Wednesday, July 15th 2026
Windows 11 vs Linux Gaming Test Reveals There's More to It Than FPS
It seems as though the launch of Valve's Steam Deck has resulted in an almost non-stop slew of comparisons between Linux and Windows as a gaming operating system. In one recent test, Meta PCs sought out to test the two operating systems head-to-head to get some hard numbers and potentially settle the debate, however, the results brought up an interesting debate about what makes one operating system better than another.
Benchmarks were conducted on an all-AMD system running an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D, an XFX Swift AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT 16 GB, and 16 GB of RAM, with the AMD Linux drivers effectively making this a best-case scenario for Linux. The benchmarks were run on the latest version of Windows 11 and Fedora Linux 44, games were tested at the same resolution, and results were an average across three runs. All games tested were also the Windows versions running via Valve's Proton compatibility layer.
The results were a bit of a mixed bag. In synthetic benchmarks, Windows was slower. In Geekbench 6, Linux beat out Windows 11 by around 3-4%, depending on whether it was single-core or multicore testing, and this was repeated in Blender tests, where Linux was anywhere from 4% to 10% faster, depending on the scene. When it came to gaming, however, Linux trailed Windows slightly, earning a 9 FPS (6%) lead in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p, and a 7% lead at 4K with High settings. In Arc Raiders, Windows beats out Linux by 9% in average FPS, but it has significantly higher 1% lows, which means perceived smoothness will be higher. Marvel Rivals also saw a modest 5% improvement on Windows.
The reviewer ended up crowning Windows as the best gaming operating system for now, noting that the moderate performance boons over Linux and more consistent support from developers for features like anti-cheat makes Microsoft's operating system the superior choice for most people. However, and perhaps more interestingly than the conclusion of the performance benchmarks is the comments section, where viewers expressed their opinions after having switched to Linux. For starters, there were many comments that questioned the use of vanilla Fedora over something like Bazzite, CachyOS, or Nobara Linux, which employ more recent kernel versions and tweaks and optimizations to both the kernel and the OS in order to boost performance.
There were also comments noting that a less-than-10% performance boost isn't worth having to deal with Windows and Microsoft's decisions surrounding privacy, AI, and UI. There are also comments arguing that Linux performance would be comparatively better had the system been running less powerful hardware or slightly older hardware, like an RDNA 3 GPU, for instance, because Linux tends to run leaner, with less bloat eating up background resources. There are also valid arguments about forced updates, which have been known to break Windows features, cause instability, or, in rare cases, even potentially damage hardware.
Source:
Meta PCs on YouTube
Benchmarks were conducted on an all-AMD system running an AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D, an XFX Swift AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT 16 GB, and 16 GB of RAM, with the AMD Linux drivers effectively making this a best-case scenario for Linux. The benchmarks were run on the latest version of Windows 11 and Fedora Linux 44, games were tested at the same resolution, and results were an average across three runs. All games tested were also the Windows versions running via Valve's Proton compatibility layer.
There were also comments noting that a less-than-10% performance boost isn't worth having to deal with Windows and Microsoft's decisions surrounding privacy, AI, and UI. There are also comments arguing that Linux performance would be comparatively better had the system been running less powerful hardware or slightly older hardware, like an RDNA 3 GPU, for instance, because Linux tends to run leaner, with less bloat eating up background resources. There are also valid arguments about forced updates, which have been known to break Windows features, cause instability, or, in rare cases, even potentially damage hardware.
66 Comments on Windows 11 vs Linux Gaming Test Reveals There's More to It Than FPS
and I hate windows, cause lately I need to play with resource manager open to get stable fps and I'm doing antivirus search right now, but if there is not a thing, that means windows is stupid.
I've already changed from windows to linux on My freebe laptop, and as I don't have backed up stuff on My main rig when I will have backed up stuff it will be in it's way to some gaming linux distro :D
Now as I need sometimes windows I'm thinking of doing live windows usb just for those rare occasion that I need windows in home :)
That's why I'm happy when I see info that linux has similar results to windows, without all those bloat :D
I was even on My way to show off about My laptop transition in linux thread, but it was closed here on forum :(
Antivirus scan has just showed that there is nothing on My pc, so windows is stupid, resource manager is stabilizing fps in warhammer 40k darktide.
Proton has helped Linux FAR more then it has hurt.
1. Windows is more CPU and RAM intensive in the background, and
2. Linux needs Proton to translate DirectX instructions.
However, I do agree with the last paragraph 100% that Linux is generally a lot nicer to use, which negates any minor performance difference.
Source: www.phoronix.com/review/razer-blade18-windows-linux
I do not suggest anyone to use a small distro unless there's a specific need that a major one can't fulfil.
As a Linux user, gaming in Linux is progressing very fast.
If you really want to install other apps, you just install them in containers or layer them if you need them at a system-level. It also includes Gear Lever for AppImage formats, which is used by a lot of programmers to package Linux apps for some arbitrary reason. I have been daily driving Bazzite on a Legion Go, and it's really fine, especially if you're mostly gaming. It includes basically everything you need for a smooth gaming experience on Linux, and if you're looking for more power-user/tinkery features, there are ways around the locked-down design. I personally love that it's basically indestructible. Means I can fiddle if I want, and if I end up borking my system, I just roll back, no worries.
On a technical level, when you don't need emulation or translation layers, linux is more efficient because they are not wasting resources on bloatware like copilot, an obscene amount of telemetry, and many other things at the lowest levels that impact raw performance.
From a user experience (especially for non-expert users), for a mixed use setup, windows is far better. This is largely due to the design and development culture of windows vs linux. For decades, microsoft's push in windows has been simplifying things as well as automation, and that has lead to a development culture even at the 3rd party level that maintains that culture. For example, in windows, simple tasks have easy to use setup wizards where a user is largely just clicking on next a few times (and likely not reading the EULA where on page 57586548, it states that you agree to drink 100% of the contents of the pacific ocean). But thanks to the culture of automation, complex tasks get the same treatment, e.g., 3rd party driver packs designed to get older legacy sound cards (e.g., an Audigy 2 Zs) working on new versions of windows, including windows 11, where what would otherwise be dozens of steps in CLI hell, becomes a process of double clicking on an exe and clicking next a few times, and it detects the OS, and automates everything and it all just works.
Another way to think of it is, windows is able to separate its complexity into layers like an onion, and each layer gets dedicated attention to implementing as many advanced features as possible, and if something has not been implemented in the simpler layer, then there is a strong focus on providing scaffolding to bridge any skill gap. For example, when unlocking the bootloader, and installing a 3rd party ROM into a smartphone lead to lots of users having difficulties with commands, others quickly came in and created batch files and GUI front ends that made the process into a simple process of extracting a large file, clicking on a batch file, and following a few basic prompts and it does everything for you, including making a backup.
On the linux side of things, it doesn't have that culture yet, instead it has 2 extremes. 1 is essentially a basic walled garden and yellow brick road for the most basic users, where the user experience is even simpler than on windows, e.g., the ubuntu software center is incredibly simple to use. The issue is when a user needs to step even slightly outside of that walled garden, then they are often tossed head first into CLI hell. In which case, a user looking to get things like the macro keys and LCD from their old gaming keyboard working, and they search a forum, see someone list a tar.gz package they can grab, and a 25-30 step CLI based setup process where they are changing various configurations, editing some files using nano, and doing a ton of other things, only to have the process fail on step 19 and give an error that the user has no idea how do deal with, and ultimately it comes down to the instructions being written for a 20.04 and the user has 26.04, and now the user has junk files all over the place, and things not working, and has no idea how to fix it because they are not an expert in CLI on linux, and were simply copying commands in the hopes that by the last step, things would just work.
Furthermore, the analogous experience that users who are at a level where they need just a little be above the basics in their use of linux, can be compared to the experience that some developers would experience with stack overflow. Where users would ask for help about issues, and would receive unhelpful responses that degrade the user rather than genuinely helping, before finally locking for being a duplicate, and linking to a very old thread where the solution there is no longer applicable years later or simply incorrect if there was nuance and a moderator didn't read into it.
Windows is able to avoid situations like that for the widest range of situations. While such ease of use has it its downsides (since it is now a hassle to try and get people to stop installing everything they see and end up with a mind boggling amount of malware), that ease of use for getting things working is still incredibly attractive for users.
Some may blame the sheer number of linux distros as well, and while too much choice can be a small issue for some, the issue is actually much deeper. For a user looking to migrate their windows experience to linux, there is no real option, instead there are many specializations. A gaming focused distros allows you to install an OS and be able to run most of your games within a few minutes, but then that same distro will be lacking in many other areas if you also used your windows system for work, content creation, and other productivity tasks.
Or the user may pick a more generalized distro that is decent with a range of non-gaming tasks, but find that it is a nightmare to try and get all of the relevant compatibility and translation layers working.
As unnecessarily bloated windows is, the typical user would find it easier to install windows, and if needed, debloat it to recover some of the lost performance (since those processes are becoming more and more automated), and essentially have the best of both worlds for gaming and productivity, as compared to using linux.
TBF, they are both great OS's, depending on what you are doing at the time.
Linux is better at some things and Windows is better at others.
Im fairly certain the Windows hate mongers are just people jumping and screaming and waving their hands, trying to stand out in a large crowd.
cant recall the last time a Windows users announced that they hate Linux on a public forum ... and for that reason I pick Windows, the team is made up of better players :)