Kernel and latency

A kernel tuned for latency¶

GlouOS ships linux-zen, built with full preemption and a 1000 Hz timer rather than the voluntary preemption and lower tick rate most desktop distributions default to. Full preemption lets the scheduler interrupt lower-priority work sooner, which helps keep input and render threads responsive while something loads in the background. These are modest, well-understood tuning choices; the larger win comes from the scheduler.

It also boots with threaded IRQs (threadirqs) and the kernel watchdog off, so interrupt handlers can be scheduled and prioritised like other threads instead of always running inline. The effect is small on most systems, but it removes one more source of occasional latency spikes.

Smoother Wine threading¶

Windows games translated through Proton lean heavily on fast thread synchronisation. The GlouOS kernel includes fsync/futex2 support and now ships NTsync (the newer, more accurate mechanism) as part of linux-zen, which Proton picks up automatically. Both are big smoothness wins for threaded games. See Proton and shaders.

Multiple kernels and easy rollback¶

GlouOS offers more than one kernel: a stable long-term version and a bleeding-edge one, through a kernel manager. If a new kernel misbehaves you can boot the previous one from the menu, which pairs neatly with system snapshots.

Opt-in performance profiles¶

Some tweaks trade a little safety for speed, so GlouOS keeps them as conscious choices rather than silent defaults. The clearest example is turning CPU security mitigations off, which can raise frame rates but weakens isolation.