a distro that I would not recommend, but that others use 
happily.

That machine was ancient when I put the SD software on it, it had been 
sitting unused for at least a year. It ran for many more years, usually 
untouched by human hand. At one point, it had been up and running for 14 
or 15 months, continuous.

But the machine was in my basement, and over time the CPU fan got 
clogged with dust bunnies. The CPU burned out.

I replaced it with another machine that I had laying in the basement. 
This one was more current, I built it for my kid as she went to college. 
She has graduates and been working for a couple of years. So it is at 
least six years old. When I built it, it was a decent machine, OK fast 
for the time, but not a gamer special, single CPU AMD of about 3000 
rating. I don't know what the real clock speed is, never cared.

That machine now has 3 big disks and all my music.

Its plenty fast for feeding my music, I have four, or five SqueezeBoxen 
of various flavors, including a Duet, Boom, and Transporter.


> OS would play a part at all!  I was just wondering if some part of the
> server is really not well written for XP in terms of performance and so
> switching to Linux would offer make the APPLICATION - NOT the OS!!- run
> a lot faster.

Not the application at all. The code, which is open source and open for 
you to look at, it written in Perl, and uses MySql as the backend 
database. There is nothing good or bad for XP, Vista or Win7 in it. Its 
the same code, exactly, for Windows, Mac and all Unix flavors.

There are folks on the developers list who have been arguing that MySql 
is slow, too slow for the benefit that it brings. But I don't follow 
those discussions in detail, because its fast enough for me and my devices.

After developing for Windows since Windows/386 2.11 and various Unix 
systems, each since the 1980s, I can say that the system, or OS as you 
want to say, is generally faster/more responsive with a Unix/Linux base 
than with Windows. And this generally results in applications that are 
faster on Unix/Linux as well.

But this is not true in all cases, all applications, and all configurations.

The OS plays a huge part in this.

And if you are running Windows with commercial malware programs (Norton, 
etc.) then the difference is much more obvious, as the anti-malware has 
a lot of impact on MySql's file access -- unless you tweak the settings 
to disable the anti-malware for all the applicable stuff.

Traditionally, people pick the application that they want, and pick the 
OS that supports it. That is why graphics professionals have used Mac's 
for decades, the fancy applications are all OS-X.

As much, most folks just buy a computer with Windows, and run it.

But if you have a four core CPU and don't like the performance, I'm not 
sure that I can help, as my whole system is less powerful than a single 
one of the four cores you have.


-- 
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

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