7 ms·

Liquorix Kernel

67 points by cglong 5y ago

marcodiego 5y ago
I miss benchmarks.
- cglong 5y ago
  Someone found some when this was previously posted: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-gaming-liquorix54&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-g...
  - sedatk 5y ago
    So, mostly slower than stock Linux 5.4.6? That's quite disappointing.
    - damentz 5y ago
      For the most part, Liquorix should always lose on throughput benchmarks. Most of Phoronix's benchmarks focus on those. You can check the comments regarding a discovery that certain sched_yield configurations destroy performance on out-of-tree schedulers and was amended post benchmarking. This however was using MuQSS, which was notorious for poor single thread performance. Liquorix now uses PDS which attempts to use all physical cores before deferring to SMT threads. This completely changes performance for lightly threaded workloads. There's been no news-worthy benchmarks since Liquorix switched from MuQSS to PDS.
      - mise_en_place 5y ago
        Anecdotal, but I noticed a lot better browser performance when switching to no I/O scheduler, "none". I also noticed that Linux wasn't trying to use most of my RAM for buff/cache.
    - spicybright 5y ago
      Which is really weird. All the speedups they list seem like it would run faster in general. Maybe the extra responsiveness under heavy loads is slowing it down?
      - retrac 5y ago
        > Maybe the extra responsiveness under heavy loads is slowing it down? Probably. It's a basic tradeoff in multitasking. A process can be left in cache and run for hundreds of milliseconds at high efficiency. Or the kernel can constantly juggle contexts in and out quickly, wasting cycles to reduce the delay between time slices and (potentially) allow fast response.
        sedatk 5y ago
        I don't understand how anything other than FPS matters in a gaming oriented distro. Does that mean less input lag?
        retrac 5y ago
        Yes, exactly. Let's imagine you were running two processes on one core, a server and a video game. The way to achieve the highest /average/ frame rate regardless of latency would be to pause the game for a good second, run the server, pause the server, run the game for a second, and repeat. This has much lower overhead than swapping between them perhaps 100 times a second. Except it's super laggy. Swap them out 100 times a second and the process only has to wait maybe 10 ms until it next executes and appears much less laggy, but total throughput decreases.
      - treffer 5y ago
        > Maybe the extra responsiveness under heavy loads is slowing it down? Yes! Extra responsiveness is done by switching more often between tasks. This is not free, so throughput suffers. The linux kernel lists that as the downside of e.g. 1000Hz ticks (something the Liquorix kernel enables).
mediocregopher 5y ago
If anyone has tried this on arch I'd love to hear your experience... I've got a home server sitting in my living room that looks bored.
- tsfranke 5y ago
  Been using lqx kernels for many years now. On arch, I definitely get better gaming performance than the stock kernel. The liquorix repo's arch kernel doesn't play well with libvirt - that's about my only gripe. Xanmod kernel seems to have all the gaming improvements and still plays nice with libvirt though.
  - netr0ute 5y ago
    Is there any meaningful difference between the two, other than the libvirt compat?
- oskenso 5y ago
  I run his kernel on my daily workstation at my day job :3 its stable and fantastic. (Also run zen on my main gaming rig, another fantastic kernel)
  - nix23 5y ago
    Zen and Liquorix is the same, Liquorix is the "product" Zen is the tuning method: >Zen Interactive Tuning: Tunes the kernel for responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage. https://liquorix.net/#features https://liquorix.net/#features >Zen Kernel — Result of a collaborative effort of kernel hackers to provide the best Linux kernel possible for everyday systems. Some more details can be found on https://liquorix.net https://liquorix.net (which provides kernel binaries based on Zen for Debian). https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel
- nix23 5y ago
  Be aware it's normally slower for server-workloads, but more responsive for Desktop-Stuff (Tunes the kernel for responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage), but on arch you can install it directly from the official sources (called zen-kernel there): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel
josephcsible 5y ago
> Liquorix is a distro kernel replacement built using the best configuration and kernel sources for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads. Hearing "the best" there really bugs me for some reason.
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  Why? It's well scoped: "the best ... for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads". The Linux kernel is buit for all sorts of devices, including embedded, servers, desktops, phones, etc - it's not hard to imagine the default settings being not perfectly optimized for a specific usecase (that said, I have not tried the lqx kernel or looked at benchmarks, but the claim doesn't seem outrageous).
  - sedatk 5y ago
    I think "optimized for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads" would convey the message better.
    - schoen 5y ago
      Amusingly, "optimized" originally means "made best". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/optimus#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/optimus#Latin (But I guess "best" can have a connotation of marketing-speak, while "optimized" can have a connotation of engineering-speak.)
      - sedatk 5y ago
        On a parallel note, "optimized" translates to "made best" in Turkish.
        schoen 5y ago
        There are lots of these with many modern languages, where someone who was familiar with both a foreign language (often a classical or scholarly language) and a local language consciously adapted the vocabulary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque It's always fun and satisfying for me to happen upon these. :-)
smackeyacky 5y ago
I've been using this on Debian 11 on an HP ML330 G6. It has dual xeons. The main reason is that there is a bug in the normal Debian kernel that prevents that specific machine from booting with a kernel panic. The bug seems to be fixed in later kernel versions, hence Liquorix. That machine also boots fine from a debian 10 kernel which is how I was able to install liquorix after the debian 11 upgrade went sideways.
- pabs3 5y ago
  There are newer Linux kernel versions in Debian bullseye-backports btw. Also, if you know which patch fixes the panic, you might want to get it into the Linux kernel LTS releases, which end up in Debian stable after a month or two. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel-rules.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel...
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    I should try to narrow it down but will have to set aside some time to try a few kernels and see which patch it was, which is hard when I'm using it.
    - pabs3 5y ago
      Here are the Debian Linux kernel bisect instructions if you haven't done one of those before: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianKernel/GitBisect https://wiki.debian.org/DebianKernel/GitBisect Tip from it: use the Debian wayback machine to do the first narrowing down: https://snapshot.debian.org/package/linux/ https://snapshot.debian.org/package/linux/
      - smackeyacky 5y ago
        Awesome thanks!
taviso 5y ago
Makes me think of WOLK, a popular kernel patchset back in the early 2000s. It didn't feel like a real kernel release until the WOLK patch was ready.
viraptor 5y ago
A similar project I've been using for working with DAWs (audio recording / real-time effects) is https://xanmod.org/ https://xanmod.org/ Not sure how it compares to liquorix, but xanmod allowed me to go from 60ms+ to <10ms in pipewire latency.
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  I can confirm that running my Ubuntu 20.04 on a xanmod kernel improved my FPS in Cyberpunk from around 40 to 65-70. And because it's only a kernel, this is the simplest and quickest way to improve your gaming experience. Definitely recommend xanmod.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  What is your hardware if I may ask ? 60ms is outrageous - I run the stock kernel and have had no issues with fairly small buffer sized, e.g. 32/48/64 frames (around 1 millisecond) in jack settings
  - alar44 5y ago
    I'd bet money they haven't played with their buffer size, because you're right, 60ms is basically unusable unless you're just mixing. I had a PC 15 years ago with a PCI Layla 8 channel input that got better latency than 60ms.
    - jcelerier 5y ago
      > I had a PC 15 years ago with a PCI Layla 8 channel input aha the first soundcard I bought was an ESP 1010... brings back good memories ! it was running on and it was also able to go quite below 60 ms too, I did not have too many issues playing live with guitar amp sims with it, between 8 and 10ms of latency IIRC ? on an athlon xp 3000 or 3200+...
  - viraptor 5y ago
    iRig2. It was some time ago, so I can't give you all details for comparison, but I'm pretty sure that was pre-buffer-tweaking. However making the buffer smaller improved both sides so xanmod was still winning. (With the same small buffer xanmod was perfect but stock started getting xruns)
pabs3 5y ago
I wonder if anyone is working on getting these patches into mainline Linux, even as a build config option.
gigatexal 5y ago
This might be a noob question but does this rebuild the zfs kernel modules as well for those of us using it on LTS? Can we use this on teh LTS version?
- gigatexal 5y ago
  Just installed this going to reboot and see if the nvidia gpu and stuff works. The zfs module built just fine. update: gpu works fine, zfs is not working -- looked like the kernel module was built but I must have been mistaken. update2: install deps then sudo make clean && ./configure && make && make deb-dkms && sudo dpkg -i ... and then import pools as needed
_8j50 5y ago
Very cool. But that curl|bash still makes me clench my butt.

Liquorix Kernel

67 points by cglong 5y ago

marcodiego 5y ago

I miss benchmarks.

cglong 5y ago
Someone found some when this was previously posted: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-gaming-liquorix54&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-g...
- sedatk 5y ago
  So, mostly slower than stock Linux 5.4.6? That's quite disappointing.
  - damentz 5y ago
    For the most part, Liquorix should always lose on throughput benchmarks. Most of Phoronix's benchmarks focus on those. You can check the comments regarding a discovery that certain sched_yield configurations destroy performance on out-of-tree schedulers and was amended post benchmarking. This however was using MuQSS, which was notorious for poor single thread performance. Liquorix now uses PDS which attempts to use all physical cores before deferring to SMT threads. This completely changes performance for lightly threaded workloads. There's been no news-worthy benchmarks since Liquorix switched from MuQSS to PDS.
    - mise_en_place 5y ago
      Anecdotal, but I noticed a lot better browser performance when switching to no I/O scheduler, "none". I also noticed that Linux wasn't trying to use most of my RAM for buff/cache.
  - spicybright 5y ago
    Which is really weird. All the speedups they list seem like it would run faster in general. Maybe the extra responsiveness under heavy loads is slowing it down?
    - retrac 5y ago
      > Maybe the extra responsiveness under heavy loads is slowing it down? Probably. It's a basic tradeoff in multitasking. A process can be left in cache and run for hundreds of milliseconds at high efficiency. Or the kernel can constantly juggle contexts in and out quickly, wasting cycles to reduce the delay between time slices and (potentially) allow fast response.
      - sedatk 5y ago
        I don't understand how anything other than FPS matters in a gaming oriented distro. Does that mean less input lag?
        retrac 5y ago
        Yes, exactly. Let's imagine you were running two processes on one core, a server and a video game. The way to achieve the highest /average/ frame rate regardless of latency would be to pause the game for a good second, run the server, pause the server, run the game for a second, and repeat. This has much lower overhead than swapping between them perhaps 100 times a second. Except it's super laggy. Swap them out 100 times a second and the process only has to wait maybe 10 ms until it next executes and appears much less laggy, but total throughput decreases.
    - treffer 5y ago
      > Maybe the extra responsiveness under heavy loads is slowing it down? Yes! Extra responsiveness is done by switching more often between tasks. This is not free, so throughput suffers. The linux kernel lists that as the downside of e.g. 1000Hz ticks (something the Liquorix kernel enables).

mediocregopher 5y ago

If anyone has tried this on arch I'd love to hear your experience... I've got a home server sitting in my living room that looks bored.

tsfranke 5y ago
Been using lqx kernels for many years now. On arch, I definitely get better gaming performance than the stock kernel. The liquorix repo's arch kernel doesn't play well with libvirt - that's about my only gripe. Xanmod kernel seems to have all the gaming improvements and still plays nice with libvirt though.
- netr0ute 5y ago
  Is there any meaningful difference between the two, other than the libvirt compat?
oskenso 5y ago
I run his kernel on my daily workstation at my day job :3 its stable and fantastic. (Also run zen on my main gaming rig, another fantastic kernel)
- nix23 5y ago
  Zen and Liquorix is the same, Liquorix is the "product" Zen is the tuning method: >Zen Interactive Tuning: Tunes the kernel for responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage. https://liquorix.net/#features https://liquorix.net/#features >Zen Kernel — Result of a collaborative effort of kernel hackers to provide the best Linux kernel possible for everyday systems. Some more details can be found on https://liquorix.net https://liquorix.net (which provides kernel binaries based on Zen for Debian). https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel
nix23 5y ago
Be aware it's normally slower for server-workloads, but more responsive for Desktop-Stuff (Tunes the kernel for responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage), but on arch you can install it directly from the official sources (called zen-kernel there): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel

josephcsible 5y ago

> Liquorix is a distro kernel replacement built using the best configuration and kernel sources for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads. Hearing "the best" there really bugs me for some reason.

cmeacham98 5y ago
Why? It's well scoped: "the best ... for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads". The Linux kernel is buit for all sorts of devices, including embedded, servers, desktops, phones, etc - it's not hard to imagine the default settings being not perfectly optimized for a specific usecase (that said, I have not tried the lqx kernel or looked at benchmarks, but the claim doesn't seem outrageous).
- sedatk 5y ago
  I think "optimized for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads" would convey the message better.
  - schoen 5y ago
    Amusingly, "optimized" originally means "made best". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/optimus#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/optimus#Latin (But I guess "best" can have a connotation of marketing-speak, while "optimized" can have a connotation of engineering-speak.)
    - sedatk 5y ago
      On a parallel note, "optimized" translates to "made best" in Turkish.
      - schoen 5y ago
        There are lots of these with many modern languages, where someone who was familiar with both a foreign language (often a classical or scholarly language) and a local language consciously adapted the vocabulary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque It's always fun and satisfying for me to happen upon these. :-)

smackeyacky 5y ago

I've been using this on Debian 11 on an HP ML330 G6. It has dual xeons. The main reason is that there is a bug in the normal Debian kernel that prevents that specific machine from booting with a kernel panic. The bug seems to be fixed in later kernel versions, hence Liquorix. That machine also boots fine from a debian 10 kernel which is how I was able to install liquorix after the debian 11 upgrade went sideways.

pabs3 5y ago
There are newer Linux kernel versions in Debian bullseye-backports btw. Also, if you know which patch fixes the panic, you might want to get it into the Linux kernel LTS releases, which end up in Debian stable after a month or two. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel-rules.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel...
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  I should try to narrow it down but will have to set aside some time to try a few kernels and see which patch it was, which is hard when I'm using it.
  - pabs3 5y ago
    Here are the Debian Linux kernel bisect instructions if you haven't done one of those before: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianKernel/GitBisect https://wiki.debian.org/DebianKernel/GitBisect Tip from it: use the Debian wayback machine to do the first narrowing down: https://snapshot.debian.org/package/linux/ https://snapshot.debian.org/package/linux/
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      Awesome thanks!

taviso 5y ago

Makes me think of WOLK, a popular kernel patchset back in the early 2000s. It didn't feel like a real kernel release until the WOLK patch was ready.

viraptor 5y ago

A similar project I've been using for working with DAWs (audio recording / real-time effects) is https://xanmod.org/ https://xanmod.org/ Not sure how it compares to liquorix, but xanmod allowed me to go from 60ms+ to <10ms in pipewire latency.

bitcharmer 5y ago
I can confirm that running my Ubuntu 20.04 on a xanmod kernel improved my FPS in Cyberpunk from around 40 to 65-70. And because it's only a kernel, this is the simplest and quickest way to improve your gaming experience. Definitely recommend xanmod.
jcelerier 5y ago
What is your hardware if I may ask ? 60ms is outrageous - I run the stock kernel and have had no issues with fairly small buffer sized, e.g. 32/48/64 frames (around 1 millisecond) in jack settings
- alar44 5y ago
  I'd bet money they haven't played with their buffer size, because you're right, 60ms is basically unusable unless you're just mixing. I had a PC 15 years ago with a PCI Layla 8 channel input that got better latency than 60ms.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > I had a PC 15 years ago with a PCI Layla 8 channel input aha the first soundcard I bought was an ESP 1010... brings back good memories ! it was running on and it was also able to go quite below 60 ms too, I did not have too many issues playing live with guitar amp sims with it, between 8 and 10ms of latency IIRC ? on an athlon xp 3000 or 3200+...
- viraptor 5y ago
  iRig2. It was some time ago, so I can't give you all details for comparison, but I'm pretty sure that was pre-buffer-tweaking. However making the buffer smaller improved both sides so xanmod was still winning. (With the same small buffer xanmod was perfect but stock started getting xruns)

pabs3 5y ago

I wonder if anyone is working on getting these patches into mainline Linux, even as a build config option.

gigatexal 5y ago

This might be a noob question but does this rebuild the zfs kernel modules as well for those of us using it on LTS? Can we use this on teh LTS version?

gigatexal 5y ago
Just installed this going to reboot and see if the nvidia gpu and stuff works. The zfs module built just fine. update: gpu works fine, zfs is not working -- looked like the kernel module was built but I must have been mistaken. update2: install deps then sudo make clean && ./configure && make && make deb-dkms && sudo dpkg -i ... and then import pools as needed

_8j50 5y ago

Very cool. But that curl|bash still makes me clench my butt.