[Pimp Daddy]

As I currently have a dual boot with XP Pro and Slack 10, I didn't think I had a need for the program. I've heard that it makes certain programs faster though - is this true? If it is it might be worth a look.

[Tetsuo]

Wine (and it's fee-supported big bro WineX) allows you to run many Windows programs in Linux. I for one have not heard anything about speed issues for programs (load times?) and I don't know if it loads games (what many people use Wine/WineX for) faster than Windows. I suggest looking around with Google to see what you can find.

[Skythra]

Considering the poor repky above, this doesnt really help you.. if you are still trolling the forums:

wine in essence is going to be no faster at say loading programs itself.. because wine doesnt have the power to make a CPU run faster then it does.

It does however have the power to when say a game like Half-Life (and its million offspring) after loading the game into the RAM the game then runs off openGL or DirectX, meaning that its using your computers components exclusively.

Now what windows does different, is it does little things to make it seem like a fast OS by KEEPING the RAM for itself (a small ammount, insignificant most of the time), also other things like it doesnt interprate the actual messages to pass to the cpu and then to the GPU as well. So in some cases, where it comes down to the actual component use LINUX is often better at using them. (Windows is compatible with almost everything, and specializes in none).

Linux is more computer dependant: you compile the thing and it does its best to fit your computer and use every component optimally.

When games are using only components rather then background proceses and RAM information, linux often stands out as being faster, because it uses the components better then windows...

In something like Microsoft Word, you wont notice the difference. You open it in a similar ammount, and possibly slower then you would in windows.

If that makes sense.

of course for that kind of thing there are native programs that have been designed and coded better then microsofts ones, and they WILL run faster. Things like Open Office which are almost exactly the same (in my opinion much better) and free, and often faster then WordXP and excell XP and powerpoint XP.

The end.

disclaimer: this is what i have found in my studies and experiance. You might find otherwise. I dont pretend to understand everything, i just try and share what i think is right its up to you to take it as advice and find the path yourself.