Questions about installing the zen kernel on EOS

[Sermor]

@BluishHumility

@Sermor

Did you have any problems after installing it, did you have to fix anything?

I have used the Zen kernel off and on for a few years with EOS, Arch, and Garuda Linux and have never had a kernel-related issue that wasn’t also present in the mainline kernel.

Then again, I don’t typically notice whatever optimizations each specific kernel supposedly provides either. Probably you can see some different performance with benchmarking or if you have a specific use case that a given optimization is intended for, but for my day to day use they all seem to be pretty much the same.

The zen kernel should run well for gaming, although from what I’ve seen on Eos the default kernel works better. And by the way, playing on EOS (with the default kernel, the same as Arch) is better than on Arch, from the little experiment I did:

Just for Fun: Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider Benchmarks on Windows 11, Arch Linux, EndevourOS, and Manjaro

I tried testing two kernels on EOS. The zen kernel, where compared to the default gaming there was no increase in performance, and the liquorix which instead was unstable enough to not be able to play the games that I could play with the zen kernel or by default. Then I reinstalled everything, since I didn’t have anything important on the PC.

@BluishHumility

@Sermor

I saw that there are two methods: install only the linux-zen package or install both linux-zen and the linux-zen-headers package.

• What is the correct procedure?

If you have or are ever going to use DKMS packages you should install the headers as well. If you aren’t sure, I would recommend just installing them along with the kernel.

sudo pacman -S linux-zen linux-zen-headers

These days, I tend to seek out a kernel where all my stuff works normally and then just leave it alone unless something breaks.

Thanks!