abarbarian Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 Has anyone any real time experience of running a alternative kernel on an Arch set up ? Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 Yup, I’ve been using them did years. I use the Zen kernel on my desktop and the Hardened kernel on my servers and  laptops. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 7, 2020 Author Share Posted October 7, 2020 (edited) 7 hours ago, securitybreach said: Yup, I’ve been using them did years. I use the Zen kernel on my desktop and the Hardened kernel on my servers and  laptops.  How does zen compare to standard an can you elucidate on any of its specific improvements.  I have read up on the kernel subject in relation to Arch installs but wanted some first hand information. Edited October 7, 2020 by abarbarian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 Let me quote the wiki:  Officially supported kernels Stable — Vanilla Linux kernel and modules, with a few patches applied. https://www.kernel.org/ || linux Hardened — A security-focused Linux kernel applying a set of hardening patches to mitigate kernel and userspace exploits. It also enables more upstream kernel hardening features than linux. https://github.com/anthraxx/linux-hardened || linux-hardened Longterm — Long-term support (LTS) Linux kernel and modules. https://www.kernel.org/ || linux-lts Zen Kernel — Result of a collaborative effort of kernel hackers to provide the best Linux kernel possible for everyday systems. Some more details can be found on https://liquorix.net (which provides kernel binaries based on Zen for Debian). https://github.com/zen-kernel/zen-kernel || linux-zen  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel#Officially_supported_kernels Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 4 hours ago, abarbarian said: elucidate  Ooooh! Big word of the day!  Your Oxford education is showing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 7, 2020 Share Posted October 7, 2020 46 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:  Ooooh! Big word of the day!  Your Oxford education is showing.  Ha, I didn’t even notice it. It’s sort of like how you skim jumbled words and still read them. I understood what he was asking without even noticing the fancy word 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 8, 2020 Author Share Posted October 8, 2020 10 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:  Ooooh! Big word of the day!  Your Oxford education is showing.  Yeah an me spell checker is set up and working too 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 8, 2020 Author Share Posted October 8, 2020 I recently changed my kernel to the zen one from the Arch repos and so far it seems to be working ok. Can not say if it is any better than the stock one as I have not had time to test it out in any way.  Was interested in the subject from a gaming point of view as there are several different kernels out there in the wild.  This one seems to be for general improvements and had a specific Skylake build.  https://gitlab.com/post-factum/pf-kernel/-/wikis/README  Or there are the tkg offerings here directed mainly at gamers I think,  https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/ihw4wb/noticeable_performance_increase_when_using_kernel/  There is this article on kernels and gaming which mentions fsync.  https://www.techspot.com/news/81254-valve-proposes-changes-linux-kernel-make-more-game.html  I am not particularly interested in mor efps though that is always sweet, more interested in the graphics quality :ie getting rid of small artifacts,slight stuttering and judt general stability and smoothness of graphics and gameplay.  The kernel change was pretty easy, but there were quite a few steps involved and with reading up it took quite a while. I could have done with a bigger EFI partition though as my 100 Mb one was too small to allow keeping the old images.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 I do not know about those but I do know that they are not officially supported kernels. Personally, I wouldn't run a kernel from the AUR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 (edited) I was about to say that I wouldn't either, but I'm currently running a kernel from Backports on one computer. I think that would be similar to running one from AUR (both "unsupported", right?). But normally I don't even use Backports, and I don't like to use much from AUR, for that matter. Edited October 8, 2020 by saturnian fixed typo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 9, 2020 Author Share Posted October 9, 2020 On 10/8/2020 at 2:43 PM, securitybreach said: I do not know about those but I do know that they are not officially supported kernels. Personally, I wouldn't run a kernel from the AUR.  Well the pf kernel seems to be developed mainly by a chap who makes commits to the main line kernel. An the tkg developers seem to be known devs eg: Gloriouseggroll. I get your concerns regarding security regarding AUR or stuff where you have no knowledge of the developers.  I knew as soon as I posted that things were fine that they would go bottom up. I rebooted twice with no problems after a couple of small updates to the sysytem. Then an update appeared for linux-zen and linux-zen-headers. These caused a kernel panic on reboot. For some reason the intramfs and vmlinuz stuff had not updated. As I use rEFind these are kept on a separate /boot partition and you have to alter a few things to make these auto update. Looks like I have missed out some simple step somewhere. Had a copy of System Rescue OS on a usb and had fun fiddling and bodging but to no avail. So resorted to using backups of root and boot and am now back to booting ok from the week old backups. Still have to work out what I missed but at least I am back up and running again.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 9, 2020 Share Posted October 9, 2020 Odd as I have my boot on a separate partition due to LUKS encryption and I have never had an issue. I do use systemd-boot instead of rEFind as my bootloader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 9, 2020 Author Share Posted October 9, 2020 It has taken me all day to find a gremlin in my pc. Â I thought I had things tickety boo after using my backups. Yet every time I tried to update with linux-zen and linux-zen-headers my kernel panic reapered. So it was back on the roundabout, boot live os , mkdir's, mount dir's, rsync backups, reboot, panic. Â As a last resort back in original os I tried a " mkinitcpio -P " which failed telling me that mkinitcipio.conf had a glitch at line 68/69. Could see nothing wrong with the file but deleted it and reinstalled mkinitcpio. An whoooopeeeeeeeeeeee did a system update which included linux-zen etc and rebooted successfully. Â Penguins , tricky little beasts. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 9, 2020 Share Posted October 9, 2020 That's one way to do it... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 12, 2020 Author Share Posted October 12, 2020 Well so far the zen kernel seems to be running with no problems after I have sorted out the new user set up glitches.  I play mahjong and have noticed that before zen some of the layouts would take quite a while to throw up a new game, after zen they appear to load much more quickly. I have also notices a slight improvement in loading times for Dishonoured Death to the Outsider. Can not say if zen has given me any other noticeable improvements as I have not been using the pc for much else lately.  Later on when the weather turns really bad I' will have a looksee at the other two kernels I mentioned earlier.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 12, 2020 Share Posted October 12, 2020 Good to hear Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 17, 2020 Author Share Posted October 17, 2020 Different Types of Kernel for Arch Linux and How to Use Them  Nice straightforward guide and information. Has a neat explanation of how to customise grub for use with several kernels. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 17, 2020 Share Posted October 17, 2020 Nice find Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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