# Mac vs windows - why is windows soooo slow? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 4, 2008, 9:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155 "2008-10-04T21:39:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 9:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/1 "2008-10-04T21:39:31Z")
I don’t really want this to turn into a heated discussion, Im just trying to figure out if Im somehow missing any dependencies or tweaks. I have a very beef dual dual-core computer with 4 gbs of ram, 500gb, and a really good video card. Yet, when Im starting/stopping my development server, or clicking through controller actions, it is very slow. To give you an idea of how slow, my coworker has an equivalent mac desktop, which runs things about THREE times fast, thats including migrations, bootup, controller actions. Is there something about the ruby interpreter on windows that makes things so slow. Aryk ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 9:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/2 "2008-10-04T21:46:05Z")
On Oct 4, 8:39 pm, Aryk G. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > desktop, which runs things about THREE times fast, thats including > migrations, bootup, controller actions. > > Is there something about the ruby interpreter on windows that makes > things so slow. Ruby is known for being slower on window than on \*nix like platforms. No idea why. Fred ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 11:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/3 "2008-10-04T23:23:24Z")
Someone with far more technical knowledge of the inner workings of both Windows and \*nix would have to speak, but most people I have spoken to recommend doing development on even a virtual Linux box because many of the tools you will use “just work” better on Linux than they do on Windows. On Oct 4, 2:44 pm, Frederick C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 2:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/4 "2008-10-05T14:27:08Z")
If you go through Deploying Rails Applications book, the authors go on record to say that Ruby/Rails is about 3 times slower on Windows than Unix/Linux on comparable boxes. So your experience is in line with that. I have a Windows XP laptop with 4 Gig of RAM and two older laptops with Ubuntu Linux 7.10 installed on them with only 1 Gig RAM. They execute Rails code faster than the newer Windows laptop with 4 times as much memory. ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 5:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/5 "2008-10-05T17:18:22Z")
It’s said that rails was not too slow before 1.2.3, however, after then, the speed especially the startup time became rather slow. ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 6:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/6 "2008-10-05T18:04:37Z")
Pratik Naik wrote: > where is it said that I think he is talking about his own experience, not about the book. My personal tests: running rake or any ruby is much faster on my old iBook with Tiger than on my Windows XP box with an Intel Core2Duo E6300. I won’t even talk about running autotest on my windows box. “Innovation” as they call it… ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 5:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/7 "2008-10-05T17:20:44Z")
where is it said that On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 4:17 PM, swachian [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > with Ubuntu Linux 7.10 installed on them with only 1 Gig RAM. They > > execute Rails code faster than the newer Windows laptop with 4 times > > as much memory. – Cheers! - Pratik [http://m.onkey.org](http://m.onkey.org) ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/8 "2008-10-05T18:16:26Z")
I’ve had much the same experience. I won’t even do development work on my work box anymore because I am forced to use Windows XP there. I have a cheap IBM ThinkPad I do most of my developer work with and I have Ubuntu 8.04.1 loaded onto it. On Oct 5, 11:04 am, Fernando P. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 6:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/9 "2008-10-05T18:33:09Z")
Page 187. On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:19 PM, Pratik [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > record to say that Ruby/Rails is about 3 times slower on Windows than > > – > Cheers! > > - Pratik > [http://m.onkey.org](http://m.onkey.org) > > > – Maurício Linhares [http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/](http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/) (pt-br) | [http://blog.codevader.com/](http://blog.codevader.com/) (en) João Pessoa, PB, +55 83 8867-7208 ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 2:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/10 "2008-10-06T02:52:22Z")
Guys, Thanks a TON for your input. Now I know Im not alone. Im going to look into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed issue. Would I be right in saying that mac’s are on par in speed as unix running RoR? Thats been my observation, especially with beefier mac desktops. ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 4:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/11 "2008-10-06T16:30:02Z")
Aryk G. wrote: > Guys, > > Thanks a TON for your input. Now I know Im not alone. Im going to look > into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed > issue. > > Would I be right in saying that mac’s are on par in speed as unix > running RoR? Thats been my observation, especially with beefier mac > desktops. Also remember that Macs have the fantastic TextMate editor! ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 4:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/12 "2008-10-06T16:24:44Z")
On Oct 5, 7:52 pm, Aryk G. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Guys, > > Thanks a TON for your input. Now I know Im not alone. Im going to look > into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed > issue. You would not be alone in that either. Many people develop Rails on Macs, I did for a while until finances came into play, but you will not be disappointed. > Would I be right in saying that mac’s are on par in speed as unix > running RoR? Thats been my observation, especially with beefier mac > desktops. Yes, I believe you would. Enjoy, but I would recommend maybe trying out one of the newer Linux desktops as well. There might be a learning curve, but it would at least give you a free alternative to try out before taking the plunge. ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 6:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/13 "2008-10-16T18:21:34Z")
> Ruby is known for being slower on window than on \*nix like platforms. > No idea why. > > Fred > would still be interested whether this a windows(slow I/O?) or ruby/ > rails@windows problem? ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 6:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/14 "2008-10-06T18:58:09Z")
> Im going to look > into developing on mac instead of windows just because of this speed > issue. Yes, please. My apple shares … Oh dear, I don’t even want to think about it. Some viral marketing definitely helps. Real man use linux though. ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2008, 9:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/15 "2008-10-16T21:56:02Z")
> would still be interested whether this a windows(slow I/O?) or ruby/ > rails@windows problem? I’d vote that Windows is the slow component. I was dual booting XP Pro and Ubuntu 7.10 for a while, and just sourcing a big database in MySQL was 25 minutes in Windows, 7 minutes in Ubuntu on the same physical hardware. Ruby on windows still has to play by the Windows rules, so it may in fact be slower than ruby on \*nix/Mac, but not due to its own faults. ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 9:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/16 "2008-12-09T21:10:01Z")
With the release of rails 2.2.2, the speed hit was huge. On my PC, running rails 2.0.2, it took about 10 seconds to run one of the unit tests (most of the time loading the environment). On 2.2.2, it is now taking about 30 seconds, a 3x slowdown. I’m guessing it’s because rails is now much fatter, so loading everything in is that much slower. In contrast, it takes 3 seconds on an ubuntu box running 2.2.2. Sigh… ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2008, 3:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/17 "2008-10-17T15:20:51Z")
I’m the one who went on record in “Deploying Rails Applications”. Rails isn’t slow on Windows - Ruby is. It was horribly slow almost four years ago when I started, and it’s slow now, although it’s faster because our CPUs have gotten faster. I spent a good majority of my Rails career working on the Windows platform but have since switched to Mac for most things. When I go back to the Windows environment, it’s quite noticeable. A long time ago, it was explained to me that the compiler used to build Ruby for Windows has some limitations. I’m being intentionally vague here because I can’t remember who said it so I can’t really back that up, I understand that the maintainers of the One Click Ruby Installer are making some nice improvements in performance in some of the test releases out there, so there’s hope. But to the OP, it’s definitely a Ruby on Windows thing, and it’s a little sad because it makes converting people much more difficult, and where it really hurts is in testing. People stop running rake test:units or rake spec because it’s terribly slow. The situation gets better all the time though, as talented Rubyists get involved and improve the performance for the Windows users. I personally find Mac the best environment to work on, but Ubuntu is fabulous as well. Sadly enough, even VMWare with an Ubuntu insallation running on top of Windows runs Ruby faster than Windows itself. VMWare + smb mounting can be an interesting way to develop Rails if you can’t move off of Windows 🙂 (Way more work than it should be though.) On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:56 PM, Ar Chron ---
**Author:** ![ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/c68b51/32.png) [@ericgoodwin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ericgoodwin)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 2:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/mac-vs-windows-why-is-windows-soooo-slow/150155/18 "2008-12-10T02:19:59Z")
Cause Bill and Ballmer are fatter then Jobs 😛 On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 4:10 AM, Jurket Largit \< removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid\> wrote: > ## In contrast, it takes 3 seconds on an ubuntu box running 2.2.2. Sigh… > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). > > > – TWRUG Blog: [http://blog.rubyonrails.org.tw](http://blog.rubyonrails.org.tw) CFC on Rails: > **[CFC on Rails](http://zusocfc.blogspot.com)** > > 火車請別撞我 Only two surfaces of a box: [http://blog.pixnet.net/zusocfc](http://blog.pixnet.net/zusocfc)