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Windows 11 Outperforming Linux on an Intel Arrow Lake H Laptop

56 pointsby tuananhtoday at 11:20 AM30 commentsview on HN

Comments

jezzetoday at 12:11 PM

If Linux previously always outperformed Windows the result should be similar this time around as well. It could possibly be some missing feature or a bug in the linux drivers but it sounds unlikely to me. I mean the architecture isn't fundamentally different. Maybe windows ignores some thermal throttling? Something smells fishy here for sure.

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p0w3n3dtoday at 1:03 PM

I recently learned that my device won't display UHD movies in Linux on my projector because HDMI is vendor-locked to Windows... Maybe this is something similar (a driver that was not done right)

jgtroshtoday at 11:37 AM

I appreciate the fact that they waited two months to check their results before sharing them publicly. However, this feels like there should be a hypothesis for explaining the difference other than “this fits expectations”, especially after the author extensively claims this does not fit their own expectations. Did I miss something?

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cubefoxtoday at 1:13 PM

I'm surprised the choice of operating system can have such a large impact on performance. I would have expected the performance was more dependent on the application, not the OS.

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RobotToastertoday at 12:27 PM

Could windows be using binaries optimised for that specific processor? "Simply" running apt-build world would possibly fix it if that's the case.

skibidithinktoday at 12:16 PM

The last time I tried Linux on a consumer device was 15 years ago. The battery life was unacceptable. Have things improved since then? Phoronix doesn't seem to test battery life.

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RicoElectricotoday at 11:39 AM

If there is a measurable performance differential, then such a big gap is actually a good sign. There is probably one thing massively broken, and not a systems design problem that needs a man-year to resolve if FOSS folks ever agree how to fix it.

user3939382today at 12:47 PM

This isn’t about kernels. Ubuntu. Look at the ps ax list from a default ubuntu it’s like 300 processes it’s ridiculous.

krautburglartoday at 12:20 PM

Wonder if it has something to do with licensed features:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46002989

(i.e. no license, have to fallback to unaccelerated software-only implementation)

BoredPositrontoday at 12:24 PM

Normally phoronix does the work but I am irritated that he just used Ubuntu to test the machine instead of verifying it with a different distro.

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josteinktoday at 11:38 AM

Could this be due to how Windows vs Linux does process scheduling on CPUs with P- and E-cores?

To my knowledge Linux isn’t that capable on BIG.little architectures, and Linux power-management (as this intersects with) has always left a little to be desired - when comparing battery life to Windows.

Disclaimer: pure speculation. Possibly misinformed :-D

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