Linux Mint vs Windows 10 -- which is best for small business productivity?

If you're using an old computer in your small business, the likelihood is that you don't have a great deal of money to splash on powerful hardware.

You might therefore be tempted to look for extra performance by using Linux -- and save on the cost of buying the OS into the bargain. But is there really that much of an advantage? James Mawson of Australian site DXM Tech Support has conducted a series of tests to find out.

Using a basic HP 245 G6 with an AMD E2-9000e processor set up to dual boot, he ran the same tasks using Windows 10 1903 and Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon. The results are interesting, for most of the tasks including booting the machine, browsing the web and editing documents in LibreOffice, Mint proved significantly faster. For editing a JPEG in GIMP they were neck and neck. Only when opening collaboration tool Slack did Windows have a slight edge.

If you're looking for the best performance from your low powered hardware therefore it looks like Mint is flavor of the month.

You can see the full results on the DXM Tech Support blog and in the graphic below.

Image credit: gualtiero boffi/Shutterstock