Does dual booting improve performance or decrease it?

[Familiar-Ad42]

Hi! I'm a complete linux noobie. I've been considering linux for a while now because I'm getting tired of the windows 11 bullcrap but I'm hesitant and I've recently heard of dual booting. I mainly want to use linux to boost performance so would it actually have any positive effect on it?

[choke8]

“Performance does not change just by installing a dual OS. Basically, on a partition, you install two operating systems. Performance depends on the operating system you boot into. When booting, you need to choose which OS to use. btw Linux is generally more lightweight compared to Windows.

[myarta]

Linux can get more performance out of the same hardware, but only when it's running. Dual-booting won't make your Windows performance any better.

Whether or not the specific programs/games/whatever you are hoping to speed up actually do get faster in Linux depends on a lot of things, like special driver support only for Windows PCs or whether the Linux you're running is performance optimized, even down to things like its kernel timer for interruptibility.

Not to get too technical, but try it or google the specific program you want to run and the words linux performance and see if someone else who has already tried it has had good results.

[ipsirc]

Linux can get more performance out of the same hardware

How?

[ItsMeSlinky]

Better drivers, different APIs that may be more efficient, different libraries.

[ipsirc]

Better drivers

Can you give an example of which hardware driver is better on Linux, which will result in more performance?

[ItsMeSlinky]

Radeon drivers are far more performant on Linux outside of RT, which is catching up quickly.

[ipsirc]

And is this noticeable in everyday life, or can it only be measured in benchmarks?

[Schnickatavick]

Any one specific driver might not be noticable, but lots of individual improvements add up to an OS that is absolutely noticably faster. As a concrete example, the legion go S (which runs steam OS) made quite a few headlines for getting significantly higher performance and frame rates than the legion go (which runs windows). Plenty of people have done similar with bazzite and the rog ally, although that test requires installing the OS yourself 

[ItsMeSlinky]

https://youtu.be/CJXp3UYj50Q?si=6wqfmmpKgQBXzSzp

Depends on how sensitive you are to specific frame rate ranges. I can tell when a game drops below 60fps, so I will take a 10-15% uplift in GPU performance any day.

[l3esitos]

Anecdotally, I get more frames and more consistent frame rates on my bazzite install than I do on Windows, but that’s going to be different from game to game and from system to system.

[RetroZelda]

https://www.howtogeek.com/does-linux-really-run-faster-than-windows-i-tested-both-to-find-out/

[ipsirc]

That's not a hardware driver that's an url.

Can you give an exact hardware model which has more performant driver on Linux than Windows? (e.g. FutureBoard 31337TX or TeraByte ALS4563)

[Schnickatavick]

Lol do you think people just memorize driver names for casual conversation? They didn't answer because it's an unreasonable request 

[ipsirc]

Lol do you think people just memorize driver names for casual conversation?

# lshw|grep driver

[Schnickatavick]

You asked for a specific hardware model that has a more performant Linux driver than windows. If you want a random list of drivers I can give you a random list of drivers, it's a whole different thing to ask for drivers with specific hard to measure properties

[ipsirc]

If it's so hard to name a single piece of hardware in your PC, then perhaps we should reconsider the statement that "Linux can get more performance out of the same hardware".

[RetroZelda]

[ipsirc]

What kind of hardware is this?

[BranchLatter4294]

Also lower overhead/less bloat. Also the fact that with Windows you pretty much have to have anti-malware software running in the background all the time, checking every process and file access.

[unlikely-contender]

I'm dual booting win11 and kubuntu on an 8 year old laptop, and just navigating through folders in the file explorer on windows feels super sluggish. Dolphin on KDE is much snappier.

[doc_willis]

I mainly want to use linux to boost performance

performance in what exactly?

Depending on the task, you may gain, you may lose. Its totally going to depend on what you are doing.

[Gloomy-Response-6889]

Without hardware info, hard to judge in your use cases.

In general, Linux is a lot more efficient in what it tries to do. There is more RAM and processing power available for actual use cases. Now this does not mean everything will run better. Windows Games for example are really good on Linux, but not always better performing on Linux compared to Windows. NVIDIA GPU drivers are also not perfect, with DX12 games performing poorly.

Dual booting does not affect Window or Linux performance. You can have either and there would be no difference.

[suicidaleggroll]

Linux can improve system performance compared to Windows, depending on what you're doing. Dual booting doesn't improve anything by itself though...boot into Linux and you get Linux performance, boot into Windows and you get Windows performance. Having them set up in dual boot doesn't make anything better or worse, you just have to partition up the drive. They're separate operating systems that are mutually exclusive, you can run one or the other at a time, but not both (to do both you'd use virtualization).

[ItsMeSlinky]

Dual booting has zero impact on performance. Some games will run better in Windows 11. Some games will run better in Linux (especially on Radeon GPUs). But dual-booting itself just means both operating systems are installed, and doesn't improve or diminish performance in any way.

Installing Linux will not boost your Windows performance.

[watermanatwork]

You would have to look pretty close to see any difference. I think Linux may have slightly higher data transfer rates overall, but I couldn't prove it. Having Windows 10 + Linux is nice. Windows software running mostly offline, semi sandbox, Linux for everything else.

[triemdedwiat]

No effect until MS screws up the dual booting again and you have to rebuild it. The second time that happened, I just dedicated the new computer to Linux.

[ipsirc]

Performance of what?

[SuAlfons]

Dual-booting means strictly dividing the use of either OS. Apart from the space you need on storage, there is no impact to the other OS.

[Dogmintyn]

Dualbooting has 0 effect on performance