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 -> kyber (mq) / bfq (sq)

--- Virtual Memory Subsystem ---------------------------

Background-reclaim hugepages...:   no   ->   yes
Compact Unevictable............:   yes  ->   no
Watermark boost factor.........:   1.5  ->   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

--- Split/Bus lock detection ---------------------------

Split Lock Detection...........:   on   ->   off
Split Lock Mitigate............:   1    ->   0
  • 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.
  • Optimized Disk I/O: Uses Kyber for multiqueue devices and BFQ for single queue devices, providing best responsiveness under high IO.
  • TCP BBR2 Congestion Control: Fast congestion control, maximizes throughput, guaranteeing higher speeds than Cubic.
  • 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.