Compared to which software? Ableton? Reaper?
Did you use RT kernel? JACK or ALSA? Pipewire?
DE will also affect performance.
Compared to Bitwig, since that's what I use on both Macs and Windows PCs. Distro was Ubuntu Studio, which is tooted as an OS "configured for best performance for various purposes: Audio, Graphics, Video, Photography and Publishing", and comes with Jack.
That's kind of surprising? Any idea what might have caused that?
Not really sure... drivers maybe, or sound server ? When it's time to make music I don't want to waste time troubleshooting things so after a few attempts at fixing this I just got back to Windows.