Benchmarks Of The Liquorix Linux 4.17 Kernel

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 3 July 2018 at 12:32 AM EDT. 5 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
It's been a while since last benchmarking the Liquorix kernel that is a modified version of the Linux kernel. Liquorix was recently updated against Linux 4.17 and a premium patron requested some fresh benchmark results.

Liquorix for those out of the loop is a configured and patched kernel intended to deliver an optimal experience for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads. Liquorix makes use of Zen interactive tuning, the MuQSS process scheduler (formerly BFS), hard kernel preemption, BFQ, minimal debugging options, and various other changes. Liquorix is designed to be trivially installed on Debian and Ubuntu systems via APT/PPA repositories.
Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

For satisfying the premium supporter, I ran the tests on a Core i9 7980XE system in the same hardware/software configuration. The CPU differences reported on the table come down to the Liquorix kernel using the CPUFreq ondemand governor rather than P-State powersave, which reports the base/boost clocks differently. The current Liquorix 4.17 kernel was benchmarked against a "vanilla" (mainline) Linux 4.17.3 kernel as well as Ubuntu 18.04's stock Linux 4.15 kernel. The kernels were tested using their stock binaries and without making any other modifications to any of the kernels off the same Ubuntu 18.04 LTS installation.
Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Liquorix favors responsiveness over throughput, so the I/O results tend to be mixed in the benchmarks.
Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Liquorix actually delivered the lowest average frame-rates in the various Linux game tests carried out.
Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

Linux 4.17 Kernel Tests

The other results tended to be mixed. Granted, it's hard to quantify the responsiveness of the desktop system. Additional data is available via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. Those wishing to try out the Liquorix kernel can find it at Liquorix.net.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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