Genuine question, when people talk about apple silicon being fast, is the comparison to windows intel laptops, or Mac intel architecture?

Because, when running a Linux intel laptop, even with crowd strike and a LOT of corporate ware, there is no slowness.

When blogs talk about "fast" like this I always assumed it was for heavy lifting, such as video editing or AI stuff, not just day to day regular stuff.

I'm confused, is there a speed difference in day to day corporate work between new Macs and new Linux laptops?

Thank you