Windows and Linux are not the same

We like to think that operating systems are commodities, that Windows performs just as well as mac OS, and they both perform as well as Linux. I'm not sure about mac OS, but I can think of one significant difference between Windows and Linux, and that difference may affect the lifespan of the hardware.

Specifically, the difference in Windows and Linux may affect the hard disk drive, when it is an SSD (solid state disk). SSDs have a limited lifespan, in the number of reads and writes. This is important because Windows and Linux show different behavior with disk activity.

My experience is that Linux has minimal disk activity. Linux loads, creates a login session, does a few more things (I suspect that it runs 'apt' for an update) and then sits and waits. No disk activity.

Windows is quite different. It loads and creates a login session (just like Linux). But then it keeps doing things. Computers with disk activity lights show this activity. (Is Windows downloading updates from Microsoft servers? Checking for malware? I don't know. But it's doing something.) And it does this for at least 30 minutes.

That's before I log in to Windows, and before I launch any applications, or check my e-mail, or visit web sites.

After I log in, Windows does more. One can see the disk activity (on PCs that have status lights). When I check the CPU usage (as shown by Task Manager), I see lots of different tasks, many with vague names such as "Local Service".

Not all of this is caused by Microsoft. My work client has supplied a laptop that runs Splunk, McAfee, and a few other third-party applications (all installed by my client) and they wake up and do things every few minutes or so. All day long.

The immediate thought from this disk activity is: this cannot be good for SSDs. Each read operation and each write operation chips away at the lifespan of the SSD. (Old-style spinning hard disks are much less susceptible to this effect.)

The constant activity in Windows means that Windows will "consume" an SSD much quicker than Linux.

I certain that Microsoft is aware of this issue. I'm guessing that there is not much that they can do about it. Windows was designed to run lots of tasks on start-up, and throughout the day. (Also, it's not really Microsoft's problem. The fact that Windows "burns out" SSDs means that people will replace the disks, or possibly replace the whole PC. People will view this problem as a problem of hardware, not a problem with Windows.)

I tend to keep computers for a long time. For computers that run Windows, I look for systems that use the older hard disks and not SSDs. That's my strategy. Let's see how it works!