What Kernel are you guys using?

I have seen some people claiming that custom kernels like zen cachyos offer better battery life and performance.

Is it true ?

  • Parade du Grotesque
    3·
    4 days ago

    The question is this: if your distribution already provides a working kernel, and the battery life and performance are acceptable, why waste your time recompiling a new kernel?

    Compiling your Linux kernel used to be mandatory, precisely because Linux was so fast moving and because hardware management was poor. This is (mostly) not the case anymore.

    Use the kernel provided by your distribution, and let them worry about updating testing and securing it.

    I say this as someone who used to compile kernels, to support all the hardware in my servers. I don’t do this anymore, and I haven’t done this since 2010 or so.

      • Parade du Grotesque
        1·
        8 hours ago

        If that’s the case, my advice is to spend some time to understand the finer point of kernel configuration and compiling, and to compile a kernel as stripped down as possible. Hint : ‘dmesg’ and ‘make menuconfig’ are your friends.

        Include only the drivers you know you need, and especially network, graphical card, and sound card, and make sure you target your CPU architecture. Then, and only then, can you start including fancy configurations like the ones you mentioned.

        Finally, consider adding as much memory and SSDs in your configuration as possible, as these usually have a huge impact on performance.