> the kernel might still be good but the userland is just awful in every way imaginable The Windows kernel is also falling behind. Linux is considerably faster

> the kernel might still be good but the userland is just awful in every way imaginable The Windows kernel is also falling behind. Linux is considerably faster for a wide variety of workloads, so much so that if you're CPU limited at all, moving from Windows to Linux can net you an improvement similar to moving up a CPU generation.