If you have just bought a next-generation laptop with the newest from Intel, the Panther Lake chips (Core Ultra 200V), you may assume that Windows 11 is the operating system that suits it best and with which you will get the most out of it.
However, The latest news states the opposite and it seems that Linux not only also works on these processors, but also gets much better performance out of them.. We are talking about tests and exact data that show that, on the same hardware, Linux manages to overtake Redmond to the right.
Michael Larabel, the founder of Phoronix, has been the one who has had to show Microsoft’s colors, since it is dedicated to pushing processors to the maximum with extreme performance tests.
When comparing Ubuntu 25.04 against Windows 11 on an Intel reference platform, the results have left more than one with their mouths open.
Linux finishes the job while Windows continues to think about how to organize itself
In pure calculation tasks, memory management and artificial intelligence operations, Linux has won in the vast majority of tests, being up to 20% faster in some cases.
The point in question why Linux seems to have a great advantage is how it knows how to handle this processor and all its power. These are capable of managing changes of pace with a speed that Windows 11, for now, does not have.
The key to everything is in the system «scheduler», which is the one that decides which task goes to each core. While Windows still seems to have some doubts about how to distribute the work on these powerful chips, the Linux kernel has been perfectly optimized for it.
The performance ‘tax’ you pay for using Windows
Now, why such a difference? Basically, Windows 11 has several security problems, background processes and compatibility with twenty-year-old programs that slow it down.
Linux, being more modular and cleaner, allows the Panther Lake processor to run more freely. In memory bandwidth and latency tests, Linux has proven to be better.
In the field of files and storage (the famous I/O), the differences are again clear. Linux file systems, such as ext4 or Btrfs, have been shown to be faster reading and writing data to NVMe drives than Windows NTFS.
Of course, don’t worry, because not everything is negative for Microsoft. Windows continues to be the king in very specific areas, especially in the field of video games and certain desktop applications that are closely linked to their own drivers.
In web browsing tests with specific browsers, Microsoft integration sometimes manages to gain a few points advantage. Additionally, although Linux runs more AI using the main processor, Windows still has an advantage in using the NPU (the dedicated AI engine), simply because there are more programs ready to use that chip.
Windows 11 already exceeds 66% share on Steam: it is the operating system most used by PC gamers
In this area it seems to have an advantage. According to the figures corresponding to the latest Valve survey, 66.71% of Steam players uses Windows 11, which represents an increase of 0.11 percentage points compared to the previous month.
In this case it seems that the competition is with respect to the previous operating system. In any case, Windows 10 continues to hold up better than expected.
Although its end of support occurred at the end of last year and many users now rely on extended security updates, the system still represents 27.79% of Steam usersalso with a monthly increase of 0.28 points.
Alternative systems share the remaining small percentage, with Linux reaching 3.38% and macOS 2.01%.
Regarding hardware, the survey reflects very clear configurations among players. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is the most popular graphics card, at 4.16%usually accompanied by 16 GB of RAM, six-core processors, 8 GB of video memory and 1080p monitors.