Performance improvements by turning off CPU security mitigations

After to read: HOWTO make Linux run blazing fast (again) on Intel CPUs - LinuxReviews

Seems like the performance of your computer can be pretty improved by turning off some security features (add the extra parameters to your /etc/default/grub and reboot)

Maybe this can be an option to select from the installer :thinking: specially useful for not-powerful computers

yeah but... it's security... i don''t think it's such a good idea

"option to select" (by the user) :slight_smile:

yeah of course I was not talking about defaults

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ok it may be ok... just underline how bad it is

Sounds good, but make sure the user easily can know that it is security.

Because this is security we are meddling with.

could be good to know:

  • how easy or hard can be to encounter the issue
  • how the issue happen (if you are not running virtual environments you should not worry? if your bios has virtualization flags disables you are free of the issue?)
  • what scenarios can happen if you are affected
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I tried a while back after spectre and meltdown what the overall effect was on my Thinkpad Carbon machines and wasn't really impressed by the difference that made.
Disabling/enabling SMT/hyperthreading I haven't tried but it's yet another barrier to add..... again. :frowning_face:

  • I have my doubts on the overall speed difference it would make on the things most people use a computer for, on a daily basis.

It might be an idea to allow that as an option to the older kernels (for older hardware) but definitely not by default or as an easy option.
Maybe just a link to a HowTo here on the forum ...... it is after all a decision that requires some thought and IMO a thorough knowledge of what exactly could be the consequences.

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No much differences? :thinking: I didnt' have tried it yet

well, we have this thread :slight_smile:

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Yeah, but we might need a way to make certain returning subjects easier to find.
Even I lose quite a bit of time finding older relevant threads again .... and usually I still know what I'm looking for.

I think that the search tool of the forum should be improved, but it stills work pretty good, we only need to search in the correct places (categories), that's why changing the threads to the correct categories are important and of course having a descriptive title

Also, I think that some useless threads should be removed from the forum too, in order to not saturate the options of useless information (unless a "useless" question can be a common question, then it becomes useful), and moving offtopic replies to their correct category (for example nvidia topics to the nvidia thread, etc)