For those that may be upgrading to the new Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 series “Strix Point” SoCs and curious about hitting the best possible Linux performance, this article is for you. Here is a look at the performance of the Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 across CachyOS, Clear Linux, Debian, Fedora Workstation 42, Manjaro Linux 25.0, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and Ubuntu 25.04.
As part of my Framework Laptop 13 testing with the AMD Strix Point upgrade, I was testing out these very latest Linux distributions to verify their functionality on this popular modular laptop and along with that decided to run benchmarks of these different Linux distributions. All of the testing occurred on the same Framework Laptop 13 with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Zen 5 + RDNA 3.5 SoC, 2 x 16GB DDR5-5600 memory, and 1TB WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD.
The Linux distribution releases tested were:
– CachyOS Rolling
– Clear Linux 43280
– Debian 13 Testing
– Fedora Workstation 42
– Manjaro Linux 25.0
– openSUSE Tumbleweed
– Ubuntu 25.04
Again, the same laptop was used for all tests and each OS tested at the defaults. Any hardware differences indicated on the system table just amount to the Linux kernel version in use and how the different information is reported, such as whether the base or boost frequency are reported and the integrated graphics model.
In addition to looking at the raw performance, the CPU power consumption was also monitored in looking at the power efficiency among these 2025 Linux distribution releases.
This was a straight-forward comparison with testing each Linux distribution following a clean install and testing in the out-of-the-box condition. All of these Linux distributions were running well on the new Framework Laptop 13 while let’s continue and see how the performance differences compare among these distributions.
