The computation portion is essentially the same. The Windows version gives you the graphics image and screensaver while the Linux version does not yet provide that. Running the graphics image reduces the amount of CPU available for the real work by a few percent.

You are right, Pconfig.

The graphics only eat up cycles if you bring up the graphics view in the Agent or run the screensaver. Other than that, the differences between OS versions should come down to OS calls (trivial, several milliseconds here and there) and the efficiency of the compiler. That last one might be noticeable. Although Linux has many fans, most people feel that the gcc compiler is not highly optimized. There has been no comment from the staff about which compiler (and math library) has been used for each version.

Anyway, my personal opinion is that the application speed will depend on compiler and library issues rather than on OS.

Personally I think windows can be pretty lean if one disables unnecessary services etc.