What kernel do you use?

General system
41

I use the zen (and zen-zfs) kernels for the most part - just in case the reports of slightly better ‘desktop’ general performance asre correct. Can’t really detect the difference myself - and I find all the mainstream kernels I’ve tried to be surprisingly reliable. Not a bad idea to keep an LTS around for fallback, though! :grin:

I suspect it has as much to do with always wanting to have the latest, shiniest toy possible (after years of watching and waiting for kernel updates in Ubuntu) once the basic features for my hardware have been added…

42

That was my pet hate and why I moved to rolling releases. So I guess we all want the latest, shiniest, tweaked-up kernel around, at the expense of some long term stability.

43

The linux-zen kernel changes the default values of the CFS process scheduler (Completly-Fair-Scheduler) so that it is more responsive to foreground / GUI tasks. This can be good in some cases.

The downside of this is that CFS is no longer completely fair. Background tasks are suffering a performance hit from this. Therefore, if you run server proceses in the background tasks (e.g. nextcloud, plex media server, virtual machines, etc.) I would not recommend the zen kernel.

Form my point of view the main advantage of the zen kernel or the xanmod kernel is the patchset they include. E.g. they both make use of the futex patches long before the mainline kernel. Other patches are addressing specific hardware issue for various drivers.

I would look at the patch sets to see if something is in there for you:

linux-zen 5.17

xanmod

The winner for me is xanmod because it provides an LTS kernel and it does not do this CFS tweaking. I actually use xanmod 5.10.31 on my main PC.

2 Likes
44

I’m not an lts kernel user normally. I usually stick with the default kernel although i have also run the zen kernel. I have never ever had to use an lts kernel in order to make something work. I guess i have the right hardware? That’s just been my experience. :man_shrugging:

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45

For me it has to do with ZFS. I can not just jump to the newest kernel version, e.g 5.17, unless it is officially supported by ZFS.

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46

Actually, the zfs compatability finds its way into the newest kernels pretty quickly - I run the latest zen(zfs) quite happily. As mentioned, the CFS tweaks are all good on my desktop systems, and I run the mainline on my mirror server (although LTS would probably make more sense, if it ain’t broke… :grin:)

Now, if only I could get the ZFS-ready repo more quickly - it is on a horrendously slow mirror. I wonder if they want a quicker mirror added? I’ve got the space…

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47

I think you used “xfs” instead of “zfs” in a few places there… :wink:

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48

Slippery fingers! Fixed…

Funny, I noticed one and fixed it originally! Maybe I should look for a new keyboard (it’s too fast for me).

3 Likes
49

Has anyone tried the Clear Linux kernel ?

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-clear
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-clear-bin

50

generally i’m on linux-rt but occasionally i run zen. those are the only kernels i have on both my desktop and laptop. no mainline or lts.

51

and about linux-tkg ?

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52

I also usually install the latest kernel and the LTS kernel for any errors that may occur. This strategy has already worked well for Antergos, so I kept it with EndeavourOS as well.

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53

I use the LTS kernel (5.15 at this time). I had a mainline too some times ago but the 5.16 kernel gave me a lot of boot problems so i revert back to LTS and now i stay with it.

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54

ZEN mainly and LTS when something goes wrong with the ZEN kernel

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55

Using that.