Eee Kernel Scheduler Tweaks

With the release of stable kernel 2.6.31.1, I got in to the patching game again. 6 patches have been backported from the 2.6.32 scheduler updates, which has been under heavy scrutiny since BFS (Brain Fuck Scheduler, Con Kolivas’ latest creation) and the LKML collided. I have been running the 2.6.31 kernel with this for a bit to make sure I didn’t really blow anything up, but it seems to be working just fine, and with the release of 2.6.31.1, I’ve included them in my build.

The biggest change by far is the disabling of the NEW_FAIR_SLEEPERS scheduler option. Several people on LKML found that disabling this option has a noticeable impact on desktop performance. If you see any problems, let me know. I’d also be interested to hear if this makes the Eee feel snappier for you at all- I can’t say for sure, but I seemed to notice the computer feeling a bit more responsive while opening GMail in the browser and doing some I/O and CPU heavy tasks (git pulling and compiling) on the SD card in a terminal.

See Also

• Eee Kernel 2.6.31.2-1 Update - October 6, 2009
• Arch Kernel Eee 2.6.31 built - September 9, 2009
• Arch Eee Repository - April 1, 2008
• 2.4 > 2.6 in OpenWrt - November 29, 2009
• Slicehost kernel upgrade - November 1, 2009