The XanMod Kernel Is Working Well To Boost Ubuntu Desktop / Workstation Performance

It's been four years since last testing out the XanMod kernel as a spin of the Linux kernel with various patches and extra tuning designed to offer better desktop/workstation performance, similar to the Liquorix kernel. But given the recent Liquorix kernel testing and discussions over kernel schedulers and more, here are some fresh benchmarks of the latest XanMod kernel. Long story short, I am quite impressed by these latest XanMod results.

XanMod advertises its Linux kernel flavor as offering the following extras over a conventional generic/vanilla/mainline kernel:

- Preemptive Full Tickless Kernel at 500Hz w/ Tuned CPU Core Scheduler.
- Tuned Multi-Queue Block Layer w/ Low-Latency BFQ I/O Scheduler.
- Caching, Virtual Memory Manager and CPU Governor improvements.
- RCU Boost for better multitasking and lower DRI frametime latency in Games and Production Applications.
- ORC Unwinder for Kernel Stack Traces (debuginfo) implementation.
- BBR TCP Congestion Control + CAKE Queue Management Algorithm.
- Third-party patchset available: ZFS filesystem, Clear Linux, PCIe ACS Override, BMQ Process Scheduler, Tkg's Proton fsync, Aufs, Ureadahead and GCC graysky's.

There is also a real-time (PREEMPT_RT) flavor of XanMod too for those interested. XanMod is focused on Debian/Ubuntu support and the project does offer a Debian archive for those wanting to easily install their kernel binaries on said distributions. More details on the project can be found at XanMod.org .

For some fresh XanMod benchmarks, I ran tests of its latest kernel binary at the time (Linux 5.4.8-xanmod5) on Ubuntu 19.10 from an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X test system. I compared the Xanmod performance to the generic Linux 5.4.7 mainline kernel at the time as well as the Linux 5.4.7 low-latency kernel build, both of which were obtained from the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA. I also compared results of Liquorix 5.4.0-7.1 as what I started last week's Liquorix kernel testing with and then again with Liquorix 5.4.0-8.2 for the very latest and using the same kernel point release as XanMod.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide range of tests were carried out from gaming to different desktop/workstation workloads.