About Linux bandwidth usage
 

Good day all. This is my first post, both my wife and I are considering switching to Linux for a mix of reasons. For starters there are the rumors of Microsoft's direction with Windows concerning the Desktop as a Service model, not to mention all the backdoors both my wife and I are sick of and in doing research we learned about how those backdoors don't exist in Linux due to its very nature. Though we'll likely still go to Linux regardless to the answer of this question the more we know the better.

Since Linux doesn't have the rootkits and security holes that Microsoft uses to take and sell user data in the first place does that mean ultimately Linux's core internet bandwidth usage is null in comparison to proprietary operating systems regardless of distro?

bandwidth usage is determined by what you're downloading. say you're using a torrent app, it is downloading 1 file, all of the bandwidth is going to that one file, if you are downloading 2 files, then the bandwidth is split between the two files. not to factor in the speed of the other pc/host you are pulling off of. if you are not using the internet then no bandwidth is being used.

so the answer would be , no, I surely hope not.

you might want to rephrase your question.

Ok, lets try this with a hypothetical situation.

Say your ISP can only provide 10mbps speeds and they are the only one in the area. Would two Linux computers take better advantage of those speeds than a single Windows 10 unit?

the speeds and bandwidth available by the provider is not determined by the unit using it. if you can only get 10mbps speeds then that is all you are going to get. having two separate systems pulling off of the same 10mbps router they will max out at 10mbps no faster. that is not to say you max limit is 10mbps, and the sending side is only sending at 5mbps then you are not going to get 10mbps. if the sending side is 15mbps then you're going to only get 10mbps.

take better advantage of the 10mbps limit, I do not see why windows does not. what are you experiencing?

this is a networking limitation not Linux kernel limitation.

switching to Linux you no longer need to worry about viruses, having your operating system being taken away from you while updating the system. free apps that you can modify the source code if you want or need to. more desktops / window managers to pick from. you can turn it into a server, and more...

For downloading, only to the extent that you have more or easier control over updates*. For uploading (ie windows phoning home) it depends on your ISP. Otherwise two Linux computers will be much the same as two windows computers - it depends on what and how much you download. Don't forget that by going from one computer to two computers you'll have the temptation of downloading things twice.

As far as back doors go, it depends on how paranoid you're willing to be - there are lots of eyes on the code, but how sure can everybody be? And even if the OS is secure, what about the hardware? What about the online services you use? Best to just stomp on the problems you know about and assume that computer crackers (the correct term for malignant "hackers") are always trying to break in.

*"Your mileage may vary", but for a major upgrade I've always found a new install of the latest distro version easier and quicker than updating the individual components.

Ok, thank you. I was just thinking maybe we'd be able to do more with our systems online if we weren't dealing with the huge amount of Windows background processes that send data back and forth across the internet.

you should get a sniffer and monitor your data through put to see who is doing what in your system. two: you can create a live Linux distro on a USB Stick and boot that and run Linux and your wifi to compare as well. to get a general idea.

Ok, Thank You. I'll now look into what would be best for us then.

maybe pick up a pack of 8GB 4GB even if you can still find them, then install a few different distos on them . or just one USB Stick and a hand full of different distros, then burn one, check it out, then burn another one over top of the old one, then you can check out a hand full of distros while you're at it.

On an average Linux system, there is usually only a single software update system, though some do have things like snaps and flatpaks updating separately. Windows will have the OS, Virus Checker, Internet Security, Adobe updater, Chrome or Firefox updaters, and possibly several others. Add to that all of the Windows services, and a lot of things can be happening in the background. I believe that this was the intent of the original question.

On Linux, there ARE background processes which can use up bandwidth, but unless you have a load of desktop widgets, it is unlikely that they will take up much bandwidth, unless they are downloading graphics.

As BW-Userx says, packet sniffers can monitor these things.

One other thing that is worth bearing in mind is that 10Mbps is actually a LOT, unless you are watching videos. The only thing that should really affect an internet connection is if you have a Data limit for your monthly subscription.

You could set up one as a cache using Squid or APT-Cacher or APT-Cacher-ng. Configure both to use the cache, one is using itself the other is using the first machine. As long as you wait a bit between updating the first and subsequent machines, then technically you are only downloading once. That will be a little faster for two machines, and a lot faster for tens or more. That would be just for package updates. Regular browsing would need a fancier setup with TLS proxying due to so much HTTPS these days.

It's not really so much the OS as the websites. The amount of data being transferred for spying purposes is quite small. But some 90% of web bandwidth is used to display advertising and other objectionable traffic.

I will assume you mean the bandwidth the OS uses without user interaction.
if that is a concern, then you should choose a distro that

• is very conservative (debian stable comes to mind - NOT ubuntu)
• does not do automatic upgrades (this isn't distro specific, but desktop environment specific -and can be switched off)

the rest of bandwidth usage is what you as a user do or what internet-facing software is configured to do.
obviously email and web browser and such do access the internet; there's no difference between linux and windows there.
if you want to reduce bandwidth there, you might want to look into serious adblocking, maybe via /etc/hosts.

There are a few bits of linux software that can do that automatically on an OS level rather than hosts or browser level:
https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html
https://advanxer.com/blog/2015/05/ad...nd-dns-server/
and a few others too. Unfortunately, you lose access to some sites completely.

these seem to be dns servers that apply ad-blocking for you.

1. that's not on the OS level, but outside your machine entirely.
2. i don't see why one needs to resort to third party (and no offense, but slightly fishy looking) "solutions".

blocking through hosts also loses access to some sites completely, but i'm using a handy script to check if a domain is blocked, and unblock it if necessary.

blocking through /etc/hosts is NOT a software solution, it's just a list of domains that your computer looks through before even consulting the DNS server.
it's what computers were using (and still do) before DNS was invented.
that's what makes it so elegant.

still, various helper scripts to assist people with that (regular updates, level of protection etc.) do exist.
i use gaenserich's hostsblock.