Your experiences with different kernels and gaming on Linux

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
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Just as an intro, I have used Linux for a long time now but I’ve never gotten my head around optimized kernels with specific patches and gaming distributions with specific patches applied to mesa, wine or other patches applied to improve gaming performance. So that’s why I am starting this topic learn something from other people’s experiences when it comes to gaming and Linux.

In the past I have used kernels such as the Nobara and Zen kernels and I have found that I didn’t experience any performance boosts as people say they do. Yesterday I decided I would try a benchmark with 2 games and 4 different kernels. The two games being Cyberpunk 2077 and Borderlands 3, why those because those seem to take quite a bit of power out of my system. The kernels I used this time were linux, linux-lts, linux-zen and cachyos-linux.

I actually have never done bench marking so keep in mind this was just a for fun test, the end result was that all games had the same average fps on all kernels and I didn’t notice a different which is the same as I had concluded a few years ago. Now I know there is more to performance than that than just fps. Like the hardware you use, game configuration settings and games running through Proton or Wine vs Native, wine and proton versions, the games you play, drivers, etc. Now about game optimization, I just normally select high or ultra when it comes to graphical settings and usually don’t change any other settings with an exception here and there.

Now I would like to know why you see in a lot of places like Reddit, here and other forums, that optimized kernels give a performance boot for them and that they feel their system runs smoother. I find that if something feels smoother that it’s not actually proof for anyone and can also be a trick of the mind in my opinion. Also it would be interesting to know how do you do your benchmark testing to see if your system really runs better as well as your games, because I wouldn’t know what to test for other than frame rates(fps) and screen response(ms).

Now I would find it interesting if people here shared their experiences when it comes to gaming and running customized kernels like linux-zen, cachyos-linux, nobara-linux, Liquorix, etc. Also it would be interesting to know if you applied any other customization/optimization with your gaming setup and could you please share those so I and others can try those out?

And if anyone here is running CachyOS or Nobara as their gaming system do you really notice that your games run better and smoother with the advertised performance boost you get from the distribution being focused on gaming compared to when you run your games on Arch Linux or EndeavourOS?

I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s experiences and responses to this.

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You are probably so GPU bound in this case that the kernel is less impactful.

That being said, as it relates to gaming, I have never noticed any anecdotal difference between kernels but I haven’t done any benchmarks.

The problem with considering this problem generally, is that it will differ from person to person.

  • We all have different workloads
  • We have different hardware
  • We are bothered by different things

My advice is to see what you prefer and to not worry about people on reddit think.

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I forgot about that if. I am understanding you correctly you are saying that since most games now days tend to use the GPU more than the CPU so that your GPU gets most of the load and that your CPU isn’t impacted as much with load. and that for that reason the kernel isn’t impacted as much but just the GPU and the drivers used by the gpu. Am I understanding that correctly?

Thanks good advice! I am a curious person though so when reading a lot about other people’s experience with customized kernels and gaming distributions with specific patches applied it makes me curious and want to understand how a person can really notice a difference and if can actually be proven.

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It really depends on the game in question but if you are pushing the visual settings to high and ultra, you will usually be heavily GPU bound unless there is a big mismatch in performance between your GPU and CPU or the game has some CPU optimization issues.

In a game like cyberpunk, it would be interesting to see if there was any difference in results if you pushed the graphical preset to the lowest value.

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I’ll try it sometime, but when I do I’ll just do it with the kernels from the repos since it took like half an hour for cachyos-linux to compile from the AUR. Thanks for your input on this topic! :slight_smile:

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Just as an FYI, if you are just doing a one-time test and don’t care if the kernels stay updated, you can install them directly from the cachyos repo with pacman -U

7

I forgot about that, thanks for reminding me!

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