I am talking about both operating systems running on the exact same hardware. Linux will still run faster than Windows, and I am including Vista under the Windows umbrella. I am also not talking about the fluff and thunder of the window managers and desktop finery. I am talking about the guts of the operating systems. The parts that do the real work. The parts that make the real difference in how fast your bucket of bits run.

There are many factors which effect the speed at which an operating system runs. For starters I am going to remove the hardware out of the equation. Both operating systems run on exactly the same hardware. The difference between the two operating systems and what really makes the hair split is the underlying design philosophy that went into creating these essential parts of our computing experience.

In the beginning of the Windows road to Vista the operating system was a single tasking architecture.

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