Comment by rogerbinns

> Windows is noticeably slower than Linux or Mac on the same hardware. Isn't that a problem?

Windows isn't slower at running Windows apps, fitting into a Windows infrastructure (Active Directory, management tools, Exchange etc), using Windows device drivers, working with NTFS volumes and their features, backwards compatibility, printers etc.

It all comes down to what the goals of the users (or purchasers) are, and I doubt anyone buys Windows because of "performance" in the sense being talked about. But they do care about the "performance" of items mentioned in my previous paragraph.

Linux has been able to optimise because of being open source and vehemently ignoring closed source. Open source means for example that the Linux USB stack could be optimised and all affected code due to API changes could be updated. This and other topics are covered really well in Greg Kroah-Hartman's OLS 2006 keynote - http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html - see "Linux USB Code" about halfway down for that specific example.