Liquorix Kernel

Liquorix is a distro kernel replacement built using the best configuration and kernel sources for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads.

Major Features

• Zen Interactive Tuning: Tunes the kernel for responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage.

  --- Virtual Memory Subsystem ---------------------------
  
  Mem dirty before bg writeback..:  10 %  ->  20 %
  Mem dirty before sync writeback:  20 %  ->  50 %
  
  --- Block Layer ----------------------------------------
  
  Block Layer Queue Depth........: 128    -> 512
  Default MQ scheduler......: mq-deadline -> bfq
  
  --- CPU Scheduler (CFS) --------------------------------
  
  Scheduling latency.............:   6    ->   3    ms
  Minimal granularity............:   0.75 ->   0.3  ms
  Wakeup granularity.............:   1    ->   0.5  ms
  CPU migration cost.............:   0.5  ->   0.25 ms
  Bandwidth slice size...........:   5    ->   3    ms
  Ondemand fine upscaling limit..:  95 %  ->  85 %
  
  --- CPU Scheduler (MuQSS) ------------------------------
  
  Scheduling interval............:   6    ->   3    ms
  ISO task max realtime use......:  70 %  ->  25 %
  Ondemand coarse upscaling limit:  80 %  ->  45 %
  Ondemand fine upscaling limit..:  95 %  ->  45 %

• MuQSS Process Scheduler: Fair process scheduler for gaming, multimedia, and real-time loads.
• 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 BBR Congestion Control: Fast congestion control, maximizes throughput, guaranteeing higher speeds than Cubic.
• Smaller TX Net Queues: Reduced queue size on network devices to combat buffer bloat.
• Ubuntu ureadahead Support: Compatible with Ubuntu's readahead.
• Binary Compatibility Cross Distro: Compatible with Debian Testing and newer as well as latest Ubuntu. Worst case, a package rebuild will be required on older distributions.
• Distribution Kernel Drop-in Replacement: Proper distribution style configuration supporting broadest selection of hardware. Paravirtualization options enabled to reduce overhead under virtualization.
• Minimal Debugging: Minimum number of debug options enabled to increase kernel throughput.

Install

Debian Prerequisites:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https && echo -e 'deb http://liquorix.net/debian sid main\ndeb-src http://liquorix.net/debian sid main\n\n# Mirrors:\n#\n# Unit193 - France\n# deb http://mirror.unit193.net/liquorix sid main\n# deb-src http://mirror.unit193.net/liquorix sid main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/liquorix.list && curl https://liquorix.net/linux-liquorix.pub | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

Ubuntu Prerequisites:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:damentz/liquorix && sudo apt-get update

The Liquorix kernel can be installed by way of meta-packages. This will guarantee that the latest kernel is installed on every upgrade.

32-bit without PAE (HIGHMEM4G):

sudo apt-get install linux-image-liquorix-686 linux-headers-liquorix-686

32-bit with PAE (HIGHMEM64G):

sudo apt-get install linux-image-liquorix-686-pae linux-headers-liquorix-686-pae

64-bit:

sudo apt-get install linux-image-liquorix-amd64 linux-headers-liquorix-amd64