which kernels?

[wilfryd]

Which kernels do you roll with sid,
which one do you think is better?
debian ones?siduction?aptosid?liquorix or ....?
why and is there really any difference?

[dkeg]

i'm using 3.10-4 pae. for me runs lighter and cooler than 3.11 towo, 25MB lighter to be specific. In general towo runs a bit heavier for my specs, Acer Aspire TimelineX.

[machinebacon]

Yes, there's a difference, but it depends on your usage scenario. Some people like Liquorix (I don't), others stay with vanilla Debian (which is a healthy compromise). For info about why Liquorix and slh kernels are different, see http://liquorix.net/slh-lock-retardatio ... ation.html
Personally, I have not experienced higher RAM usage with towo's non-PAE (right now in openbox using 43 MB RAM after startup) -- I'd say install them all in similar version numbers side by side, check the boot time and the RAM usage, the CPU usage in different scenarios (no X, X, with browser, playing Flash videos, playing music, videos) - sure it takes a few hours to get stats but this is the only and best way for your hardware/setup. Guess it;s impossible to say "this one works best for all".

Thinkpad T43

[wilfryd]

What about aptosid vs siduction?any winner?

[pidsley]

What about aptosid vs siduction?any winner?

I'd say install them all in similar version numbers side by side, check the boot time and the RAM usage, the CPU usage in different scenarios (no X, X, with browser, playing Flash videos, playing music, videos) - sure it takes a few hours to get stats but this is the only and best way for your hardware/setup. Guess it's impossible to say "this one works best for all".

[ivanovnegro]

Look, we have all kernels available on Debian. Choose the one you think is best, Bacon's description. They are all somehow different but a noob won't notice a difference unless you have overheating or another strange issue with one of them.

I prefer towo and vanilla and at the moment use vanilla Debian 3.10.-3.

[wuxmedia]

i don't actually know my kernel... 3.something

ok;
3.9-8.towo-siduction-686

[mirix]

This convinced me of giving Liquorix a try:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... rnel&num=1

So far so good.

It seems the CPU load is slightly lower as compared to a vanilla kernel, which in turn translates into lower power consumption.

However, in the past I have observed stability issues with a particular 64-bit laptop. In other systems it is perfectly stable.

If you have an SSD, you might want kernel 3.10 or newer.

Liquorix sets BFS as the default scheduler. Some people say this is the best option for an SSD, others say it is the best option in general, others prefer no-op (Arch Wiki) or deadline or CFS (the default in most kernels). I have no clue...

[bizcuit]

Adds pointless babble ... Agree with what everyone has already said. Plus am in no way a nix kernel guru anyway.

Point I agree w most is the people who already said "Try them for yourself and see". Imo that pretty much universally applies across da board while discussing gnu/nix, shrugs.

Though yeah, there are diff, some of those being, which cpu scheduler is used ( BFS, CFS etc ... think the default in debian is the CFS still ? Completely fair scheduler), which disk i/o scheduler is used (CFQ, BFQ, deadline etc), the latency setting in the kernel, timer interupt freq ( 250hz-1000hz), the cpu freq governor ( ondemand or in the case of Liquorix set default @ performance) < That should be adjustable with the right utils installed. Personally prefer ondemand myself.

Agree w Machine about the Liquorix kerns ... Siduction maintainer seems to be more conservative and think that's a good thing. Not downing Liquorix kernel either. As been mentioned by others, try em, see whatcha think/prefer. Nixbbq ( Siduction kerns) Siduction kerns ... Aptosid should be, all 100% compatible with Debian me thinks ? And Liquorix maintains a Debian repo for Sid, last time I bothered checking. Obviously any kern taken from a Debian repo will be 100% compatible with Debian. :P

So no harm is trying them yourself. Best way to decide and if don't like ... remove em @ any time, am now going to shut it, as already mentioned am not a kernel expert. Spent only enough time to learn a few things about the topic.

PS, also neglected to mention agree w Machine-others, that which kern configs can obviously depend on what the OS is being used for, server ( what's it's intended purpose.) same thing for desktop gnu/nix = what does the user want to do with it-etc. Though installing and trying diff kerns is still easy enough to do and no harm, no foul ... so why not ?

[RandomCharacter]

I use 3.11-1.towo-siduction-amd64 and something seems to have gained a lot of weight since the 3.10 kernel series. I used to boot to about 114 MB RAM used (without X), but on the day of the first 3.11 installation, that jumped to about 155 MB.

So far, I have been unable to determine where this came from (the extra RAM usage). I am almost certain that it is not any user process. It could possibly be the new radeon driver. And I cannot find anything out on the internet where others report a similar increase.

Anyway, damn.

Tim

[machinebacon]

Tim,
I exactly noticed the opposite now with the new kernel and the newer udev and systemd goodness, on a laptop with an Intel onboard gfx chip. So, it might be either radeon or the xserver upgrade. if you like you can post your pstree and we'll have a look. Siduction and BBQ are the same family ;)

[RandomCharacter]

Thanks, machinebacon. Here is my pstree; it was made after a fresh reboot to runlevel 3 (no X), and the used memory was 159 MB.

Code: Select all

systemd-+-NetworkManager-+-dhclient
        |                `-3*[{NetworkManager}]
        |-acpi_fakekeyd
        |-cron
        |-cupsd
        |-dbus-daemon
        |-gpm
        |-irqbalance
        |-login---bash---pstree
        |-mdadm
        |-modem-manager
        |-ntpd
        |-polkitd---{polkitd}
        |-preload
        |-pywwetha.py
        |-rpc.idmapd
        |-rpc.statd
        |-rpcbind
        |-rsyslogd---3*[{rsyslogd}]
        |-shellserver.sh---sleep
        |-systemd-journal
        |-systemd-logind
        |-systemd-udevd
        `-vnstatd

Tim

[RandomCharacter]

Two of my problems were resolved when the Siduction 3.11.3 kernel came, yesterday. I can now boot with wireless enabled, and my boot process is back down to 16.5 sec (it had been over 30). However, it is still using the larger amount of memory. It's no big deal, everything is working great.

Tim

[machinebacon]

Sorry Tim, I have completely forgotten to answer here. Glad the thing fixed itself ;) recently, we can see that kernels play an important role when things *don't* work.

By the way, you can remove pywwetha which is only used for the siduction-installer. IIRC there was a thread about it on siduction forums, too.

[RandomCharacter]

Thanks. I'll look there about pywwetha.

Tim

[machinebacon]

It's in German: http://siduction.org/index.php?name=PNp ... pic&t=2559
Basically, cryptosteve says that it is not needed and it should be removed after installation (automatically), if not, do it manually.

[RandomCharacter]

Yes, I purged it. I used Google Translate to make sure I understood what he said.

Thanks,
Tim