The Intel i9 works better on Windows 10 than Linux. Is this true?

Although in my day to day I use Linux more, I am a user of the three main operating systems. I still have an old iMac, I have a laptop with Windows 10 and Kubuntu on my newest laptop, to which I add Manjaro that I use on a pendrive on the same laptop on which I have the Microsoft system installed. For me, one of the strongest points of Linux is its "speed", and I put it in quotes because right now it is making sure that the Intel i9 it's faster on Windows 10 than Linux.

I have read this statement in the middle tom's HARDWARE, and there is something that has caught my attention from the beginning: »Linux»? What "Linux"? That to begin with. Although most of us refer to the kernel-based systems developed by Linus Torvalds as "Linux," the systems are GNU / Linux, the latter being the kernel shared by many operating systems. Ie: Ubuntu is Linux, but Linux is not Ubuntu. And it is the Canonical system that they have used for a test.

Better benchmarks in Windows 10 than in Ubuntu 20.10, both with Intel i9

The original article was written by Michael Larabel at Phoronix, and its entry has a less misleading headline: «Windows 10 beats Ubuntu on the Core i9 11900 for some workloads«. Here we have the first detail: the word "some" ≠ "all". In addition, the Ubuntu that you have used in testing uses Linux 5.12, a kernel that is currently under development and whose 7th Release Candidate still had to improve, to the point that it is not ruled out that its release will be delayed a week.

For everything else, in both cases the same equipment was used, otherwise it would not make any sense: a computer with the i9-119000K, 32GB of 3200MHz RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. Looking at the data, it is true that Windows 10 is ahead in some tasks, such as using Blender 2.92, Crafty 25.2 or IndigoBench 4.4, but it is also behind in Selenium, encoding a WebP image or Zstd compression. Regarding these benchmarks, Window 10 Pro wins in 61.5% of the tasks, while Ubuntu does it in 38.5%.

Linux is not "an operating system"

Linux is not "an operating system." As we have already explained, that we refer to them as such does not mean that we can generalize as we do with Windows or macOS, where what there is is a system that is renewed every so often. Therefore, we could say that the latest "build" of Windows 10 Pro is faster than the last one of Ubuntu, but taking into account that a kernel version that has not been officially released.

On the other hand, also you have to take into account how both operating systems move. On the same laptop where I have Windows 10 Pro and use Manjaro, I also use Ubuntu 20.10 on a USB, and the benchmarks are something that serves as a reference, but it is not the only thing that matters. Opening an application early and not waiting for a while does matter, and that is something that I notice in Manjaro, which is Linux, and in Ubuntu, and I don't even notice in Windows 10.

Sure, if your computer is powerful ...

When we use a powerful computer, the operating system, in terms of its speed, almost does not matter to us. Windows will move well and the applications will open quickly, but things change when we use a more discreet computer, as is the case with my laptop with Intel i3, 4GB of RAM and 512GB HDD, not all of us can have or need an Intel i9. Still, I doubt that Microsoft's system will maintain its performance after a few years, something that Linux-based operating systems do.

Be that as it may, if we look solely and exclusively at these results, and waiting for Linux 5.12 is officially released, Windows 10 is faster than Ubuntu on an Intel i9 computer. It's hard to believe, but I trust who has done it, although I would like to see a timed video in which applications also open.