Recent vanilla Kernels for Debian based distributions

Motivation

For me, Debian is the obvious choice for a server. But sometimes I need a more recent kernel. As I am lazy, I do not want to build the kernel and shuffle around the deb-files on my machines, so this is where this repo comes in.

Kernel Configuration

I used the Debian kernel configuration found in /boot/config-* and imported it using make oldconfig and used the default values offered.

A linux kernel also knows make deb-pkg as a target, so packaging is done in a breeze.

Attention: This kernel is NOT signed.

FAQs

Debian Kernel from vanilla sources

Kernel.org recent kernel sources with the trusty old debian config.

Sources:

• https://kernel.org

Changes:

• enabled virtio RNG as a hardware RNG for me to be used on KVM guests
• Added exFAT support
• Added Landlock support

VM Kernel from vanilla sources

Kernel.org recent kernel sources with debian config as a base, most of the drivers stripped and tuned to run on a VM

Sources:

• https://kernel.org

Changes:

• stripped drivers except for VirtIO, Xen, etc
• set ‘MQ Deadline’ as the default IO Scheduler
• set default TCP congestion control to be BBR
• Added Landlock support

Gentoo based kernel

Kernel.org recent kernel sources with Gentoo Patches tuned for Gameservers running as KVM Guest

Sources:

• https://kernel.org
• https://dev.gentoo.org/~mpagano/genpatches/

Changes:

• enabled virtio RNG as a hardware RNG for me to be used on KVM guests
• Added exFAT support
• Added Landlock support
• Enabled ‘kernel self defense’ settings

Gentoo based VM kernel

Kernel.org recent kernel sources with Gentoo Patches tuned for Gameservers running as KVM Guest

Sources:

• https://kernel.org
• https://dev.gentoo.org/~mpagano/genpatches/

Changes:

• stripped drivers except for VirtIO/KVM/Qemu
• set ‘MQ Deadline’ as the default IO Scheduler
• set default TCP congestion control to be Westwood+ for better networking over WAN/WLAN
• CONFIG_HZ set to 1000Hz for better responses
• Preemption Model set to Desktop for better respones
• Maximum number of CPUs set to 8
• Enabled ‘kernel self defense’ settings

Installation

Debian

1. Add the repository:

   curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/debian-kernels/buster/script.deb.sh | sudo bash
   

2. Install the kernel

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install <kernel-flavor>
   

   kernel-flavor can be any of vanilla-kernel, vm-kernel or gameserver-kernel

Any other distro supporting debian packages

1. Download the zip files from the release page
2. Unzip the archive
3. Use dpkg -i to install the packages (dpkg -i *.deb works fine on Ubuntu as well)

Non-DEB Package distros

You may want to try the program Alien to convert the package to the format of your liking. (Example: alien --to-rpm /path/to/file.deb) If this doesn’t work, you can convert the packages to be a tarball and unpack the kernel and modules into your system.

Sponsors

A big thank you to https://packagecloud.io/ for providing me with repository hosting for those packages as it wouldn’t be possible for me to host the repository on my line here.