Speed Up Linux

If you'd like to test for leaky javascript and other mitigations that get disabled. Check out: leaky.page/ Note: Even after I removed my mitigations, these tests failed on the AMD Ryzen 5600X. I've never seen Meltdown or Spectre exploited with much success in the wild, just proof of concept projects. I stand by my recommendation that these mitigations should be disable on desktops as the security risk is minimal, but is still there.

Unless you really know what you're doing, this is just really bad advice for most people. People run untrusted binaries all the time on their personal computer. Besides, on Linux, the line can easily blur between a desktop and a server. Many people have SSH servers running, game servers, chat servers, etc, and some don't even have proper firewall set up. Turning off mitigations is a bad idea unless you really need that few percent increase in performance, or you have an air-gapped system or something.

It's nice to see the entire linux community completely united at this: this is an awful idea

Never turn off those mitigations, those things are in place to protect you against attacks. Those exploits like spectre and meltdown can likely be exploited by a simple JavaScript. This is really dangerous so as much as possible never do this. Valve also didnt do this because they know better, they dont want to be in a scandal about security of their device....

He forgot to mention Step 0: unplug your network cable and any WI-FI antennae

Recommendations I never hear of, but certainly make your system faster and more secure, are disabling unused or unneeded systemd services (most of them listening on ports) and blacklisting unused modules. Definitely keep mitigations enabled, malicious javascript can exploit those vulnerabilities. The biggest performance drop comes from disabling hyperthreading with noht or nosmt, mitigations=full doesn't disable hyperthreading.

Don't turn off mitigations. Spectre and Meltdown are still a huge issue even for desktop users.

What windows manager are you using on Fedora? It looks pretty nice.

I'm really curious, what you will encounter and recommend setting up. Using the Steam Deck as another Desktop works quite well. I just have to tinker a bit with the best way when deactivating immutable root.

In my testing on a 16 core Threadripper, I only got 2% improvement. Definitely not worth the security risk it adds.

Hi Chris - Have you ever talked about running a Linux distro at the same time as windows via WSL2?

Linux community: Few random commands gives up to 30% speedup. Gentoo (optimization and configuration for every program and kernel) gives 2% speedup

The comments section saved me from this disaster of a suggestion. Chris you should make an explainer for your thinking behind this.

I really doubt that this is a good idea. As others have said, the mitigations contains fixes for vulnerabilities, including Meltdown and Spectre. Furthermore, it will not use mitigations on vulnerabilities that are not present for that given CPU. The video should do a better job at explaining what exactly people are doing here, without blindly encouraging them to disable vital kernel vulnerabilities fixes. PS: I'm not an Linux expert, but if you do a quick google search regarding this you will overwhelmingly find that this is a bad idea for various reasons.

There are wifi driver errors in new kernels...

great video. i would like to see some extensive power optimizations though. in windows, when it's on battery, performance decreases considerably. is it the same on Linux too?

Good timing Chris, was currently optimizing my PopOS. Gotta make this baby faster than Bill Gates can say penguin.

I already have a Kernel setting in that place, are they comma delimited I wonder?

Your customize DE is really impressive. Can I get the script??

I appreciate the effort you put in here, thanks. That said, I do not think that the Asus Tuf X570 Plus Wifi, R9 5900X and Ubuntu 20.04 with Kernel 5.15 have the mitigation's applied, since I see no difference in the before and after scores.