Preemptiveness aka interactiveness & responsiveness: Linux vs. Windows Vista

My recent experiences with Windows Vista x64 brought up interesting and unexpected cognitions: One of these experiences is that the Flash plugin consumes as much CPU time under Windows Vista x64 as under Linux x86_64. It is not a surprise as the Flash plugin (a x32 program) has to be executed in a x32 envirnonment under both x64 operating systems. Nevertheless I was surprised as the npviewer.bin Flash plugin wrapper consumes approx. as much CPU time as a running VMware instance.

Furthermore my CPU cooler was much more active when I used Windows Vista although the task manager have not shown any special tasks and my power profile was set to "balanced".

Also the responsiveness of any Linux desktop manager is much better than under Windows Vista. In fact if there any comprehensive IO operations it is almost impossible to work with the system productively because the system does not respond on user input. On Linux even if you have the most extensive IO on your system, you can still interact with the system smoothly. The preemptive multitasking capabilities of Linux are in fact unequaled.

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