Less demanding operation system faster performance?

[Info To All]

Hi. i do not know if you have ever made a video about this, but it would be an interesting question to have answered. With computer hardware being so expensive these days, would it be a better solution to just downgrade your operating system to a less demanding system and running the same hardware? What do you think?

[uzivkovic97]

It depends on your needs. If you are talking about going from Win10/11 to 7, then absolutely not. But you could switch to some Linux distro if you can give up on certain software that doesn't work on Linux such as Photoshop, MS Office etc.

 

I am using Win 10 on one of my laptops, but I have another one which is hooked up to tv TV, and I'm using it only for watching movies. I have Linux Mint on it and it runs much better cuz it has some AMD CPU from 2012/13 with only 4GB RAM.

[bmx6454]

linux can be used to game, with the right distro set up correctly. imo, if you get to the point of looking for lighter os's just to get more fps, it's past time to get a proper hardware upgrade. i just can't see it being worth doing for the little performance you would gain, unless you are just a linux fan, and want to.

[GuiltySpark_]

What exactly is the problem you're having? I've never once found the OS to be a bottleneck in.. anything. Assuming you're using current generation hardware for that OS.

[OddOod]

I had an old laptop which had a 0th gen i5 in it. It maxed out at 4gb of ram and it chugged even running 2 tabs of chrome on win10. I dropped PopOS on it and it now lives in my dad's shed running his outdoor speaker system. 
However, I would take issue with the assertion that computer hardware is expensive these days. It's kinda dirt cheap. 200$ 2TB m.2 drives (get em while they're hot, prices will pop in Q2 before returning to normal in Q3 for reasons), 14TB HDDs for 250$, 16GB of ram for 55$. 800W 80+ gold PSUs going for 75$. CPUs are still remarkably inexpensive for their performance. Sure, mobos are slightly elevated and GPUs are still pricey, but with the crypto crash we should see GPUs briefly return to earthly prices before the next gen release. So across the board, almost everything is cheaper than it ever has been. Not sure what you're on about with this "computer hardware being so expensive"

Oh, and cases? Holy hell, 8 years ago  I would have given my left arm to have the phanteks eclipse 400 mesh go for 100$ let alone the 55 I regularly see it at

[RONOTHAN##]

The only real time I've seen people actually care about their OS for performance reasons are for the competitive overclocking community. There every point matters, so making your OS as lightweight as possible and disabling as much crap as you can can be the difference between 1st place in a benchmark and 5th place or worse. 

 

For daily users, that doesn't really matter as much. It's like 5% faster at most between a relatively clean Windows install and a stripped for parts Windows install. Linux is a way to make older hardware run a lot faster since it's basically stripped down by default (the heavier distros run at ~1GB of RAM used at idle while I've rarely seen Windows go below 1.8GB), but getting stuff to run on there is hit or miss depending on your use case, and games are hit or miss for if they even run faster on there. If this is a gaming PC and not just a web browsing machine, I wouldn't really consider this a real option. If you want to make your gaming PC faster, a lighter OS just isn't gonna be noticeably better, and you're better off just biting the bullet and getting new parts, especially since basically everything but GPUs are actually fairly cheap now (the i3 12100F is an amazing CPU for only $110)

[steelo]

1 hour ago, Info To All said:

Hi. i do not know if you have ever made a video about this, but it would be an interesting question to have answered. With computer hardware being so expensive these days, would it be a better solution to just downgrade your operating system to a less demanding system and running the same hardware? What do you think?

Your only real option imo would be linux and it's either a 'love it' or 'hate it' os for a lot of people.

 

I've always just backed everything up reinstalled windows when my system becomes sluggish for no apparent reason and it's snappy again for awhile.

[Info To All]

Thanks for all your input, as you can guess i am not much of an tech geek, but I am glad to learn something new every day