Python Performance on Windows

Question

Is Python generally slower on Windows vs. a *nix machine? Python seems to blaze on my Mac OS X machine whereas it seems to run slower on my Window\'s Vista machine

Answer 1

No real numbers here but it certainly feels like the start up time is slower on Windows platforms. I regularly switch between Ubuntu at home and Windows 7 at work and it's an order of magnitude faster starting up on Ubuntu, despite my work machine being at least 4x the speed.

As for runtime performance, it feels about the same for "quiet" applications. If there are any GUI operations using Tk on Windows, they are definitely slower. Any console applications on windows are slower, but this is most likely due to the Windows cmd rendering being slow more than python running slowly.