{
  "id": 1465219,
  "title": "Con Kolivas Revives \"-ck\" Patches & MuQSS To Improve Linux Desktop Responsiveness",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/17/con-kolivas-revives-ck-patches-muqss-to-improve-linux-desktop",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-08-17T10:26:08.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phoronix",
    "slug": "phoronix",
    "url": "https://www.phoronix.com/news/Con-Kolivas-Linux-Patches-2026"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Con Kolivas has revived his -ck patchset, which aims to enhance desktop and mobile device responsiveness, interactivity, and gaming performance. The patchset primarily replaces the CPU scheduler with EEVDF, configurable runqueue sharing, and MultiQueue Skiplist Scheduler. It has been ten years since Kolivas originally abandoned the patchset due to time constraints, but the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) has made merging and development much more straightforward.\n\nSince the last publicly announced release, numerous features have been added to the patchset, including I/O aware CPU scheduling, Kthread work accounting, P/E core aware load balancing, skiplist structure size minimisation, and micro-optimizations. The patchset has also undergone a \"mother of all resyncs\" to bring it up to date with Linux kernel version 7.2. Additionally, a multitude of bugfixes have been implemented.\n\nMichael Larabel, the principal author of Phoronix.com and a long-time contributor to Linux hardware support, performance, graphics drivers, and other topics, is the lead developer of the -ck patchset. Phoronix.com was founded in 2004 and has since published over 20,000 articles on Linux hardware, performance, and benchmarking. Larabel can be reached via Twitter, LinkedIn, or through his personal website, MichaelLarabel.com.",
  "summary": "Huge surprise this morning! Longtime Linux users may recall the out-of-tree work done years ago by open-source developer Con Kolivas... And as part of that his work on the Brain F*** Scheduler that evolved into the MuQSS scheduler, all in the name of working to improve Linux desktop and mobile responsiveness. While a number of years ago he decided to retire from this out-of-tree Linux kernel…",
  "key_points": [
    "Con Kolivas revives -ck patchset to improve Linux responsiveness",
    "EEVDF scheduler, configurable runqueue sharing, and MultiQueue Skiplist Scheduler implemented",
    "Michael Larabel leads development of -ck patchset"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}