Is Linux really faster than Windows? This is the question that every PC user ever asks themselves, and which has the Linux and Microsoft system communities constantly at odds with each other. Each system is different, and manages the computer’s resources in its own way. In addition, the drivers also have a lot to do with getting a better or worse performance of the system.
New Phoronix benchmarks have pitted Windows 11 Pro against the latest versions of major Linux distros, both using Intel‘s new Alder Lake processors. It is not the first time that this test has been carried out, since with the arrival of the processors both operating systems were already put to the test, far surpassing Windows 11 over Linux due to the lack of optimization patches in the Kernel. Now that the latest kernel release has included patches and drivers for Intel’s new range of processors, the testing has resumed.
And, although many may think when looking at the results that Linux has surpassed Windows 11 and works much better, if we carefully analyze the results we can see that there is a trap in this statement.
Windows 11 vs Linux, who wins?
For the tests, Phoronix has decided to use a Windows 11 Pro , on behalf of Microsoft, and three different Linux systems: Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 22.04 with Kernel 5.18 , and Clear Linux 36580 , the latter not making much sense since it is not Not even one of the 70 most used distros in the world.
It is true that Windows seems to limp a bit when it comes to coding in WebP, or when working with OpenJDK, but in the rest of the tests it has obtained significantly better results than Linux. There hasn’t been a single test where Linux has outperformed Windows in all the tests, because, one way or another, Microsoft’s system has managed to place itself above Linux, be it in compression tests, encoding , CPU acceleration or particle tests, among others.
Taking the average of all the tests, Ubuntu 22.04 gets 4% better performance than Windows 11, while Clear Linux outperforms it by 8%. But, as we say, it cannot be said in any way that Linux is better and faster than Windows, when it has not been able to beat it in all the tests in any single test.
Strange results
In addition to the above, it has also caught our attention that, in some of the tests, such as those of ParaView, Windows 11 has been in last place in the first three benchmarks, but finished first, and with quite a difference, in the last one. Which, moreover, was the most demanding. Or the same can be observed, for example, in OSPRay performance tests.
In addition, it is curious to see how Ubuntu 22.04 without the 5.18 patch is capable of overcoming this same distro with the patch that, in theory, improves compatibility and performance with this type of CPU.
