Well here's some timer results I've so far gathered from various browsers and OS's. All tests were done on my AMD K6ii-300 with 32Mb RAM, 2 IDE HDD's; one is a Conner 400Mb the other a Fujistu 6.3Gb. 1 IDE floppy drive, 1 IDE CDROM drive.

All times are from my watch, hand and eye. Boot times are timed from the moment the HDD starts working on loading the OS, to the time the HDD stops working. Since I used F8 to get to the MS-DOS 7.0x boot menu, the DOS boot time starts from the moment I hit enter for the "Command Prompt Only" menu selection.

1. Operating System boot times:
   • Win98 boot up time: 55.64 seconds
   • RedHat 5.2 Linux, Kernel 2.0.36 boot up time: 35.96 seconds
   • M$-DOS 7.0x (Win98) boot up time: 4.28 seconds

   This was a suprise to me. I was expecting Linux to take a lot longer to load than Win98, I guess they hide the boot time with their boot images. Win98's time stopped on the moment the HDD stopped working. This means that it had to load all autostart programs which on my system only includes ICQ net-detect and Sound Control.

   Linux loaded in only 35.96 seconds, which includes all HDD's mounted to their mount points via fstab. The timer stopped when the HDD stopped working which is when the login prompt appears. No GUI was loaded, since the OS is Linux, not X11.

   DOS loaded the fastest of course, and I always expected it to. However I have no CDROM driver loading, this would add about 5 secs to the time, and no Drive Caches were loaded. For some reason "Winbloze DOS" refuses to look at my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. I am going to fix this in the future and get it loading how I like it to, (ie: CDROM drivers, mouse drivers, sound drivers etc.) then I will re-post new results.

2. Browser load times:
   • Netscape 4.xx Win98: 9.75 seconds
   • IE4 Win98: 6.00 seconds
   • Win98 Arachne 1.5b2: 2.53 seconds
   • DOS Arachne 1.5b2: 5.32 seconds
   • Netscape 4.xx Linux/X11: 16.03 seconds

   Just what I suspected, except for the case of IE4 loading faster than NS4.

   I always thought that Win9x Netscape 4 loaded faster than the Linux/X11 version. This test proves it. I didn't expect IE4 to load faster than Netscape 4, but of course Arachne blitzed them again. A smashing 2.53 seconds from the Win98 environment, and 5.32 seconds from raw DOS. Please remember this has no disk cache software running, like SMARTDRV or NWCACHE. I will configure and re-test this in the future.

3. HTML page loading times:
   • Netscape 4.xx Win98 page load: 2.04 seconds
   • IE4 Win98 page load: 3.47 seconds
   • Win98 Arachne 1.5b2 page load: 1.05 seconds
   • DOS Arachne 1.5b2 page load: 15.05 seconds
   • Netscape 4.xx Linux/X11 page load: 1.21 seconds

   Some interesting results in this test, the page I loaded was from my hard-disk and it is the index2.html page of my homepage. All images are loaded along with it. (1 JPG, 3 GIFs)

   DOS Arachne took the longest, again, this is because of no disk caching or RAM disking. Future results will be uploaded when I configure my DOS better.

   Win98 Arachne won out with a smashing 1.05 seconds, this would include the JPG to BMP conversion for the indextitle.jpg image at the top. I run Arachne in HiColor mode, so no pallete mixing is involved.

   Linux/X11 Netscape closely followed, rendered the page as it should. Win98 Netscape was next then IE4. I would say after configuring DOS Arachne real-DOS would be even faster than Win98 Arachne. (How fast can you get?) I forgot to do the tests with Opera 3.51 too.

Here's some results for Quake2 running under RedHat Linux 6.0. Load amounts are given next to their results.

• A 'timedemo' on demo1.dm2 gave me 18.9 FPS . 689 frames taking 36.5 seconds. This was minimum load to my satisfaction, ie:
  • No X11 running (no GUI)
  • Only the one login running Quake2, no added daemons such as ftpd or httpd running.
  • The machine's approximate 'uptime' (ie: how long since a reboot) was 23:30 hours.
• A 'timerefresh' on map q2dm1 running a listen deathmatch server, no players but me and standing in the center of the arena on the map with the crosshair pointed at the yellow armour returned 35.32 FPS. The systems load was the same as the first test.

Here are the results for Quake2 running under Micro$oft Windoze 98:

• A 'timedemo' on demo1.dm2 gave me 11.5 FPS. 689 frames taking 60.2 seconds. This was minimum load to my satisfaction, ie:
  • Windows98 GUI running (required)
  • No other programs running, except for "Volume" in the System Tray. It is not disable-able after booting, to my common Windows knowledge.
  • The machine's approximate 'uptime' (ie: how long since a reboot) was about 5 minutes.
• Using the AMD 3D-Now! Quake2 executable for use with AMD3D CPU's, I got the following results running the same test as above. 12.8 FPS on a 'timedemo' and 'demomap demo1.dm2' 689 frames taking 54.0 seconds. The machine's 'uptime' is about 15 minutes.
• A 'timerefresh' on map q2dm1 running a listen deathmatch server, no players but me and standing in the center of the arena on the map with the crosshair pointed at the yellow armour returned 22.59 FPS. The systems load was the same as the first test.
• Using the AMD 3D-Now! Quake2 executable for use with AMD3D CPU's, I got the following results running the above test (timerefresh, listen server, map q2dm1) 'timerefresh' returned to me 27.04 FPS with same in-game circumstances as above.

Well, there you have it. Linux has won out by a great margin. It's flexibility allows you to run anything with or without anything else, so therefore I feel that the tests are completely fair.
Linux SVGALib uses a Trident 9440 driver to render the display. Windoze 98 uses the driver provided with the hardware (Trident 3dImage 9750) All tests were run in the lowest available resolution.
WinBloze seems to have some trouble with hard-disk activity once the game has begun, it has a large thrash a few seconds into the demo, but the overall performance and framerate (as proven in the tests above) show that it just doesn't render the game as smooth as Linux. The hard-disk activity to me suggests maybe an inferior "virtual-memory" or disk-swapping routines.
Do you know if Quake2 can be run from real-DOS? If you do, please Email me and tell me how! All I get is "This program requires a MicroCrap virus".

I was giving Win98 a 6 month trial on dedicated hardware. ie: Nothing but Windoze installed. It barely lasted 2 months. The test was run on an AMD K6ii processor running at 300mHz, 2 hard drives - 1 400Mb Conner and 1 6.3Gb Fujitsu, ESS AudioDrive Sound Card, standard 33.6k modem, Trident 9750 AGP card with 4Mb of video RAM, and a standard 32x CDROM drive. Here's my report:

• Installation: Easy to install? I think not. M$ have made the installation all "pretty" with graphics and a GUI, though the functionality and speed of the install was rather crap. First, I wanted to install Windoze onto an extended DOS partition leaving my Linux partition on hda1 (first partition of the first drive). Oh nooooo, Bloze wouldn't have it. "Check what OS you have on your hard drive" the docs said. Of course I know what's there! I just want to put it on a different partition and load it with a boot loader!!!!! After 2 days of unsuccess, I finally decided to install it on my 400Mb HDD, and use the Gb drive (which has no Linux on it) for data and programs.
  The installation took 2 hours off a 32x CDROM drive.
• Setting up with hardware: This was rather good, since all hardware companies make Windoze drivers for all their products. CDROM detected auto, and I actually found a DOS CDROM driver that works! All the drivers at that time installed fine, however, when I tried to temporarily install drivers and software for my brother's Diamond Riva TNT Viper v550 3D card, didn't we have hell! I still didn't manage to get it to work, after about 1 1/2 hours of driver installing, un-installing, changing settings, rebooting and what not. I did 8 reboots all up, but it was to no avail. I pulled out the 3D card, restored my hardware to how it was, went to change the display settings and got a nice CRAP dialog from Bloze. (See WinCRAP for more.) I now have 640x480x256 display, so Windoze is getting the arse.
• "User friendliness": To define this section, I will stick to the "don't-know-a-thing-about-computers" aspect of the "user-friendliness", and not mention stability/functionality which IMHO are a big part of an OS's "user-friendliness".
  Quite easy to use, although M$ have sacrificed speed for this "user-friendliness". Auto-detections on hardware aren't to crash hot, generally finding the hardware, but thrashing the HDD or something so much it's not funny. It makes us wonder what it does when it auto-detects stuff. Most of the programs are too squinty eyed to use and learn quickly. Many buttons, with many little pictures.... just give me a button with a letter R on it for "R"efresh servers like in XQF instead of a red & blue arrow with a computer inside them in Gamespy. But there are some very nice programs for Windoze too.
  Shortcuts tick me off. On my desktop I have links to my drives (A, C, D and E) when I download a file it brings up the browse window, I click on the "Desktop" button (near the parent directory button) then on one of these drive links to go to the directory to save the file in. Half way through the download I notice it is saving as D Drive.lnk. Ok, no problem, just rename the filename and extension. Oh, no we have a problem. Windoze wont allow me to change the extension of a .LNK file via the directory explorer. Another bug unforseen by M$.
• Bugs: Within hours of installation I have found a severe bug. Using a full screen DOS prompt if the text scrolls off the bottom of the screen crash. No Ctr + Alt + Del to end task, no Alt + Tab, no Alt + Enter. Reset or power switch flick is required.
  I join IRC asking how to fix this bug, no-one knows a thing and I'm told that the "Windows Update" feature will not fix it either. This bug was not in Win95, so what's it doing in 98?
• Stability/Functionality: Like I've said above, fast for 3-4 days, then crap house slow. A defrag would speed it up for about one session but then back to slow. If the speed would remain like it is when you first install, I would possibly use Windoze more often, but then the stability of it comes in.
  Programs would crash, yes not Windoze's fault, but Windoze will slowly but surely keep slowing down until it crashes. Starkey thinks that everytime you run a program you lose a little more RAM, the longer you run your computer, the more programs you use, the quicker you crash. No tests have been carried out to prove this theory. Well, I got Blue Screen Of Death's regualarly on boot up (once a week) no explaination for these, as a switch off and back on would boot fine. Also when dialing to my ISP, I would recieve 650 errors saying that his computer is not responding, reboot my computer and it would dialin fine. The Blue Screen Of Deaths increased, I got 3 in 3 hours one night. This has pushed me to see that Win98 is at it's end of trial period, and it's time to go to LSL's website and order a RH6 CD, get Partition Magic 4 off a friend, setup my drives and install Linux and be happy once again.

Check out QNX. A POSIX type operating system, they have these "fit on a floppy" setups that let you use QNX from booting from a floppy. I think you can even surf the web with the floppy setup.