When it comes to pushing silicon to its absolute limits while begging your cooling fan for forgiveness, not all CPUs—or operating systems—are created equal. In the great gladiatorial arena of 2024 laptop silicon, AMD’s Zen 5 architecture makes a striking entrance with the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360, a chip designed not just for raw speed but for doing its thing across different workloads, be they classic productivity suites or AI-tuned edge scenarios. But how does it fare when running Ubuntu 25.04 versus Windows 11? Let’s grab a digital loupe, hop on a Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, and dissect this battle of bit-flipping operating systems.
The Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 isn’t just another name in AMD’s burgeoning lineup—it’s part of what can be described as the Strix Point SoC lineage, heralding a refined hybrid design. Under the hood, it packs eight cores split into three high-performance Zen 5 cores (tuned to hit a stratospheric 5.0GHz) and five efficiency-oriented Zen 5C cores (maxing out at 3.3GHz). This fusion brings together the dragon’s breath of raw single-core muscle and the ant-like industriousness of smaller, power-sipping units—all within a surprisingly slim chassis.
Backing this dance of cores is 32GB of screaming-fast LPDDR5-7500 memory and a swift 1TB Kioxia NVMe SSD. Toss this into a ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and you have a machine that, on paper, could probably plot its own escape from most benchmarking labs.
But let’s be honest—hardware reviews today aren’t just about what’s inside the box. It’s also about which operating system you call home. Windows 11, Microsoft’s flagship decked out with productivity and compatibility, versus Ubuntu 25.04, the open-source darling for developers and power users alike. Both have fiercely loyal fans, and both shoulder the responsibility for software optimization at every tick of the CPU clock.
No settings were tweaked, no registry edits attempted, and no boot flags thrown about like confetti. Defaults ruled. Just pure, unadulterated out-of-the-box performance. Even the measured power plans were left to the wisdom (or folly) of the respective operating systems.
The result is a set of benchmarks that capture what you’d actually experience—whether you’re an enterprise warrior picking up a ThinkPad in a boardroom or a code poet spinning up containers in a coffee shop.
When it’s time to unleash all 16 threads, that’s where the fun begins. The dance between Zen 5 and Zen 5C becomes evident, as workload scheduling, OS kernel efficiency, and thread distribution all join the party. On several multi-core tests—including compression workloads, video rendering, and scientific number-crunching—Ubuntu 25.04 often shows an edge ranging from a few percent up to double digits. The open-source kernel, it seems, can wring just a little more out of AMD’s new architecture, especially in tasks built with Linux in mind.
That said, Windows 11’s scheduler has matured impressively, handling the hybrid Zen design without as much fuss as previous generations. For end users, these differences are often perceptible only in synthetic test graphs or with a stopwatch running.
Under Ubuntu 25.04, the open hardware enabling ecosystem is moving rapidly, offering an ever-growing set of AI libraries and frameworks that tap into both Zen and onboard accelerators. Developers on the Linux side will find support for TensorFlow, PyTorch, ONNX, and more, often enjoying greater control over low-level features.
Windows 11, meanwhile, remains the friendliest for plug-and-play AI out-of-the-box, largely due to AMD’s own optimized software stack (Radeon Software, DirectML, and more) and the broader availability of AI-powered applications. While the performance gap in raw AI throughput can occasionally favor Ubuntu when bleeding-edge kernels catch up, most mainstream users may find Windows a more accessible entry point for AI-accelerated tasks… at least, until Linux support catches up with the latest AMD drivers.
Windows 11 has not been sitting idle either. Its task scheduler, once notorious for getting confused by hybrid CPUs (thanks, Intel big.LITTLE!), has matured. The latest patches and firmware updates mean Windows 11 is typically adept at placing heavy threads on Zen 5 cores and efficiently shuffling background tasks to the Zen 5C cores. If you run classic Windows workloads, the integration is seamless.
Still, in some highly-threaded Linux-native workloads, Ubuntu’s scheduler can grab that last few percentage points of performance, thanks to lower overheads and an open ecosystem where developers can tune for their workloads. The result? Linux, in certain scenarios, feels just a bit snappier—especially if your day job involves compilers, containers, or computational workloads tailored for open-source platforms.
On Windows 11, out-of-the-box settings defer to Lenovo’s preset power plans. You’ll see balanced performance most of the time, with robust boosting under heavy load. The system’s fan ramps up when expected, but thermal management is effective, leveraging firmware-level optimizations that are fine-tuned for this particular ThinkPad model. Battery life remains respectable for a high-performance business laptop, typically north of 8-9 hours with mixed use.
Switching gears to Ubuntu 25.04, power management depends more on the kernel’s ability to take advantage of AMD’s full suite of power states. With the latest kernel and power management tools, idle consumption is within striking distance of Windows’ refined profile, although burst workloads can briefly draw more power as the kernel attempts to maximize performance. Over longer runs, battery drain is a shade higher—but only just—suggesting Linux power management is catching up fast.
Windows 11 wins handily when it comes to peripheral support—no surprise there. Every function key works, firmware updates flow through Lenovo Vantage, and webcam drivers are plug-and-play. Security features like Windows Hello and BitLocker are optimized to leverage both OS and CPU capabilities. If you work in a world where every Teams call must look pristine, Windows 11 is the safe bet.
Ubuntu 25.04, though better than ever, still grapples with quirks in the so-called “business laptop” experience. The basics—Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, suspend/resume—are rock-solid and improved by Lenovo’s recent enthusiasm for Linux, but advanced features like fingerprint readers or WWAN cards might require a few terminal commands and a pinch of patience. That said, the situation is massively improved over past years, and community momentum means new devices are getting official support faster than ever.
That differentiation may matter less to individuals, but for big organizations choosing Lenovo endpoints for their thousands of road warriors, enterprise management tools and patching pipelines still give Windows the edge. For smaller teams or privacy-focused users, Ubuntu’s transparency and control are compelling.
Windows 11’s update cadence is, at this point, legendary for springing new features on users mid-coffee, but OEM partnerships ensure devices like the T14s receive BIOS and firmware updates automagically. Five years from now, you’ll still find support for your ThinkPad.
Ubuntu, though in its interim 25.04 beta here, benefits from easy upgradability and a growing set of certified software repositories for this generation of AMD platforms. While support from hardware vendors is often half a generation behind Windows, Ubuntu’s life cycle and upgrade path are straightforward, and rolling to an LTS (Long Term Support) release is only ever a command away.
Windows 11, meanwhile, has reimagined its developer credentials. The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) gives you the best of both worlds: a full Linux environment alongside your regular Windows tasks. However, for those who spent years wrangling UNIX permissions and makefiles in anger, running “native” never loses its appeal.
That said, Ubuntu 25.04, with its improved Vulkan support and cutting-edge graphics stack, is narrowing the gap. For open-source native games (or via Steam Proton), performance on the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 is often at or above Windows levels, especially for indie titles or retro emulation. Multimedia tasks—whether playback, editing, or streaming—are now fully viable on both sides.
The real winner? The user. The AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360, sitting inside its ThinkPad shell, barely breaks a sweat no matter which OS you throw its way. This is hybrid computing done right—raw speed, smart power usage, and a growing ecosystem ready for whatever you dream up next.
So whether you’re compiling the next big app in Ubuntu or presenting to a boardroom in Windows, take a moment to thank the engineers who got us here. And maybe, just maybe, give your CPU a break and let it cool off between sprints—it’s earned it.
Source: Phoronix Ubuntu 25.04 vs. Windows 11 CPU Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 Review - Phoronix
Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360: The Strix Point Star
The Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 isn’t just another name in AMD’s burgeoning lineup—it’s part of what can be described as the Strix Point SoC lineage, heralding a refined hybrid design. Under the hood, it packs eight cores split into three high-performance Zen 5 cores (tuned to hit a stratospheric 5.0GHz) and five efficiency-oriented Zen 5C cores (maxing out at 3.3GHz). This fusion brings together the dragon’s breath of raw single-core muscle and the ant-like industriousness of smaller, power-sipping units—all within a surprisingly slim chassis.Backing this dance of cores is 32GB of screaming-fast LPDDR5-7500 memory and a swift 1TB Kioxia NVMe SSD. Toss this into a ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and you have a machine that, on paper, could probably plot its own escape from most benchmarking labs.
But let’s be honest—hardware reviews today aren’t just about what’s inside the box. It’s also about which operating system you call home. Windows 11, Microsoft’s flagship decked out with productivity and compatibility, versus Ubuntu 25.04, the open-source darling for developers and power users alike. Both have fiercely loyal fans, and both shoulder the responsibility for software optimization at every tick of the CPU clock.
Benchmark Methodology: A Tale of Two Desktops
To keep things fair (and to terrify both OSes equally), Phoronix ran its cavalcade of CPU benchmarks under identical conditions. The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 was the constant; only the software shifted beneath the silicon—Windows 11 Pro came straight from the Lenovo factory preload, updated to the latest patches. Ubuntu 25.04, though technically still enjoying its “beta” afterglow during testing, was kept up to date with April’s freshest packages.No settings were tweaked, no registry edits attempted, and no boot flags thrown about like confetti. Defaults ruled. Just pure, unadulterated out-of-the-box performance. Even the measured power plans were left to the wisdom (or folly) of the respective operating systems.
The result is a set of benchmarks that capture what you’d actually experience—whether you’re an enterprise warrior picking up a ThinkPad in a boardroom or a code poet spinning up containers in a coffee shop.
The CPU Tests: Zen’s Real-World Fisticuffs
Single-Core and Multi-Core Muscle
First, the single-core speedsters. With its Zen 5 cores knocking on the 5.0GHz ceiling, the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 leans in hard whenever a benchmark asks for raw single-thread performance—think code compilation, Photoshop filters, and the ever-relevant “how fast can I load Excel.” Here, both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.04 deliver in spades, but the margin between the two is often razor-thin. In certain microbenchmarks, Ubuntu sometimes ekes ahead, buoyed by Linux’s famed low-latency kernel handling, while Windows 11 takes the crown in scenarios benefiting from specific driver and framework optimizations.When it’s time to unleash all 16 threads, that’s where the fun begins. The dance between Zen 5 and Zen 5C becomes evident, as workload scheduling, OS kernel efficiency, and thread distribution all join the party. On several multi-core tests—including compression workloads, video rendering, and scientific number-crunching—Ubuntu 25.04 often shows an edge ranging from a few percent up to double digits. The open-source kernel, it seems, can wring just a little more out of AMD’s new architecture, especially in tasks built with Linux in mind.
That said, Windows 11’s scheduler has matured impressively, handling the hybrid Zen design without as much fuss as previous generations. For end users, these differences are often perceptible only in synthetic test graphs or with a stopwatch running.
AI and Edge Computing: The Secret Sauce
What’s perhaps most interesting—and the reason for all those “AI” badges stuck on new silicon—is how these CPUs handle edge AI tasks. Here's where the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 flexes: not only is it a competent traditional CPU, but it’s also packing on-chip neural hardware designed to accelerate machine learning inference right at your fingertips.Under Ubuntu 25.04, the open hardware enabling ecosystem is moving rapidly, offering an ever-growing set of AI libraries and frameworks that tap into both Zen and onboard accelerators. Developers on the Linux side will find support for TensorFlow, PyTorch, ONNX, and more, often enjoying greater control over low-level features.
Windows 11, meanwhile, remains the friendliest for plug-and-play AI out-of-the-box, largely due to AMD’s own optimized software stack (Radeon Software, DirectML, and more) and the broader availability of AI-powered applications. While the performance gap in raw AI throughput can occasionally favor Ubuntu when bleeding-edge kernels catch up, most mainstream users may find Windows a more accessible entry point for AI-accelerated tasks… at least, until Linux support catches up with the latest AMD drivers.
Kernel Matters: Linux 6.8, Windows 11, and the Art of Scheduling
Under the hood, this CPU battle is as much about kernel wisdom as silicon muscle. Ubuntu 25.04 comes out swinging with Linux kernel 6.8—a release marked by further improvements for modern AMD CPUs, with refined scheduler logic and better idle state handling. For the hybrid Zen 5/5C setup, that means smarter hand-offs and less idle thrashing, translating into more consistent results than on older kernels.Windows 11 has not been sitting idle either. Its task scheduler, once notorious for getting confused by hybrid CPUs (thanks, Intel big.LITTLE!), has matured. The latest patches and firmware updates mean Windows 11 is typically adept at placing heavy threads on Zen 5 cores and efficiently shuffling background tasks to the Zen 5C cores. If you run classic Windows workloads, the integration is seamless.
Still, in some highly-threaded Linux-native workloads, Ubuntu’s scheduler can grab that last few percentage points of performance, thanks to lower overheads and an open ecosystem where developers can tune for their workloads. The result? Linux, in certain scenarios, feels just a bit snappier—especially if your day job involves compilers, containers, or computational workloads tailored for open-source platforms.
Power Efficiency and Thermal Management
No one likes a laptop that sounds like a turbojet at idle. With its mix of fast and efficient cores, the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 promises hours of runtime—so long as your OS plays along.On Windows 11, out-of-the-box settings defer to Lenovo’s preset power plans. You’ll see balanced performance most of the time, with robust boosting under heavy load. The system’s fan ramps up when expected, but thermal management is effective, leveraging firmware-level optimizations that are fine-tuned for this particular ThinkPad model. Battery life remains respectable for a high-performance business laptop, typically north of 8-9 hours with mixed use.
Switching gears to Ubuntu 25.04, power management depends more on the kernel’s ability to take advantage of AMD’s full suite of power states. With the latest kernel and power management tools, idle consumption is within striking distance of Windows’ refined profile, although burst workloads can briefly draw more power as the kernel attempts to maximize performance. Over longer runs, battery drain is a shade higher—but only just—suggesting Linux power management is catching up fast.
Ecosystem and Software Support
Performance is only part of the story. Daily life on the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 involves more than compiling code or rendering frames. From peripherals to VPNs to biometric sensors, much depends on the maturity of your chosen OS.Windows 11 wins handily when it comes to peripheral support—no surprise there. Every function key works, firmware updates flow through Lenovo Vantage, and webcam drivers are plug-and-play. Security features like Windows Hello and BitLocker are optimized to leverage both OS and CPU capabilities. If you work in a world where every Teams call must look pristine, Windows 11 is the safe bet.
Ubuntu 25.04, though better than ever, still grapples with quirks in the so-called “business laptop” experience. The basics—Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, suspend/resume—are rock-solid and improved by Lenovo’s recent enthusiasm for Linux, but advanced features like fingerprint readers or WWAN cards might require a few terminal commands and a pinch of patience. That said, the situation is massively improved over past years, and community momentum means new devices are getting official support faster than ever.
Security, Privacy, and Management
Here’s something both camps now care about: security and privacy. On the surface, both operating systems secure your files with disk encryption and manage firmware updates well. On Linux, open-source code provides transparency and reduces the attack surface, while Windows 11’s security stack (especially in enterprise builds) offers layered defenses, device attestation, and industry-standard encryption by default.That differentiation may matter less to individuals, but for big organizations choosing Lenovo endpoints for their thousands of road warriors, enterprise management tools and patching pipelines still give Windows the edge. For smaller teams or privacy-focused users, Ubuntu’s transparency and control are compelling.
Upgradability and Longevity
Let's face it, no one enjoys reinstalling a laptop every two years. Both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.04 offer long-term support—but in different flavors.Windows 11’s update cadence is, at this point, legendary for springing new features on users mid-coffee, but OEM partnerships ensure devices like the T14s receive BIOS and firmware updates automagically. Five years from now, you’ll still find support for your ThinkPad.
Ubuntu, though in its interim 25.04 beta here, benefits from easy upgradability and a growing set of certified software repositories for this generation of AMD platforms. While support from hardware vendors is often half a generation behind Windows, Ubuntu’s life cycle and upgrade path are straightforward, and rolling to an LTS (Long Term Support) release is only ever a command away.
Developer Experience: Coding, Containers, and Creativity
For developers, Linux remains the Promised Land—and Ubuntu 25.04 cements that. Containerized development, native access to tools, and package managers are, frankly, a delight. VS Code, Docker, Kubernetes, and hundreds of niche frameworks run natively at full tilt. Plus, with Linux rapidly gaining support for new AMD chipsets, developers working at the cutting edge will feel right at home.Windows 11, meanwhile, has reimagined its developer credentials. The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) gives you the best of both worlds: a full Linux environment alongside your regular Windows tasks. However, for those who spent years wrangling UNIX permissions and makefiles in anger, running “native” never loses its appeal.
Gaming and Multimedia
Modern laptops lead double lives: work during the day and play at night. On this front, Windows 11 continues to rule, buoyed by mature DirectX support and a broader set of game optimizations from both AMD and Microsoft. For gamers, there are simply more titles, smoother experiences, and less troubleshooting.That said, Ubuntu 25.04, with its improved Vulkan support and cutting-edge graphics stack, is narrowing the gap. For open-source native games (or via Steam Proton), performance on the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 is often at or above Windows levels, especially for indie titles or retro emulation. Multimedia tasks—whether playback, editing, or streaming—are now fully viable on both sides.
The Verdict: A CPU for Two Worlds
What’s clear from these benchmarks is that the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 is well-matched by both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.04. Each operating system brings its own strengths and idiosyncrasies to the table.- For enterprises, day-to-day warriors, and creators needing everything to “just work,” Windows 11 on the T14s is near-flawless: performance is robust, battery life is optimized, and feature support is comprehensive.
- For developers, tinkerers, and those who value transparency and flexibility, Ubuntu 25.04 offers a surprisingly competitive—sometimes superior—experience, especially as the Linux desktop reinvents itself yet again.
The real winner? The user. The AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360, sitting inside its ThinkPad shell, barely breaks a sweat no matter which OS you throw its way. This is hybrid computing done right—raw speed, smart power usage, and a growing ecosystem ready for whatever you dream up next.
So whether you’re compiling the next big app in Ubuntu or presenting to a boardroom in Windows, take a moment to thank the engineers who got us here. And maybe, just maybe, give your CPU a break and let it cool off between sprints—it’s earned it.
Source: Phoronix Ubuntu 25.04 vs. Windows 11 CPU Performance For The AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 Review - Phoronix
