Friday FOSS Fest Looking for a little more desktop responsiveness? Liquorix provides current, easy-to-install desktop-performance-optimised kernels for Ubuntu, Mint, Debian and derivatives… and Arch and Red Hat users can get it, too.
Since we've been talking about kernels recently at The Reg FOSS desk, today we're exploring options outside Ubuntu's own offerings.
Ubuntu maintains three channels for kernels, depending on what type of release you're running: LTS (or an LTS-based derivative such as Linux Mint), HWE and OEM.
For their supported lifetimes, LTS editions get updates for the same kernel they shipped with: at the moment, that means kernel 5.4 for Ubuntu 20.04 and Mint 20, for instance.
If you run an LTS and you opt for the HWE kernel, you get the kernel from the current short-term release. Ubuntu 20.10 had kernel 5.8, then 21.04 had kernel 5.11, and 21.10 had kernel 5.13.
Ubuntu also offers a bunch of variants for different purposes: one if you're looking for low latency, others for various public cloud platforms, and so on. The OEM release can offer something newer, but at the time of writing, the latest is linux-oem-20.04d, which is only version 5.14.
Debian, meanwhile, is currently shipping kernel 5.10.
Liquorix comes in if you want something newer than that – if you fancy a bit of that in-kernel NTFS goodness from 5.15, say. Liquorix tracks the current stable release: right now, that's 5.16, but you can always check on kernel.org.
We can't add any value by repeating the project's own instructions (go here for all the installation steps). All you need to do is add its repo (a PPA for Ubuntu and Mint, a normal repo for Debian) and install the package. Your old distro kernel will remain in the GRUB menu in case you have problems, and will get updated in parallel.
Liquorix itself builds upon the Zen kernel, which integrates various patches and improvements aimed at desktop users.
Liquorix isn't the only one of its kind; there are other such efforts out there, such as XanMod.
You can also use both Liquorix and XanMod kernels on other Ubuntu downstream distros such as Pop!_OS and Elementary OS, of course.
It's also possible to install both on Red Hat-family distros such as Fedora using the Rmnscnce COPR repo. All of these usually ship newer kernel versions than Ubuntu anyway. It's even in the AUR for Arch types.
To be honest, we suspect that you won't see any massive performance improvements from any of these.
For The Register FOSS desk, the main use has been to get at features from newer releases without wasting time compiling our own kernels like we had to do in the 20th century. But if you enjoy tweaking your system, as the Ubuntu OEM-kernel page says, "Why not?" ®
Comment Recently, The Register's Liam Proven wrote tongue in cheek about the most annoying desktop Linux distros. He inspired me to do another take.
Proven pointed out that Distrowatch currently lists 270 – count 'em – Linux distros. Of course, no one can look at all of those. But, having covered the Linux desktop since the big interface debate was between Bash and zsh rather than GNOME vs KDE, and being the editor-in-chief of a now-departed publication called Linux Desktop, I think I've used more of them than anyone else who also has a life beyond the PC. In short, I love the Linux desktop.
Apple is extending support for its Rosetta 2 x86-64-to-Arm binary translator to Linux VMs running under the forthcoming macOS 13, codenamed Ventura.
The next version of macOS was announced at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference on Monday, and the new release has a number of changes that will be significant to Linux users. The company has disclosed the system requirements for the beta OS, which you can read on the preview page.
One level of Linux relevance is that macOS 13 still supports Intel-based Macs, but only recent ones, made in 2017 and later. So owners of older machines – including the author – will soon be cut off. Some will run Windows on them via Bootcamp, but others will, of course, turn to Linux.
A Linux distro for smartphones abandoned by their manufacturers, postmarketOS, has introduced in-place upgrades.
Alpine Linux is a very minimal general-purpose distro that runs well on low-end kit, as The Reg FOSS desk found when we looked at version 3.16 last month. postmarketOS's – pmOS for short – version 22.06 is based on the same version.
This itself is distinctive. Most other third-party smartphone OSes, such as LineageOS or GrapheneOS, or the former CyanogenMod, are based on the core of Android itself.
Review The Reg FOSS desk took the latest update to openSUSE's stable distro for a spin around the block and returned pleasantly impressed.
As we reported earlier this week, SUSE said it was preparing version 15 SP4 of its SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution at the company's annual conference, and a day later, openSUSE Leap version 15.4 followed.
The relationship between SUSE and the openSUSE project is comparable to that of Red Hat and Fedora. SUSE, with its range of enterprise Linux tools, is the commercial backer, among other sponsors.
The Linux Mint XApps suite of cross-desktop accessories has a new member – the Timeshift backup tool.
The Linux Mint blog post for June revealed that Mint team lead Clement Lefevbre recently took over maintenance of the Timeshift backup tool used in Linux Mint.
Timeshift is akin to Windows System Restore in that it automatically keeps backups of system files. It's not Mint-specific and was originally developed by Tony George. That name might sound familiar as we recently mentioned his company TeeJeeTech as the creator of the original Unity-based remix, UMix.
Right after the latest release of the KDE Frameworks comes the Plasma Desktop 5.25 plus the default desktop for the forthcoming Linux Mint 23.
In a sign of how display handling is evolving, the GNOME desktop's 3D-compositing Mutter window manager is gaining support for variable refresh rate (VRR, also known as Adaptive Sync) displays.
Mutter is an important chunk of code. As the project page says, it's "a Wayland display server and X11 window manager and compositor library."
It's the basis of GNOME Shell, which is implemented [PDF] as a Mutter plug-in, but other desktops use it as well.
Microsoft and Samsung have teamed to stream Xbox games on the Korean giant's smart televisions and monitors.
Samsung has offered streaming games since early 2022, taking advantage of its smart displays running the Linux-based Tizen OS. The "gaming hub" installed on those devices can already deliver games from Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now.
Xbox is a rather larger brand, making this deal considerably more significant.
Opinion Consulting giant McKinsey & Company has been playing a round of MythBusters: Metaverse Edition.
Though its origins lie in the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, the metaverse has been heavily talked about in business circles as if it's a real thing over the last year or so, peaking with Facebook's Earth-shattering rebrand to Meta in October 2021.
The metaverse, in all but name, is already here and has been for some time in the realm of online video games. However, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vision of it is not.
Intezer security researcher Joakim Kennedy and the BlackBerry Threat Research and Intelligence Team have analyzed an unusual piece of Linux malware they say is unlike most seen before - it isn't a standalone executable file.
Dubbed Symbiote, the badware instead hijacks the environment variable (LD_PRELOAD) the dynamic linker uses to load a shared object library and soon infects every single running process.
The Intezer/BlackBerry team discovered Symbiote in November 2021, and said it appeared to have been written to target financial institutions in Latin America. Analysis of the Symbiote malware and its behavior suggest it may have been developed in Brazil.
The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing
Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2022