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

[phoronix]

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

Motivated in part by the recent le9 kernel patches that are already carried by XanMod and not having benchmarked the XanMod or Liquorix Linux kernel downstreams in a while, here are some fresh benchmarks of Liquorix and XanMod against the recent upstream Linux kernel releases.

https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=30374

[perpetually high]

Nice, thanks Michael. Might run a few of these for context. I feel like my custom kernel is the hybrid superchild of xanmod and Liquorix, taking all the best of both. (Plus I use the 5.4 LTS kernel which I believe to be faster than the newer kernels on older hardware, however, the patches don't all apply cleanly. But if there is a will, there's a way. 5.4 kernel is supported until 2025, and it was my best interest for my MacBook Pro and Desktop to get it all working, and it's finally all working and it's beautiful.)

Some guy was sweating me on here yesterday saying tweaking the kernel is pointless, talking about "microbenchmarks" when it's all relative, bud. Same exact machine, different kernel. You're tweaking the brains of the OS and you don't find that of interest or worthwhile?

Ok, but that's literally free performance you're leaving on the table. And you frequent Phoronix and want to bust my chops? That makes zero sense. Sometimes you don't have to comment, you know. Keep some things to yourself. But I don't let one ignorant person shy me away from sharing with the rest of the Linux community

[birdie]

Does Xanmod provide individual patches? Doesn't look like it considering their git repo which is a bummer because you cannot pick individual patches which could really benefit everyone without lumping them all together and risking stability and security.

[perpetually high]

Does Xanmod provide individual patches? Doesn't look like it considering their git repo which is a bummer because you cannot pick individual patches which could really benefit everyone without lumping them all together and risking stability and security.

He does! It's great. Sorted by 5.10, by 5.12, and 5.13 right now.

https://github.com/xanmod/linux-patches

If you need other patches, the rest are provided by sirclucjan.

https://github.com/sirlucjan/kernel-patches

Those two for the most part have everything. Git clone both, and update the directory often.

I have a build script and everything that applies all the patches. Hoping to share it with everyone soon so they can compile their own turbocharged -O2 -march=native's with all the good stuff

[CochainComplex]

Nice, thanks Michael. Might run a few of these for context. I feel like my custom kernel is the hybrid superchild of xanmod and Liquorix, taking all the best of both. (Plus I use the 5.4 LTS kernel which I believe to be faster than the newer kernels on older hardware, however, the patches don't all apply cleanly. But if there is a will, there's a way. 5.4 kernel is supported until 2025, and it was my best interest for my MacBook Pro and Desktop to get it all working, and it's finally all working and it's beautiful.)

Some guy was sweating me on here yesterday saying tweaking the kernel is pointless, talking about "microbenchmarks" when it's all relative, bud. Same exact machine, different kernel. You're tweaking the brains of the OS and you don't find that of interest or worthwhile?

Ok, but that's literally free performance you're leaving on the table. And you frequent Phoronix and want to bust my chops? That makes zero sense. Sometimes you don't have to comment, you know. Keep some things to yourself. But I don't let one ignorant person shy me away from sharing with the rest of the Linux community

Totally support your statement and even if it is microbenching it is quite fun. I'm just experimenting with llvm12 vs aocc vs gcc (kernel and/or mesa+drm) ltoed.

https://openbenchmarking.org/s/xanmod5134#

ltoed+pgoed (-O3 -march=native -fsemantic....etc) mesa+drm with gcc 11.1 gave me around 2% more than vanilla oibaff. Sounds not much but 2% here 2-5% with the kernel a few with dxvk builds a bit here and there with custom proton ...adds up quickly to a nice gain. And sometimes its not just throughput but latency.
I think it will be worth to check out lto+pgo build with AOCC. But I#m not so experienced with clang yet.

Next step I try to apply the pgo patches on the 5.13.5-cacule kernel. But its not straight forward.

[CochainComplex]

He does! It's great. Sorted by 5.10, by 5.12, and 5.13 right now.

https://github.com/xanmod/linux-patches

If you need other patches, the rest are provided by sirclucjan.

https://github.com/sirlucjan/kernel-patches

Those two for the most part have everything. Git clone both, and update the directory often.

I have a build script and everything that applies all the patches. Hoping to share it with everyone soon so they can compile their own turbocharged -O2 -march=native's with all the good stuff

if you download xanmod tar it has already O3 and by default it also has the https://github.com/graysky2/kernel_compiler_patch
patch applied just run menuconfig an set it for your individual arch.

[perpetually high]

if you download xanmod tar it has already O3 and by default it also has the https://github.com/graysky2/kernel_compiler_patch
patch applied just run menuconfig an set it for your individual arch.

Oh I didn't know he was using O3 also, good stuff. The only thing is he can't do -march=native which I believe is a *big* part of all this.

I'm actually going to share my script and patches right now. No need to sit on it, everyone can take what they want from it. It's plug and play if you have all the prerequisites. But let's see how it goes

[lumks]

Michael could you measure the temperatures? My problem with xanmod is that my systems (Both desktop (AMD X1700) and laptop(AMD 4600U)) die a heat dead a few minutes in game. I literally can't use this kernel because of this. I'm also pretty OK with zen.

[CochainComplex]

The only thing is he can't do -march=native which I believe is a *big* part of all this.

Yes - true. I have tried this month ago (maybe 1-2 year already) on my old FX-8350. I was able to build it but I had to switch of RETPOLINE and some UNWINDER ORC stuff. It compiled fine afterwards but well it comes with the obvious downside.

[perpetually high]

Yes - true. I have tried this month ago (maybe 1-2 year already) on my old FX-8350. I was able to build it but I had to switch of RETPOLINE and some UNWINDER ORC stuff. It compiled fine afterwards but well it comes with the obvious downside.

I'm going to share my configs too. One with amdgpu built in for anyone that has Polaris that wants, and one that just builds it as a module like normal. I find building it in is preferred for smoother bootup and such.

But I'm telling you, if everything is configured right, it should run flawless. Should be no drawbacks or nuances