A Phoronix report published November 5, 2026, found two different results in clean Linux kernel builds: on a Framework Laptop 13 Pro with an Intel Core Ultra X9 388H Panther Lake SoC, Linux 7.4-rc1 was about 5% faster than Linux 7.3 for x86_64 defconfig, while allmodconfig was slightly slower.
| Build configuration | Linux 7.4-rc1 compared with Linux 7.3 | Build type |
x86_64 defconfig | About 5% faster | Clean build |
allmodconfig | Slightly slower | Clean build |
What the comparison covered
Both results came from clean builds on the same Framework Laptop 13 Pro. allmodconfig builds all kernel modules; the report compared that configuration with x86_64 defconfig against the same Linux 7.3 baseline.
The comparison concerns clean builds, not incremental builds or no-op builds. Its results are tied to those configurations and that test machine. They do not describe every Linux 7.4 build workload.
NeoTeo’s earlier Panther Lake performance report covered Linux 7.3 across other workloads on a Framework Laptop 13 Pro. This comparison focuses on kernel build times.
Earlier percentages measured different build stages
A separate earlier Phoronix patch-series graphic labeled a 36% gain for allmodconfig, about 70% for incremental builds, and about 90% for no-op builds. Those figures belong to a different patch-series context and build stages; they are distinct from the later clean-build comparison, which found a small defconfig improvement and a slight allmodconfig slowdown.
When comparing kernel build results, check the configuration and build stage alongside the percentage.
Source growth adds context to the slower result
Phoronix reported roughly 500,000 additional lines in the Linux 7.4 source tree and noted that not all of them are relevant to x86_64. That growth and the added drivers are context for the allmodconfig result, since the configuration builds all kernel modules.
