Curious to know the coolest things you achieved by configuring your kernel. I know kernel config can be boring, but I’m hoping someone will have an impressive answer.
For me I have a very lightweight kernel that runs wayland on nvidia without any issues to date.
I used to manually compile with the Linux-VServer patches, before Debian started shipping a pre-patched kernel.
Linux-VServer was kinda like LXC or OpenVZ. I was using it around 2008 or so as LXC wasn’t quite ready for use in production yet (was still far from finished) and OpenVZ didn’t support Debian hosts.
A wee bit of knowledge and the wisdom to stop doing it.
A kernel that fits my hardware and supports things the original kernel doesn’t. Then again, i use gentoo.
What did the original kernel not support?
I don’t know if this is considered as custom kernel, but I run Guix using non-libre Linux, with Intel Wi-Fi firmware blob. Since it does not have other firmware, it is pretty light, and I’m saving around 200-300MB.
Does that have any appreciable difference in day to day computing?
Compiling kernels makes no sense anymore.
Back in the days - Linux versions 2 and below - the kernel was much less modular, and resources wasn’t as plentiful. So it often made sense to build kernels with the stuff you needed statically compiled for speed, and the rest left out fo save memory and shorten boot time. Not to mention, Lilo (the thing we used before Grub) had limitations with respect to kernel size.
Nowadays, Grub can load a kernel of any size from anywhere on the disk. There’s plenty enough memory and CPU to leave the kernel core slightly bloated with stuff almost nobody needs with zero practical impact on boot time and memory usage, and most everything else is compiled as modules and loaded as needed - again with next to no boot time or running speed impact.
If you custom-build a kernel today, you’ll boot a tiny bit faster and it’ll run a tiny bit faster, and you’ll have a tiny bit more free memory - all of which you will never notice. What you will notice however is that kernel updates are a PITA on a regular basis.
Kernel updates are extremely easy when custom compiling, not sure what you are doing to make them a pain. Custom compiling is a great way to sort of passively absorb knowledge about kernel changes and new features or features you didn’t know about as they change and make oldconfig brings up questions about them.
Not really. I’ve not tweaked anything related to performance - because I’m not even sure how I would go about doing that on Guix. This makes it really easy for me to switch to custom kernels, so that’s just it. Right now, I have the option between default non-free and XanMod. Someone could package Zen or TKG on Nonguix, and that would increase the kernel choices. There’s also this option to switch to an entirely different kernel architecture, like for example, Hurd, but that probably won’t work on metal.
Mostly just understanding what was there, what was necessary for my machine at the time and what was optional.
Back when I was still using Gentoo, configuring your own kernel was a rite of passage. It was kind of fun to try and configure it as minimalist as possible to cut down on the kernel compile time. Also, understanding all the different options and possibilities. And thanks to use flags, you had access to all these different patch sets for the kernel, which took a lot of the pain out of trying things like experimental schedulers or filesystems.
Everybody gangsta until they set their block and filesystem drivers to module.
“Oh, did I need to rebuild the initrd too? Shhheeeeit, can I do that in a chroot from a livedisk or something?”
Knowledge and time forced to not be on the computer
Wow, I never thought of that as a good thing until now. I bet Gentoo users are more well-rounded than Arch users
Well, lots of time to practice sword fighting in office chairs
Or to scroll through XKCD, apparently :P
Better lzma performance with xz. 🤪
Bragging rights.
I’m running a custom kernel on my Arch laptop. It’s a little faster, a little smaller and a little quite more secure. I’m also running custom kernel which enables adiantum encryption on old phone with postmarketOS.
How did you conduct this speed test? Where are the results? 😂
Sorry, I think this any time someone says their computer is faster or mod X on Android is “snappier”
I used geekbench 5. My CPU is AMD Ryzen 5 5500U. I tested a few prebuild kernels and custom compiled the fastest one.
prebuild linux kernel:
- singlethread: 1170
- multithread score: 4604
prebuild linux-zen kernel:
- singlethread: 1156
- multithread score: 4593
prebuild linux-xanmod kernel:
- singlethread: 1164
- multithread score: 4594
prebuild linux-hardened kernel:
- singlethread: 1156
- multithread score: 4841
custom linux-hardened kernel:
- singlethread: 1160
- multithread score: 4977
The secureblue image I use disables numerous kernel modules, hopefully that means a more secure system? I honestly don’t know, nor do I change the default recommended by the developer.
A gentoo install once upon a time… and learning how to configure a kernel. Also a slightly better understanding of kernel module configuration for custom or odd ball hardware and a vague idea of what to look for in hardware support if I want to dig deeper.
Not for myself but a client who was running a game server. He wanted to tweak the number of ticks/second that the kernel interacted with CPU. Didn’t even know that this was a parameter and after a few attempts, according to him, never went on that server myself, made a huge difference and he claimed having grabbed a good part of the market because of that.
After that familiarized myself more with the stuff in there. But that was a good while ago, before most of you guys were born.
I run linux-xanmod-anbox for root support in Waydroid (Android on Linux).
And I configured my kernel to support VFIO (Virtual Function Input Output).
So I can fully pass through one of my GPUs to my Ameliorated Windows KVM,
which I use for both work and gaming.Hows the perf in the VM?
Amazing, basically native speeds,
currently playing Horizon Forbidden West with maxed out graphics and DRS disabled at a steady 60-80 FPS.Previously I also played Horizon Zero Dawn in it, also maxed out graphics, steady locked 100 FPS,
below is a benchmark comparison of HZD in the Linux host OS and the Windows KVM guest OS:
Has this gotten any easier to do? I set it up a few years ago, it was painful to do and maintain so I let it slide. You were writing all sorts of scripts to specify the passthrough devices and then they’d stop working so you had to track down what was failing and update. Then there was iommu so you had to be careful which groups you added devices to.
Gotta admit, it was very hard to setup initially.
However it’s been working perfectly ever since I did.
Been using it for about a year or 2 now.Also when I linked the Arch wiki,
I noticed in it’s article that there’s now a gpu-passthrough-manager,
which will likely make the process of setting up a little bit easier.
Amazing. Does Photoshop work ?
Yush, it does under the KVM :)
Is there an easy way to run this for photoshop? GUI if possible
Root Waydroid lol, thats basically hell.
Waydroid without SELinux already removes all the Android sandboxing. Now its rooted!
Root on Android is a necessity for me.
I’ve been rooting all droids I use for the past 10 years or so.Imagine using Linux as a power user,
without being able to use sudo/su.Also, Magisk does not just allow any application to access root, you have to manually allow apps to make use of it.
Just like administrator rights on any other OS,
things only go wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing, and then grant rights to something malicious.Yes but Waydroid is not an Android phone. Have a look at this
https://github.com/waydroid/waydroid/issues/1136#issuecomment-2016948867
Just download the devel kernel from your distro and go into
make menuconfig. I am on an Intel Laptop with recent hardware. No reason to use amd, nvidia etc drivers. And there is a shitload of likely unmaintained drivers for ancient hardware.
