Kernel mods, Modules, Patches, Initramfs, Cachyos etc etc

[anonymous1234567]

Greetings to all! I am a cachyos user who is creating a gentoo machine in a VM and with this more customised version of gentoo, i plan to replicate my vm on my older computers which are a lot slower than my laptop I am using right now.
I am at the stage of my gentoo installations where I am working with USE Flags and will go onto configuring my kernel next, so I am planning.
On the cachyos github page GitHub - CachyOS/linux-cachyos: Archlinux Kernel based on different schedulers and some other performance improvements., when you scroll down, there is a chapter(?) that has the title of Other GNU/Linux distributions. As I want the performance benefits of cachyos but on a more optimised system that is gentoo which as it is source based. Is there a way for me to get the benefits of cachyos on gentoo?

eselect repository add CachyOS-kernels git https://github.com/Szowisz/CachyOS-kernels
emaint sync -r CachyOS-kernels

the above was copied from the cachyos github page. as this is mostly to do with the kernel, i believe that the people here would be able to help me sorta merge the two kernels as in, keep the gentoo kernel but bolt on the benefits of cachyos.

I am in the process of setting use flags as i have stated earlier, but I have worked on the gentoo kernel before when i was doing a more basic install to get a feel for things.
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Another issue is that I dont exactly know how modules and patches work. Like how do I configure such things, this will be my first proper deep dive into kernels and I have read the wiki on this stuff but i think I am missing something as I cant seem to find a good guide on doing such things. How can i change my schedulars, how can I NOT use an initramfs or initrd? Ive heard that I just have to load drivers and otherstuff onto the kernel but how? Could someone send me the right guide for more kernel stuff? I dont want an initramfs as I dont need one, my filesystems and other stuff are not encrypted, so.

Thank you all for your time! It is greatly appreciated!

Moderator note: Fixed the long line. -- Banana

[pingtoo]

I think you should build a Gentoo kernel (yet, try gentoo-kernel-bin, so you don't have to build it you self) then try cachyos kernel and compare them for the specific thing you are looking for,

It is very hard to guess what is "benefit" of a kernel vs the other unless you know what you want. One's benefit may be disaster for other.

If you are new to Gentoo (A Rolling / meta distribution) I suggest you don't try too hard at day 1. just take everything as default, select a profile most match your expected usage.

Tuning is fine art, you are trading one thing for other that you think will benefit you most.

[pietinger]

anonymous1234567,

first of all: Welcome to Gentoo Forums !

[anonymous1234567]

Thank you so much for these guide!! reading them right now.

[anonymous1234567]

I would try the cachyos kernel but unfortunately it has dependancies on systemd (i tried installing it on Artix linux and couldnt get thru a sysd issue). I have done a gentoo install before through mint, but that was just a test so that I have a tiny bit of pracitice. that was also the first time i entered the menuconfig, but i didnt do much other than some light exploration. I understand that there probably isnt much point of doing this and I will admit, much of the reason for me doing this is purely because I have the freedom to be able to do this. I am not exactly a pro user, mostly stick to librewolf / cachyos browser and the terminal, but on gentoo, there are so many choices you can make and I really want to take advantage of that a) as practice before i go and do linux from scratch b) I really liked gentoo on my first 2 tries, and this is my third try before i install gentoo on hardware instead of virtual, and I want it to be over the top and as customised as i can make it. Like Ive delved into USE Flags, C and CXX Flags and RUST Flags and all that stuff and gotten rid / added so much that I would personally need, and having gone through all this effort to make this as customised as possible, I kinda find it wasteful not to customise the kernel. My computers are powerful enough that none of these customisations woud reeeaaallly give much of a difference if anything, but i want to do it nonetheless for the sake of it. CachyOS is giving me noticible improvements on my laptop compared to the arch linux that I had before and so if i can customised gentoo, then maybe I can get that extra bit of performance as well, if i decide to replace cachyos...

[pietinger]

[pingtoo]

[pjp]

@anonymous1234567,

I'd start by comparing it against a working Gentoo kernel of the same version. I would then try to make the common parts the same or similar. Maybe what's left isn't important, or could be easier to patch.

[Hu]

Those are Kconfig options added by a Gentoo patchset (rather than being in Linus' releases). They forcibly-enable kernel features that are known to be mandatory for various common setups, so that novice users have fewer ways to configure a kernel that is known not to work on a typical desktop/laptop install. Presumably, the underlying options are not sufficiently obvious that everyone would do the right thing on their own, so these provide a guide. Users who want to micromanage the kernel can disable those, at the downside of having certain common software be less functional. To me, that is different from saying the Linux kernel has a dependency on systemd (or udev). Perhaps CachyOS has its own patchset that delegates too much work off to systemd, or has an initramfs that only knows how to hand control to a systemd-based init system.