You can't have windows laptop without running a ton of Antivirus and other crapware .e.g MS store, HP/Dell diagnostics and MS Teams. If you factor that in, Linux will win everytime.
Not the case unfortunately; you can. I'm not defending Windows here (bitter hatred of Microsoft here, since they started charging 2k for the compilation tools back in the 90s).
In your particular corporate environment that might be the case, but not in this case, I had free run of a fresh install and no offensive AV there, and detuned to remove the crap.
Other posters have said certain optimizations (which I'm not sure would help, it was pure compilation, no large files that I'm aware of). Just saying, always good to keep an open mind.
I believe you can lock a Linux box down tighter than a windows box, but then you're trading compile times for other costs.