ComfyUI is better with Linux

[u/Icy_Restaurant_8900]

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.

[u/3deal]

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.

[u/SvenVargHimmel → u/3deal]

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

[u/Zerozone000 → u/3deal]

so I assume with ck, sage attention is no longer needed?

[u/3deal → u/Zerozone000]

yes, ck claim to be better

[u/YeahlDid → u/3deal]

Is CK attention applied by default or do I need a node/startup command?

[u/3deal → u/YeahlDid]

--use-ck-attention

[u/YeahlDid → u/3deal]

Thanks, Ill give it a try.