Re: Why is Windows faster ?

[Havoc Pennington <rhp@zirx.pair.com>]

Basically, X has an additional layer of abstraction; apps aren't talking
directly to the hardware or even using a relatively low-level interface;
instead they have to talk to X via a special protocol. This means that X
applications can be run over the network ("network transparent").

Another contributing factor is that many XFree86 servers aren't optimized
as well as the corresponding Windows drivers, but they are improving over
time.

XFree86 has some new technologies that should begin to address this
problem, such as better acceleration.

Havoc