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 / Fedora / 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 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. Fedora builds are produced for all supported and upcoming releases.
  • Distribution Kernel Drop-in Replacement: Proper distribution style configuration supporting broadest selection of hardware. Paravirtualization options enabled to reduce overhead under virtualization.