Python Performance on Windows

Question

Is Python generally slower on Windows vs. a *nix machine? Python seems to blaze on my Mac OS X machine whereas it seems to run slower on my Window's Vista machine. The machines are similar in processing power and the vista machine has 1GBs more memory.

I particularly notice this in Mercurial but I figure this may simply be how Mercurial is packaged on windows.

Answer 1

I wanted to follow up on this and I found something that I believe is 'my answer'. It appears that Windows (vista, which is what I notice this on) is not as fast in handling files. This was mentioned by tony-p-lee.

I found this comparisons of Ubuntu vs Vista vs Win7. Their results are interesting and like they say, you need to take the results with a grain of salt. But I think the results lead me to the cause. Python, which I feel was indirectly tested, is about equivalent if not a tad-bit faster on Windows.. See the section "Richards benchmark".

Here is their graph for file transfers:

_{(source: tuxradar.com)}

I think this specifically help address the question because Hg is really just a series of file reads, copies and overall handling. Its likely this is causing the delay.

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/benchmarked-ubuntu-vs-vista-vs-windows-7

Answer 2

No real numbers here but it certainly feels like the start up time is slower on Windows platforms. I regularly switch between Ubuntu at home and Windows 7 at work and it's an order of magnitude faster starting up on Ubuntu, despite my work machine being at least 4x the speed.

As for runtime performance, it feels about the same for "quiet" applications. If there are any GUI operations using Tk on Windows, they are definitely slower. Any console applications on windows are slower, but this is most likely due to the Windows cmd rendering being slow more than python running slowly.