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 / 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 -> bfq
  DM-Crypt Workqueues.......:          on -> off
  
  --- Virtual Memory Subsystem ---------------------------
  
  Background-reclaim hugepages...:   no   ->   yes
  MG-LRU minimum cache TTL.......:   0    ->   1000 ms
  Compact Unevictable............:   1    ->   0
  Proactive Compaction...........:  20    ->   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
  

• 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.
• Budget Fair Queue: Proper disk scheduler optimized for desktop usage, high throughput / low latency.
• TCP BBR2 Congestion Control: Fast congestion control, maximizes throughput, guaranteeing higher speeds than Cubic.
• Compressed Swap: Swap storage is compressed with LZ4 using zswap
• Multigenerational LRU: Alternative LRU algorithm that performs better under high memory pressure and uptimes
• Binary Builds For Popular Debian 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.
• Distribution Kernel Drop-in Replacement: Proper distribution style configuration supporting broadest selection of hardware. Paravirtualization options enabled to reduce overhead under virtualization.