Fedora Workstation 44 showed a performance regression on the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 'Panther Lake', traced to a bug in the Intel P-State kernel driver's handling of the 'performance' governor mode when using Tuned-PPD instead of Power Profiles Daemon. Intel engineers already fixed this in a July patch merged into the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle, which is being backported to stable branches and to Fedora 44 via a tracked merge request. Fedora Rawhide is no longer affected, though a Red Hat engineer investigating the bug later reported being unable to reproduce it on a different laptop, leaving the fix's scope slightly uncertain.
Questions this post answers
Why is Fedora 44 slower than other distros on the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro with Panther Lake?
Fedora 44 defaults to Tuned-PPD instead of Power Profiles Daemon, and a bug in the Intel P-State kernel driver mishandles the case where Tuned-PPD sets the governor to performance mode, unlike how Power Profiles Daemon sets it, causing a performance regression on Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake laptops. Track kernel regressions like this Intel P-State bug on daily.dev before they hit your laptop setup.
Has the Intel P-State performance governor bug affecting Fedora been fixed in the Linux kernel?
Yes, Intel engineers fixed it with the patch intel_pstate: Adjust policy->cur in active mode to policy, merged into the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle power management material and being backported to stable kernel branches. Fedora is also backporting the fix to Fedora 44 through a tracked merge request, and Fedora Rawhide is no longer affected. Developers debugging kernel-level performance issues can follow fixes like this on daily.dev.