For those on an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 “Lunar Lake” system, the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel is looking to be in better shape for those newest Intel SoCs. In testing carried out using a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura edition laptop, there are performance gains in some areas with the Linux 6.16 development kernel.
Recently I carried out some Linux 6.16 Git benchmarks compared to Linux 6.15 stable on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition laptop with the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V SoC. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon was running Ubuntu 25.04 and the Linux kernel builds were obtained from the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA for easy reproducibility.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 21NS0014US with the Core Ultra 7 258V had 32GB of memory, Intel Xe2 Graphics, 512GB Samsung NVMe SSD, and a 2880 x 1800 panel. This laptop continues working well overall under Linux and now for Linux 6.16 there are some performance improvements on the horizon along with the many other new features coming with Linux 6.16.
