Just a year away from Windows 12, Microsoft Windows 11 still can't best Linux (Ubuntu)

Windows 11 vs Ubuntu on AMD Ryzen

Ever since Windows 11 was released, the discussion on whether the OS is a faster performer than Windows 10 and Linux has been a hot topic. When it comes to the latter, several performance comparisons of it vs Windows 11 have suggested that Microsoft's OS has not been the consistent better performer. In fact, on several occasions, it has fared worse.

Data from September 2021, back when Windows 11 was not even generally available (G.A.), showed that Linux had a big lead in certain workloads and was also faster on average. Windows 11 got one back with Intel's 12th Gen chips thanks to special optimization. A newer kernel version did not help either as Linux was often seen lagging behind.

However, things started to shift around the middle of 2022 as Linux was finally getting specific optimizations related to the Big-Bigger design on 12th Gen Intel. And it was not just Team Blue as the same was holding true for AMD's Ryzen as well.

Speaking of Ryzen, the latest testing conducted on a Zen 4 APU shows that not only has Linux caught up to Windows 11, it has even surpassed it and by a very large margin in some cases. This is two years since the Windows 11 was out and the next OS is apparently launching in another in 2024.

In case you are wondering which model was tested, it was a Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U. As mentioned above, it's part of the Phoenix lineup, which is Zen 4 mobile and has RDNA 3 graphics on-board. The previous Ryzen test was also with an APU but that was in the form of a Ryzen PRO 6850U, which was Zen 3+ and had RDNA 2 iGP (integrated graphics).

The testing was conducted by Phoronix and although Windows 11 did win in several instances, the margins when it lost were generally far wider.

First up we have a couple of benchmarks measuring path tracing and ambient occlusion (AO) using Intel's OSPRay. As you can see below, Ubuntu is nearly twice as fast especially in the AO test.

In vkpeak FP16 Vulkan performance, Ubuntu 23.10 shows its prowess in terms of compute throughput.

The biggest performance gap is seen in CPU mining performance with Onecoin as Ubuntu shows around two and a half times or roughly 150% better hash rate.