With the advent of the Steam Deck and the bump in Linux adoption that we've seen since then, a number of Linux distributions have appeared that make tweaks to the Linux kernel in the hopes of gaining performance. CachyOS is one such Linux distribution, and it appears that those kernel performance tweaks are paying off, according to some recent testing by Phoronix.

In a comparison between CachyOS, AlmaLinux 10.2, Ubuntu 26.04, Fedora Workstation 44, and Windows 11, CachyOS consistently performed at or near the top of the list, with CachyOS in performance mode claiming first place in the geometric mean of the results of a workstation benchmark. Windows 11 Pro was right at the bottom of the chart, coming in 14.9% slower than CachyOS in performance mode.

It's worth reading the full write-up at Phoronix for the in-depth results, especially if you're using benchmarks to determine which operating system to use with specific software, because there are enough cases in which Windows scores a decent victory that an application-specific approach is warranted.

The tests comprised of a mix of CPU and GPU benchmarks on a $46,000+ HP Z4 G6i workstation PC with a 48-core Intel Xeon 678X Granite Rapids WS CPU, 128 GB of DDR5-6400 memory, and an NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell workstation GPU. First up was 3D rendering and modelling, which tested Blender and IndigoBench 4.4 in both CPU and GPU rendering modes. Here, almost surprisingly, given NVIDIA's reputation in the Linux community, CachyOS and AlmaLinux were both faster than Windows 11 in both CUDA and CPU compute. The biggest differences in the render workloads came from CPU-only rendering, where Windows 11 was up to 12% slower than CachyOS. Ubuntu and Fedora were both measurably slower than CachyOS, but only by about 3-4%.

Tides turned with Chaos Group's V-Ray 6.0 rendering engine, where RTX testing resulted in 6% more rays on Windows, while CUDA rendering resulted in a 2% advantage for Windows. In CPU rendering, Linux was once again ahead, with CachyOS leading the pack at 18% faster than Windows but only marginally faster than the other Linux distributions tested. Neatbench video benchmarking, GravityMark 1.87, Unigine Superposition 1.0, and OctaneBench also saw CachyOS pulling ahead, although in some tests, gains were minimal, and in Octane, only CachyOS in Performance mode and AlmaLinux managed to pull ahead of Windows. In FluidX3D fluid dynamics simulations, performance was largely identical, but Windows 11 did manage to technically edge out a lead, even if only by fractions of a percent.

OSPRay Studio and LuxCoreRender produced peculiar results, with Windows matching or edging out Linux in a number of tests but losing badly to all of the Linux distributions in others. 7-Zip compression benchmarks once again saw Linux beating Windows by a decent margin, although it was basically a wash between the different Linux distributions.