Typically when receiving any review hardware preloaded with Microsoft Windows I tend to run some Windows vs. Linux benchmarks just as a sanity test plus it still seems to generate a fair amount of interest even though the outcome is almost always the same: Linux having a hefty performance advantage over Windows especially in the more demanding creator-type workloads. As an unexpected twist and time consuming puzzle the past two months, when recently testing out the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8 it’s faster for numerous workloads now on Microsoft Windows 11 than Ubuntu Linux.
I bet Linux wasn’t updated to recognize the new processor yet and thus wasn’t scheduling to the various types of P, E, and LPE cores correctly.
Core 100 series was out at the end of 2023. The LPE cores shouldn’t have been an issue.
Ubuntu is quite behind the update curve tho. Something like CatchyOS or Arch probably would have been much better in comparison.
Bleeding edge hardware slower on an older Linux distro. In other news water is wet.
That said it being that bad is legitimately impressive. It’s not like core 100 series where they changed from P + E to LP + P + E cores to shake things up. The 200 series shouldn’t be *that *different from it.
My guess is that the Linux install, upon not recognizing the processor, is designed to assume the processor is so old to not be recognized and is setup for “potato” mode.
Umm… Ubuntu?
About a decade ago I went through an Ubuntu phase only because a lot of tutorials had their Linux examples in Ubuntu. Ubuntu was so dam laggy and frustrating that the Ubuntu phase didn’t last long.
I’ve used it a few times and it seemed reasonably snappy.
I’ve been thinking of switching from Kubuntu to Fedora KDE
I don’t like rolling releases, I’d rather have point releases (like Ubuntu or Fedora), but Ubuntu is really far behind on a lot of packages
If you migrate to Fedora KDE, just remind yourself to set the checking for updates on a weekly or monthly basis to mitigate the “updates a lot” con of a rolling release. This is done in the settings app that KDE ships.
Mind you, Fedora spins with a desktop (in contrast to their server variants) primarily use Flatpaks now (either from them, from Flathub or both) so you may wish to consider whether you would mind that.I thought Fedora KDE was not rolling? I would like to have known stable “checkpoints” as full releases. Kubuntu is good but some packages seem a bit older than I’d like.
I’ve been primarily using Flatpaks on Kubuntu already. Otherwise AppImage or Snap. I’m mostly avoiding native installs aside from Steam and Chrome Beta
You are correct on Fedora not being rolling. My mistake. If you are fine with not having (as many) native installs you should be fine with Fedora.
From what I’ve seen, Fedora is like halfway to rolling. It’s pretty cool for sure. I was also looking at Manjaro which is maybe similar but slightly more stable.
It has been a while that I used it, but Manjaro is Arch Linux with access to the AUR enabled by default. So it is very rolling and given the malware that has been found in the AUR more than once in 2025, I am not sure how much I would recommend Manjaro.
Myself, I am on Solus KDE (rolling, but not to the extend that Arch (derivatives) are) right now and that is pretty solid. Its disadvantage over Fedora is that you have to set up a firewall yourself, as well as the fact there is a slightly larger reliance on system packages (Flathub is still accessible from Discover).
