Liquorix Kernel

My PC is a bit older with an old Nvidia 1070 video card, so these optimized kernels yield results. I was using the Zen Kernel from the Arch repos, but saw a review where the Liquorix Kernel performed a little better, so not wanting to have to compile with the Arch AUR, the coder who also contributes to Zen, has an automated build repo you can add to Arch to install the kernel easily by adding to the /etc/pacman.conf file. And this kernel is even easier to install if you’re on Debian. So below is the blurb from the Arch documentation, and below that is a copy of the main page of the Liquorix Kernel website. And so far it does seem a tad smoother in playing some Silent Depth 2.0: Pacific. And since this is automated, new kernels will probably come in faster than Arch, though I keep the stock kernel and Zen Kernel installed to switch between (you can also install LTS and hardened kernels as well).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unofficial_user_repositories#liquorix
[liquorix]
Server = https://liquorix.net/archlinux/$repo/$arch

https://liquorix.net

Liquorix Kernel

Liquorix is an enthusiast Linux kernel designed for uncompromised responsiveness in interactive systems, enabling low latency compute in A/V production, and reduced frame time deviations in games.

Install

Debian / Ubuntu / Arch: Install Script

curl -s 'https://liquorix.net/install-liquorix.sh' | sudo bash
Major Features
  • Zen Interactive Tuning: Tunes the kernel for responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage. --- Block Layer ---------------------------------------- Default scheduler.........: mq-deadline -> bfq DM-Crypt Workqueues.......: on -> off --- Virtual Memory Subsystem --------------------------- Background-reclaim hugepages...: no -> yes MG-LRU minimum cache TTL.......: 0 -> 1000 ms Compact Unevictable............: 1 -> 0 Proactive Compaction...........: 20 -> 0 --- PDS/BMQ CPU Scheduler ------------------------------ Scheduling timeslice...........: 4 -> 2 ms --- CPUFreq Settings ----------------------------------- Ondemand sampling down factor..: 1 -> 5 Ondemand default up threshold..: 80 -> 55 Ondemand micro up threshold....: 95 -> 60
  • PDS Process Scheduler: Fair process scheduler for gaming, multimedia, and real-time loads.
  • High Resolution Scheduling: 1000hz tick rate for precise low jitter task scheduling.
  • Preemptible tree-based hierarchical RCU: RCU implementation for real-time systems.
  • Hard Kernel Preemption: Most aggressive kernel preemption before requiring real-time patches. Guarantees responsive system under high intensity mixed workload scenarios.
  • Budget Fair Queue: Proper disk scheduler optimized for desktop usage, high throughput / low latency.
  • TCP BBR2 Congestion Control: Fast congestion control, maximizes throughput, guaranteeing higher speeds than Cubic.
  • Compressed Swap: Swap storage is compressed with LZ4 using zswap
  • Multigenerational LRU: Alternative LRU algorithm that performs better under high memory pressure and uptimes
  • Binary Builds For Popular Debian Distros: Binary builds are produced for Debian Stable, Testing, and Unstable. Ubuntu builds are available on the Liquorix PPA same day within hours of Debian releases going up.
  • Distribution Kernel Drop-in Replacement: Proper distribution style configuration supporting broadest selection of hardware. Paravirtualization options enabled to reduce overhead under virtualization.