Want to optimize your Linux desktop for responsiveness or gaming? Try the custom Libquorix or XanMod Kernels.

Besides the default and mainline Kernels, there are some other kernels available for Debian/Ubuntu users.

Liquorix kernel and XanMod Kernel

Alternative kernels include Liquorix kernel, Zen kernel sources built with Debian-targeted configuration, designed for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads.

Liquorix kernel is optimized to be responsiveness first. It’s great for a low-latency, quick to respond desktop and gaming, when you have long heavy job running in background. The costs include less throughput (worse for development) and more power usage.

Besides interactive tuning, the kernel also features:

• PDS Process Scheduler for gaming, multimedia, and real-time loads.
• High Resolution Scheduling
• Preemptible tree-based hierarchical RCU implementation for real-time systems.
• TCP BBR2 Congestion Control: Fast congestion control, maximizes throughput, guaranteeing higher speeds than Cubic.
• Compressed Swap: Swap storage is compressed with LZ4 using zswap
• Alternative LRU algorithm that performs better under high memory pressure and uptimes

XanMod Kernel is another popular kernel source tuning for heavy workloads and faster response.

It also includes Android Binder IPC driver (binder_linux module) for better Waydroid performance, Google’s Multigenerational LRU framework, and third-party patchset, including:

• AMD’s 3D V-Cache optimizer driver (module: amd_3d_vcache)
• Cloudflare’s TCP collapse processing for high throughput and low latency.
• Google’s BBRv3 TCP congestion control.
• Netfilter nf_tables RFC3489 full-cone NAT support.
• Netfilter FLOWOFFLOAD target to speed up processing of packets.
• NT synchronization primitives emulation driver (as module: ntsync).
• Valve’s Steam Deck EC sensors / MFD core and LEDs driver support (as module: steamdeck, steamdeck-hwmon, leds-steamdeck)
• PCIe ACS Override for bypassing IOMMU groups support.
• Graysky’s additional GCC and Clang CPU options.
• Clear Linux patchset (partial).

Install Liquorix kernel

Liquorix kernel is quite easy to install in Arch Linux, Debian (bookworm, sid, trixie), and Ubuntu 24.04|22.04. Though only amd64 (AMD/Intel CPUs) platform is supported.

Simply open terminal (press Ctrl+Alt+T on Ubuntu), then run the single command below:

curl -s 'https://liquorix.net/install-liquorix.sh' | sudo bash

Run sudo apt install curl if ‘curl’ command not found.

Then, it automatically download the official script and run to auto-detect your system, add the repository, and install the kernel packages.

For Ubuntu, you may manually add the PPA and install the kernel:

• Add Liquorix kernel PPA:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:damentz/liquorix

  

• Then, install Liqiorix kernel:

  sudo apt install linux-headers-liquorix-amd64 linux-image-liquorix-amd64

  NOTE: Linux Mint user needs to run sudo apt update to refresh package cache first.
  

After installed the package, just restart your computer and run uname -a command to tell your kernel version.

Install XanMod Kernel

The XanMod Kernel also provide 64-bit .deb packages for Debian/Ubuntu users.

They are available to download in sourceforge.net via the link below:

Depends on you need, you may choose the ‘edge’ for the latest kernel, or ‘main’ which lags a bit behind for the kernel version, while ‘lts’ is even old than Ubuntu’s default kernel.

Then choose download the “linux-image-xxx” and “linux-headers-xxx” packages for you selected kernel. Finally, open Downloads folder, right-click on blank area and select “Open in Terminal”. And, run the command below in pop-up terminal to install all .deb packages in that directory:

sudo apt install ./*.deb

Also restart your computer afterwards and run uname -a to verify. If you have multiple kernels on system, then you may go “Advanced Options for Ubuntu” in boot menu to choose a kernel to boot.

Uninstall Liquorix kernel or XanMod Kernel

To uninstall either kernel package, first reboot your computer and select boot the old official Ubuntu Kernel from Grub boot menu (under ‘Advanced options’).

After booting up with old kernel, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to uninstall Liquorix kernel:

sudo apt remove --autoremove linux-headers-liquorix-amd64 linux-image-liquorix-amd64

Also run command to remove Liquorix kernel PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:damentz/liquorix

To uninstall XanMod Kernel, also reboot with another kernel and then run command:

sudo apt remove linux-image-*-xanmod* linux-headers-*-xanmod*