CachyMod

Run a custom kernel on CachyOS. This repository is primarily for my personal use, where smoothness is preferred over raw performance.

Tip

One of the best things about CachyMod is how modular it is! If you are looking for specific hardware tweaks or unique EEVDF customizations, you can easily plug them right into your own build using the _extra_patch_or_url options.

Note: The official BORE scheduler is built-in and can be enabled via the _use_bore option.

Important

If running NVIDIA graphics, first switch to DKMS for future proof CachyOS updating the NVIDIA stack to a later release.

# Obtain a list of NVIDIA kernel modules.
pacman -Q | awk '/^linux-cachyos-.*nvidia/ { print $1 }'

# Remove any prebuilt NVIDIA kernel modules.
sudo pacman -Rsn linux-cachyos-nvidia-open
sudo pacman -Rsn linux-cachyos-nvidia

# Install NVIDIA sources for DKMS (choose one).
sudo pacman -Sy nvidia-open-dkms
sudo pacman -Sy nvidia-dkms

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🛠️ Building and Installation

There are no binary packages. One builds the kernel with build.sh. The demonstrations are given for the 7.3 kernel.

# obtain CachyMod repo
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/marioroy/cachymod.git
cd cachymod

# create the "cachymod" configuration folder
mkdir -p ~/.config/cachymod

# copy the build configs for a specific version or copy all
cp defconfigs/7.3/*.conf ~/.config/cachymod/
cp defconfigs/*/*.conf ~/.config/cachymod/

# the TUI tools require the gum package
sudo pacman -S gum

# make any adjustments with the confmod.sh TUI tool
cd linux-cachymod-7.3
../confmod.sh

# build CachyMod kernel (includes installation)
./build.sh list  # to get a list of build configs
./build.sh 73    # build kernel using the 73 config
./build.sh 73 --noinstall   # skip installation

To update, fetch the changes to automatically merge them into your local CachyMod repo.

cd cachymod
git pull

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📦 Manual Package Installation & Maintenance

Below are the manual steps if needed.

The d in [67dh] will include the dbg package if built. Adjust the kernel tag to your kernel suffix. Two sets of examples are provided for demonstration.

sudo pacman -U linux-cachymod-[67dh]*.zst
sudo pacman -U linux-cachymod-rt-[67dh]*.zst

# with kernel tag
sudo pacman -U linux-cachymod-73-[67dh]*.zst
sudo pacman -U linux-cachymod-73-rt-[67dh]*.zst

Uninstall

The CachyMod kernel(s) can be removed with the uninstall.sh utility. Run the script and toggle the kernels you wish to uninstall. Then, press the enter key.

./uninstall.sh

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⚡ Improving Interactive Performance

Enable TEO (Timer Events Oriented) CPUIdle governor with modern x86-64 processors. Specifically, Intel 11th Gen (Rocket/Tiger Lake), 12th/13th/14th Gen (Alder/Raptor Lake), AMD Ryzen 2000 series "Zen+" and newer are well supported.

Do not enable if your CPU lacks the MWAIT extension. Ditto with Intel 10th Gen (Coment Lake), which may not play nice with TEO.

lscpu | grep -E 'monitor|mwait'

# Default to TEO via tmpfiles service
sudo mkdir -p /etc/tmpfiles.d

# Add entry to /etc/tmpfiles.d/tweaks.conf (create file if missing)
w! /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuidle/current_governor - - - - teo

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📂 Optional Utilities & Developer Notes

• poc-extra folder: A collection of multi-function wrapper scripts designed to easily toggle Piece-Of-Cake (POC) Custom kernel scheduler features (poc, poc-smt, poc-sticky). These tools support automatic runtime execution wrapping (e.g., for Steam launch options) and clean state restoration upon exit. Includes an automated installer for passwordless sudo rights.

• If you're running CPU-intensive background tasks or make jobs, refer to linux-cgroup-always for Ghostty-like linux-cgroup = always feature with your terminal emulator. This can be used with EEVDF/BORE and Real-time (RT) kernels.

• If adding BORE patch, the official patch may not apply with recent kernels. Try 0001-bore.patch found at https://github.com/CachyOS/kernel-patches/.

• Custom kernel tuning is possible via custom.sh, if it exists. Make a copy of the script provided and edit custom.sh. The file is ignored from GIT commits.

cp ../scripts/custom.sh.in custom.sh

• The kernel supports dynamic preemption. You can set the default with boot option. See also, preemption in the scripts folder to get/set the preemption mode dynamically.

preempt=full
preempt=lazy

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📜 Acknowledgement & Credits

• Upstream Focus: Special thanks to the CachyOS Team for providing the incredible base Linux distribution and core patches that make these optimizations possible.

• Thank you, CachyOS community with sounding board and testing.

• Piece-Of-Cake (POC) Custom Patch: The core O(1) bitmask-driven idle CPU selector patch integrated into CachyMod is a customized variant based on the official POC v2.1.0 by firelzrd. This variant has been streamlined to maintain a minimalist architecture, operating as a complementary layer to the original 0280 prefer-idle-core patch to help minimize EEVDF placement anomalies.

• The minimal-modprobed.db is from linux-tkg, used for making a diet kernel { _localmodcfg=y and _localmodcfg_minimal=y }.

• Documentation & Tooling Design: Technical documentation layouts, Markdown formatting optimizations, and scripting structural refinements for the poc-extra module were developed with collaborative assistance from Google's Gemini.

• CachyMod Core & Tooling: This project, including the custom interactive configuration TUI (confmod.sh), the automated compilation framework (build.sh), and the removal tools (uninstall.sh), is original standalone work developed by Mario Roy (@marioroy) to streamline custom kernel building on CachyOS.

• Utility Wrappers: The management tools, automation logic, installation scripts, and execution wrapper frameworks in this directory are original works developed for the CachyMod repository.

• Creative Inspiration: The CachyMod project also benefited from the creative inspiration provided by my imaginary friends, Grace Factor and Just Enough. Their role was informal and imaginative, but meaningful throughout the process of refining the project’s approach to desktop smoothness.

LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
at your option any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.