It’s been a while since running benchmarks of the Liquorix kernel as an enthusiast-tailored downstream version of the Linux kernel focused on responsiveness for gaming, audio/video production, and other creator/enthusiast workloads. In today’s article is a look at how the latest Liquorix kernel derived from Linux 6.18 is competing against the upstream Linux 6.18 LTS kernel on the same system.
The Liquorix kernel applies Zen interactive tuning, the PDS process scheduler, the Kyber I/O scheduler even on NVMe systems, still using ACPI CPUFreq rather than AMD P-State on Ryzen hardware, and a variety of other patches and kernel configuration differences compared to a pure upstream Linux kernel at its defaults. More details on the Liquorix kernel changes as well as pre-built binaries for Ubuntu, Debian, and others can be found at Liquorix.net.
For this comparison was testing its pre-built Liquorix 6.18 kernel against Linux 6.18 upstream from the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA on a Threadripper workstation. This system was using the flagship AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX with AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics, 128GB of DDR5-6400 memory, and running an Ubuntu 26.04 development snapshot as its OS albeit with the noted kernel changes.
So let’s see how the Liquorix kernel is performing as we kick off 2026.
