I decided to make quick and dirty comparison of some parameters of selected OS. I measured values once, because for me it was the most interesting to get only quantity. I have selected number of bytes written/read from HDD and number of bytes sent/received over network. Why ?

People are using more and more often SSD/flash memories, which have specified number of write cycles and people are using more and more often network connections with data limits.

Here are results, I have used mainly values observed by VirtualBox functions:

	Debian 7	W8	Haiku R1/Alpha 4.1	ReactOS 0.3.14	Android-x86 4.2 20130228	Ubuntu 12.10
installation
HDD read	1 642 392 576	5 813 965 824	138 810 880	365 170 688	1 247 232	1 033 392 640	B
HDD write	15 050 686 464	15 714 150 912	762 626 048	215 244 800	783 590 400	6 013 718 520	B
network sent	297 356	3 518 451	1 456	0	259 164	11 762 954	B
network received	925 150 023	120 896 212	2 674	0	8 053 577	464 640 969	B
installation ISO	290 455 552	2 550 913 024	615 106 560	65 105 920	206 569 472	789 884 928	B
system startup
HDD read	419 468 288	836 477 440	95 008 768	53 393 920	176 932 864	506 539 008	B
HDD write	21 831 680	142 748 160	263 168	548 864	4 755 456	16 929 792	B
network sent	9 256	48 087	830	0	5 331	10 978	B
network received	7 466	33 393	1 486	0	12 585	9 268	B
resources usage
RAM	114,40	395,00	116	66	414	399	MB
HDD	3,60	9,62	2,48	1,17	0,97	3	GB
VirtualBox/OS settings and comments
HDD	ext4 (no swap), 8 GB, SATA	NTFS, 16 GB, SATA	BFS, 8 GB, SATA	FAT, 8 GB, ATA	EXT3, 8 GB, SATA	XFS, 8 GB, SATA
RAM	2 GB	2 GB	2 GB	2 GB	2 GB	2 GB
info	packages: Debian desktop environment, Laptop, Standard system utilities		early Alpha version	no Ethernet setup, early Beta version	early Beta version	Firefox in Ubuntu 13.04 crashes and because of it older version was used
comments	system with different philosophy than Ubuntu - it contains rather older components, but it seems to be much more tested; I have select "network" installation ISO.	the most popular, but with many APIs and libraries (some based on versions created even in 1985 ?), too big, with non clear interface	example of something small and beauty, many years ago BEOS (which Haiku is based on) was comparable to Windows and really much better, today it also could be...	example of it, how NT looked many years ago	is it the future ? the only problem is lack of some security solutions and spying....	Linux for desktops, shame, that it's not too configurable

And the winner for desktops is generally Ubuntu.... I don't want to write, that this is Linux year...but this system writes 7x less data than "light" Windows 8 on startup and needs much less space. Of course, that disks aren't too expensive right now, but...this comparison can show, how different approaches are wasting resources. Let's look into ReactOS too - it's a little bit like NT 4.0, which could be like "lighting" on modern computers... But...with good NT people won't be too interested in exchanging it and it can't be good for Microsoft (it was visible with Windows XP). Don't expect, that next Windows will be "complete" too....

BTW, if you have a lot of RAM, you can make RamDisk in Windows and save your SSD too - just move TEMP directory and for example your browser profile there (use Task Scheduler - TEMP directory can be created on startup, browser profile can be moved to this disk on computer startup and moved to SSD on computer shutdown, in worst case you won't have actual cache and bookmarks, but you can save a lot of writes if you use your browser very long)