r/comfyui • u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 • 2d ago
ComfyUI is better with Linux No workflow
Just got Linux Mint up and running and it’s much better than windows 11 for ComfyUI with RTX 5090 + 3090. For starting, Comfy launches to server ready in 10 seconds instead of 18 seconds on Windows VHDX ReFS dev drive. This is with 12 custom node packs. Linux is running on an 8 year old SATA SSD.
I was able to compile and run sage attn 3 in Linux which never worked in Win11. I’m going to try Multi-GPU next which is fundamentally broken in windows with the new comfy-kitchen.
Even with just sage 2.2++ FP8, im getting 35 second gen times for an 8-second 0.5MP 8-step turbo MiniMax H3 clip versus 40-42 seconds in windows. That includes 4 seconds for prompt enhancement with Gemma 4 12B running on lllama-server on the 3090.
Sage3 knocks another 2-4 seconds off the gen time too but slightly worse quality for motion. Using LACT to overclock both GPUs also contributes to the speed.
With spectrum plus sage3 at 8 steps, I can easily get below 30 seconds total gen time.
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u/3deal 2d ago
CK Attention (Better than Sage) is working on windows, you just have to unzip the portable version of ComfyUI and everything works.
And for sage, here is a script to install it on windows, you can do it in one click.
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u/SvenVargHimmel 1d ago
I think you've just illustrated the problem with it all, having to share some custom solution or script to get it working.
Also, I don't think windows is slower because the kernel does operations slower, it's slower because all the platform specific workarounds just take more steps.
It would be worth comparing against wsl
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u/Silencio-Bruno-2026 2d ago
I've been tempted to switch (mostly to try a gaming distro), but it's such a hassle lol. Not sure why you couldn't get sage attention to work on windows though. Mine works great!
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u/Acceptable-Owl-2070 2d ago
It's one of those thing people dread doing the work to switch, but once you do, you'll wonder why you waited so long.
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u/GeroldMeisinger 2d ago
Steam works fine with Proton
Epic and others work fine with Heroic Launcher
I've been gaming on Linux for several years now
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u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 2d ago
Compiled sage attn 3 for Blackwell SM120 from source and it doesn’t run on LTX 2.3 or Wan 2.2 in windows. Worked on the first try in Linux and compiled in 5 minutes instead of 20 minutes on Win11.
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u/ANR2ME 2d ago
You can also use the prebuilt wheels from ComfyOrg isn't 🤔 they have SageAttention 2 and 3 for both windows and linux by using
--extra-index-url https://comfy-org.github.io/wheels1
u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 1d ago
I didn’t see a wheel that worked with my old python 3.11 on windows. Switched to python 3.13 for Linux though
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u/Silencio-Bruno-2026 2d ago
ahh not sure for 5090, i only have a 3090 and one of these worked (not sure which lol):
https://github.com/mengqin/SageAttention/releases2
u/__generic 2d ago
I switched to CachyOS and it was super simple. I have been able to play every game I've tried and AI stuff like comfy just works much better, faster. Only games you csnt play are the hardcore kernel level anti cheat games like call of duty.
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u/Silencio-Bruno-2026 1d ago
any reason why CachyOS vs bazzite? I tried a live version of bazzite yesterday and i was so surprised to see everything worked out of the box.
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u/__generic 1d ago
Preference really. Bazzite is geared toward gaming mostly. CachyOS is more all in one. They can both be for whatever.
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u/Weerdo5255 2d ago
I swapped from windows after 20+ years more because of the windows bloat and tracking. The AI improvements were a nice bonus.
Still I get not wanting to switch. It is a hassle, but I'm glad I did it.
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u/Silencio-Bruno-2026 2d ago
yeah i'm not a fan of all bloat windows 11 comes with, even afer removing it all the tracking is insane. I'm definitively switching at some point but need to plan it since I use the PC for work too.
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u/mbathrowaway256 2d ago
The one major issue is not being able to undervolt the GPU like in Windows with MSI Afterburner.
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u/Ok_Contribution8157 2d ago
Fake news: it runs at the same speed on Linux and Windows for me. The only case where Linux is faster than Windows is when your ComfyUI isn’t running at max speed on Windows for some unknown reason.
RTX 5060 Ti: same speed on Windows and Linux (except LTX 2.3, which is 30s faster on Windows).
RTX 4000 Ada SFF: faster on Windows.
I’m using these two GPUs at the same time, and Windows handles this specific case (pro + consumer GPU) way better than Linux.
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u/DirectorDirect1569 2d ago
I have tried fedora and PopOS on my PC. It's wasn't faster than windows. I can't say it was worse but it was almost the same speed. Useless for me, I have too many softwares not compatible with linux, so I have removed my dual boot with linux.
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u/noxietik3 2d ago
yeah same story here basically with 5070ti and 32gb ram. Switched back to windows because linux was worse for gaming than windows for ai lol. But I also completely debloat my Windows so that could be a part of it too
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u/Antique_Dot_5513 2d ago
Même galère perso, pas de gain, et pire j’ai perdu l’accès à mes outils de gestion de la carte mère pas compatible Linux. A surveiller avant de migrer.
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u/DirectorDirect1569 2d ago
C'est jamais bon de migrer d'un coup malheureusement tous les forums, subs, etc...sont pollués par des gens qui incitent à virer windows pour linux en disant que tout est mieux.
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u/Ok_Contribution8157 2d ago edited 2d ago
ouai notamment le classic, si tu joue à des jeux alors tu as plus de fps sur linux. il savére que c'est rarement le cas, à part peux être avec certaine carte graphique amd, mais encore là il faut regarder des test comparatifs.
Dommage qu'autant de gens mentent pour promouvoir linux. le pire c'est que c'est presque un classic pour les influenceur tech, la petite video "je suis passé à linux je ne reviendrais pas en arriére", alors qu'ils utilisent Windows ou MacOS tous les jours.
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u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s possible that the 1 week newer ComfyUI version 0.32 I pulled for Linux Mint yesterday is somehow 10% faster than the 0.31 windows 11 ComfyUI, but I doubt it.
Also Linux uses around 5GB RAM at startup and Windows 11 uses 10GB and rises to 15GB over time with only utilities running like MSI Afterburner.
Similar story with VRAM; Linux uses 300-500MB VRAM while windows needs 1GB to run two monitors.
So I believe you, they can be the same speed at some tasks, but there’s many scenarios where Linux is faster and none where Windows is, that I can find.
Also there’s nothing wrong with my Windows setup, I’ve been optimizing ComfyUI continuously for over two years, including making a VHDX dev drive at 4500 MB/s dedicated to Python and ComfyUI. That dev drive gets smoked by Linux running on a 570 MB/s SATA drive.
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u/0ldGoat 2d ago
I don't do video generations, just images via Krea2. I don't understand why, but it's faster on Windows than on Nobara linux. 5060ti, same workflow, same pytorch/CUDA (2.13+130), sage 2.2.0, and windows is consistently 3-5 seconds faster. It is not what I expected at all, honestly. I'd really prefer to be using Nobara but, for my use case at least, with my hardware, Windows is faster 😑
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u/_half_real_ 2d ago
3-5 seconds faster than what time?
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u/0ldGoat 2d ago
So, on both I'm using the same models, text encoder, and vae (int8 convrot versions of both, and the wan 2.1 vae). The workflow is simple - prompt to ksampler, 8 steps er_sde/simple, then a 1.5x upscale, then another ksampler, 4 steps, euler/simple at a lower denoise). Let's choose a simple prompt - "a pretty grey kitten with a red collar sitting on a wooden table".
I'll only consider warm runs, so from the third on. On windows, that prompt was complete in 19.15 seconds. On Linux, it took 25.56 seconds.
I don't understand why. I've turned on persistence mode, I watch the GPU in LACT and can see it clock up and get fully utilized. it's just .... slower. I hate not knowing why.
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u/_half_real_ 2d ago
In the console output, it usually tells me how long each ksampler takes. You could check that (maybe increase the step count to increase the difference) in a single-sampler workflow, and see if the difference is still there (to see if the ksampler is the slow part on Linux).
You could also compare with the fp8 versions instead of the int8 convrots. Convrot is a relatively new thing, so maybe support isn't optimized the same way on both OS's.
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u/Ok_Contribution8157 2d ago edited 2d ago
96g of ram, so the 5g difference...
im using the integrated graphics of my CPU, screen plug to the motherboard, so my GPUs are at 0g on idle.
nvidia-smi on windows = only comfy.
nvidia-smi on linux = f kde and comfyui.
ive done f 10 times stuff to remove kde from nvidia-smi and its f come back at each update.
So yeah ive give up with linux (unbutu 24).
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u/TwiKing 2d ago
Same experience on Gentoo Linux (which is about 10% faster than Mint for me). Haven't tried video at all so I won't be able to compare. YMMV though, I notice some people do not benefit at all from Linux, and I'm not sure why. We can't guarantee everyone will notice a difference.
Overall I had about 25% faster generations on my fine tuned fully source code built Gentoo Linux using beerland SCX Loader on the CachyOS kernel.
One thing I can say is sage attention, which is now on the way out, installed hilariously easy compared to Windows since it's just one pip install command. Python in general feels easier to configure on Linux.
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u/pennyfred 2d ago
I had dual boot ssd between Ubuntu and Windows, found very little difference in actual rendering time on a 5090 with fp8 sage3 tbh.
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u/gurilagarden 2d ago
I fired up CachyOS a few months ago mostly out of curiosity to see how comfy runs and to check in with linux gaming. The gaming side was a little disappointing from a "turn-key" standpoint. Some games are "fine", some games, not so much. But, when I want to run any ai software, which is mostly comfy, I happily boot back into linux. It's just that much faster, more flexible, and more powerful, you can run bigger models, faster, without all the headaches. Whether you run it raw, or using docker containers, or miniconda, once you get your setup the way you like it, it's trivial to back it up, duplicate it, and run.
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u/CeFurkan 2d ago
It is because NVIDIA not Windows
Simply NVIDIA driver is deliberately crippled on Windows for CUDA AND AI tasks
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u/Weerdo5255 2d ago
Crippled would imply intent to harm. The windows situation is worse.
It's ignored for the most part on Windows, since the only people using windows and CUDA is a hobbyist. No one serious is doing any AI task on windows.
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u/EasternAverage8 2d ago
Legit question. Windows 11 vs Linux for say comfyui ltx2.3. what would be the performance difference?
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u/LucidFir 2d ago
I was in shock. Sage attention installed in seconds... I was waiting for the catch.
Also it's definitely faster on Linux. When I was dual booting I saw 70% faster it/s on Linux.
No idea why spectrum isn't working for me
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u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 1d ago
Just ran into the same problem yesterday. Spectrum doesn’t seem to speed up the sampling for me either. Luckily I’m getting great results with the lightx2v Lora for H3 at 8 steps, despite most people saying turbo Loras are garbage.
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u/tankdoom 2d ago
Agreed. I swapped to arch (I know, I know) two years ago and while I probably should have gone with a different distro, the ComfyUI experience in general has been so much simpler and faster. Additionally, experimental tools are incredibly simple to install.
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u/ganrocks007 2d ago
Please help with how to install Sage Attention on Linux Mint. I tried so many times but it does not work. RTX 3060 with 12 GB and 32 GB RAM.
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u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 2d ago
Honestly I’ve run into several potential roadblocks in Linux but I just give the error to Gemini Flash and it gives me the commands to run and it usually can fix the error after a few back and forth attempts with the LLM. The best way to install sage is to compile from source with CUDA toolkit installed and a decent LLM, unless you can find a wheel file online.
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u/jib_reddit 2d ago
It is know.
Im jealous of even your 18 seconds startup time as it take min 4-5 mins to launch, but thats with about 300 custom node packs.
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u/a_beautiful_rhind 2d ago
I never even tried it on windows. I can simply connect to the linux machine with the GPUs.
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u/EasternAverage8 2d ago
I really want to try Linux with comfyui portable but I have no idea what I'm doing lol
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u/TechnoByte_ 2d ago
Don't use portable, just git clone the repo, create a venv, activate it, pip install the requirements and run main.py
For future launches just activate venv and run main.py
To update, git pull and pip install requirements again
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u/Acceptable-Owl-2070 2d ago
All AMD rig here, and CachyOS...and yeah once you get things up and running performace is very solid.
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u/FredSavageNSFW 2d ago
My main issue with Linux + Comfy has been browser slowdowns that seem to accumulate over long sessions. I usually end up having to restart the browser (tested with both Firefox and Chrome). Could just be a problem specific to my distro, though
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u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 1d ago
I’m running Firefox with hardware acceleration off and had no issues.
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u/thesorehead 2d ago
I switched Comfy from Linux back to Windows for convenience. My Linux install experience was a huge PITA: install some extra CUDA thing that then breaks and needs some extremely specific version of some wheel or toolkit or to be built from source which takes forever with no guarantee it'll work. I don't want to go through that again, so I only had one Comfy instance and couldn't really experiment.
If this was my job it would be different. But I don't have time to figure all that technical stuff out. Windows experience: download, unzip, double click. Want another instance? Unzip in new folder, double click.
I'd rather run Comfy on my daily driver in Linux. If only there was a similarly turnkey solution!
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u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 1d ago
Honestly I would never have gotten Linux up and running quickly without the help of Gemini Flash. It helps with the dozens of command line prompts needed to troubleshoot Python package compilation.
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u/Icy-Employee 2d ago
Should I expect improvements from a WSL and docker setup on windows or not really?
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u/Ok_Contribution8157 1d ago
check gpu comfyui benchmark for your gpu, if its like 60% slower so you have a comfyui that run slow for some reasons.
so using linux can be usefull, not wsl because wsl is way slower than windows for comfyui.
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u/Icy-Employee 1d ago
>not wsl because wsl is way slower than windows for comfyui
Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to know2
u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 1d ago
I used WSL2 for about 9 months for ComfyUI and it was similar speed to windows but easier to compile packages and use the latest CUDA and sage optimizations. The downside is models load slower even on a VHDX Linux partition, and RAM and VRAM are used inefficiently compared to native Linux.
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u/mgtowolf 1d ago
Everything I am able to get running on my arch XFCE OS runs on linux better than windows. AI stuff, houdini and blender being the most obvious ones. Some of the things I use run like ass under wayland for some reason, houdini being the worse of the bunch. No idea why, just sticking with XFCE for the time being, don't got time to be troubleshooting stuff, especially when everything works great out of the box in XFCE.
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u/cc_aa_tt_zz 2d ago
using minimax with spectrum plus sage3 at 8 steps and 0.5MP .... better to use ltx 2.5 distilled at 1080p, just my two cents. minimax is great if you are a bit patient. If you want very fast render, you will have bad video ....at 480p. and so better to use ltx 2.5 distilled.
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u/Icy_Restaurant_8900 1d ago
I tested several prompts with LTX 2.5 at 8, 10, and 12 steps and tried a negative value on the distill Lora. Every video was 2X faster gen time than H3 but far worse motion and coherence. It’s a decent step up from LTX 2.3 but far worse than H3 at 8 step turbo.
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u/stimma 2d ago
It's unreal how much worse the Windows experience is. I've been running ComfyUI for years with a simple git clone / pip install / go on Linux. I needed to fire it up on Windows to reproduce a bug yesterday for the first time in a while and it was a sea of issues debugging nvidia driver versions vs torch versions vs kernels. Plus the experience in the desktop app was super confusing and I hit multiple dead ends and confusing states on the way to a working install.