XanMod, Liquorix Kernels Offer Some Advantages On AMD Ryzen 5 Notebook

[perpetually high]

perpetually high nice work! My PC is already compiling - but Im not sure If i can check it out today completelly.

How about opening a tuning corner somewhere in a forum corner?

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/1269922-linux-kernel-tuning-corner

Havent got mine ready..quite busy this days.

Thank you sir, yes let's update that thread as time goes on. Good idea

[perpetually high]

Michael can you approve my kernel build post. Got unapproved after a couple edits. Anyway to get that feature to stop for Premium members??

[CochainComplex]

perpetually high strange it was at least one time visible/respectively approved

[lyamc]

I tried Liquorix and Xanmod’s kernels on a 4000 series Ryzen laptop. Liquorix took some big hits to input delay which Xanmod didn’t, so I stuck with Xanmod

[perpetually high]

perpetually high strange it was at least one time visible/respectively approved

I added a bunch of pastebins and an imgur link and it must have tripped up the system. Going to be home soon and will repost it if Michael isn’t back by then

edit: thanks Michael

edit 2: added a gif of traversing through the main parts of the config: https://imgur.com/a/xGQysAu

Didn't want to risk getting that last post flagged by the system. Definitely go through all the options, flip back on the ones I turned off that pissed you off. Do all of it. Grab a cup of coffee, and go

edit 3: there was a setting in the config (CONFIG_NR_CPUS) that i had set to 4 because I'm a quad-core, but I updated the option now to 512, which is what Ubuntu defaults to. I also have the ubuntu defaults there if you need to refer to them. I've updated the github repo with that change and don't plan on touching it for a little bit to let it marinate. Everything else should be good, but you're encouraged to go through the config as well, but the default "perpetually high" default should be okay, too. Salute.

[CochainComplex]

I added a bunch of pastebins and an imgur link and it must have tripped up the system. Going to be home soon and will repost it if Michael isn’t back by then

edit: thanks Michael

edit 2: added a gif of traversing through the main parts of the config: https://imgur.com/a/xGQysAu

Didn't want to risk getting that last post flagged by the system. Definitely go through all the options, flip back on the ones I turned off that pissed you off. Do all of it. Grab a cup of coffee, and go

edit 3: there was a setting in the config (CONFIG_NR_CPUS) that i had set to 4 because I'm a quad-core, but I updated the option now to 512, which is what Ubuntu defaults to. I also have the ubuntu defaults there if you need to refer to them. I've updated the github repo with that change and don't plan on touching it for a little bit to let it marinate. Everything else should be good, but you're encouraged to go through the config as well, but the default "perpetually high" default should be okay, too. Salute.

I ran yesterday in a compilation error related to some AMD header file. But tbh due to lack of time i was not investigating it throughly. I will do it next days. Thx for adding additional infos by using gifs. Btw if you havent seen it yet you can also switch on O3 ...just search for O3 in menuconfig.

[perpetually high]

I ran yesterday in a compilation error related to some AMD header file. But tbh due to lack of time i was not investigating it throughly. I will do it next days. Thx for adding additional infos by using gifs. Btw if you havent seen it yet you can also switch on O3 ...just search for O3 in menuconfig.

Appreciate the feedback, let me know what that error is when you get a chance

And yeah I'm back to the O3 as a couple of weeks also. Lucjan has a patch that makes O3 a little more sensible:

KBUILD_CFLAGS += -O3
+KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-option, -fno-tree-loop-vectorize)

Otherwise, I'd probably stick to O2 to be honest.

[ms178]

Did you by any chance do a breakdown of where the bulk of the perf improvement was coming from? Or if it were bits here and there?

It is mostly the Kernel and my compilation flags, as I have seen this improvement also on mainline Kernels, not just Xanmod. There is a chance that my custom Kernel configuration unlocks some of that performance as I also tune my config for my specific hardware and also disable some Spectre/Meltdown and other security related options. Compiling Mesa with aggressive compiler flags only yielded tiny improvements in comparison (at most 2 - 3 fps) but improved the smoothness a bit.

[perpetually high]

Y'all I just pushed some updates to the Ubuntu build script in the post above. I was mistaken about CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR having to be /lib/firmware/ (with a trailing slash). It didn't matter. When you set just CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE, it automatically sets it to /lib/firmware so I removed that unnecessary line from the script, and all is just as well.

Also, I won't edit that original post since it will likely keep tripping up the system.

In case you already cloned it, start fresh this one time if you can. Remove ~/kernel_main and start a new fresh git clone, and then ./build_kernel.sh of your choice (fyi I'm on Haswel//RX480 and I use the following):

5.4 LTS

AMDGPU_BUILTIN=yes VBOX_SUPPORT=yes KERNEL_TYPE=full ./build_kernel.sh

which gives CacULE scheduler, full tickless, 500 hz, PREEMPT Low-Latency Desktop. Those together work very well.

If you don't want full tickless kernel, or don't plan on using CacULE, the standard idle tickless with CFS, 1000 hz, and PREEMPT Low-Latency Desktop work well also. If you're on a laptop, maybe drop down the tick to 500 Hz for a sweet spot.

So to recap, I did a fresh clone of the repo, ran the above, and booted into this kernel and typing on it as we speak.

Should look like this at the end for 5.4:

....
....
*** Compiled kernel directory doesn't exist, creating... ✓
mkdir: created directory '/home/arvin/kernel_main/compiled'
renamed '5.4.136-0504136+custom-full-1627624873' -> '/home/arvin/kernel_main/compiled/5.4.136-0504136+custom-full-1627624873'
*** Enabling VirtualBox support for 5.4 kernel... ✓
'/home/arvin/kernel_main/patches/custom-patches/virtualbox-5.4-support/module.lds' -> '/usr/src/linux-headers-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic/scripts/module.lds'
vboxdrv.sh: Stopping VirtualBox services.
vboxdrv.sh: Starting VirtualBox services.
vboxdrv.sh: Building VirtualBox kernel modules.
*** Finished installing kernel, cleaning up build dir... ✓
total 12
drwxrwxr-x 3 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 29 23:01 .
drwxrwxr-x 6 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 29 23:01 ..
drwxrwxr-x 2 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 29 23:01 5.4.136-0504136+custom-full-1627624873
total 75408
drwxrwxr-x 2 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 29 23:01 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 29 23:01 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 204444 Jul 29 23:00 linux-buildinfo-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 19656 Jul 29 23:01 linux-cloud-tools-5.4.136-0504136+customfull_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 2128 Jul 29 23:00 linux-cloud-tools-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 10927412 Jul 29 22:22 linux-headers-5.4.136-0504136+customfull_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 2247824 Jul 29 23:00 linux-headers-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 14950932 Jul 29 22:59 linux-image-unsigned-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 10353176 Jul 29 22:59 linux-modules-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 32860928 Jul 29 23:00 linux-modules-extra-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 5624616 Jul 29 23:01 linux-tools-5.4.136-0504136+customfull_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 2252 Jul 29 23:00 linux-tools-5.4.136-0504136+customfull-generic_5.4.136-0504136+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
*** All done. ✓
*** You can now reboot and select 5.4.136-0504136+customfull in GRUB.

And like this for 5.13:

*** Finished installing kernel, cleaning up build dir... ✓
total 16
drwxrwxr-x 4 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 30 00:21 .
drwxrwxr-x 6 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 30 00:21 ..
drwxrwxr-x 2 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 30 00:21 5.13.6-051306+custom-full-1627629688
drwxrwxr-x 2 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 29 23:01 5.4.136-0504136+custom-full-1627624873
total 82944
drwxrwxr-x 2 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 30 00:21 .
drwxrwxr-x 4 arvin arvin 4096 Jul 30 00:21 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 217712 Jul 30 00:20 linux-buildinfo-5.13.6-051306+customfull-generic_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 19792 Jul 30 00:21 linux-cloud-tools-5.13.6-051306+customfull_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 2112 Jul 30 00:20 linux-cloud-tools-5.13.6-051306+customfull-generic_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 11737168 Jul 29 23:59 linux-headers-5.13.6-051306+customfull_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_all.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 2407364 Jul 30 00:20 linux-headers-5.13.6-051306+customfull-generic_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 17910028 Jul 30 00:19 linux-image-unsigned-5.13.6-051306+customfull-generic_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 11276192 Jul 30 00:19 linux-modules-5.13.6-051306+customfull-generic_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 34366296 Jul 30 00:20 linux-modules-extra-5.13.6-051306+customfull-generic_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 6969068 Jul 30 00:21 linux-tools-5.13.6-051306+customfull_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 arvin arvin 2240 Jul 30 00:20 linux-tools-5.13.6-051306+customfull-generic_5.13.6-051306+customfull.202107251230_amd64.deb
*** All done. ✓
*** You can now reboot and select 5.13.6-051306+customfull in GRUB.

edit 2: (july 30, 2021) - Looks like the 5.13 kernel also needs that module.lds for the latest VirtualBox (6.1.25 r145887) to work. Originally I thought it was just for 5.4. (or, that might have been the case, and now 5.13 requires it too). Either way, I pushed a new commit that will add VirtualBox support. (Passing VBOX_SUPPORT=yes to the script). I was also thinking of adding all the binary blobs (Navi, Polaris, Vegas) in the EXTRA_FIRMWARE line to cover all amdgpu built-in scenarios, Highly doubt the extra overhead will affect everything and it's probably best to go this route. Gonna think about it a little more and maybe do some benchmarking when I get time

Cheers and let me know if you run into any problems. This latest version has been tagged v1.00 (I deleted the old v1 tag to avoid any confusion)

[perpetually high]

Sorry to blow up the thread. Made some more changes if anyone is interested in the script. You can probably gut the thing and tweak it to your liking if you're on Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Pop! OS, Debian, you name it. The patches is where the good stuff is, the rest is up to you, I just happened to be on Ubuntu.

Quick link to the script

Added this commit with 5.10 support and some instructions on getting different flavors like 5.4 LTS, 5.10 LTS, and 5.13 going. Can't really mess anything up so just experiment as much as you want. I'll get a readme going soon but at least this commit message has enough to get going. Cheers