Enhancing Your Gaming Experience on Linux With Sched_ext - Changwoo Min, Igalia

Join us at the premier vendor-neutral open source conference, where developers and technologists come together to collaborate, share knowledge, and explore the latest innovations and advancements in open source technology. Learn more at https://events.linuxfoundation.org/ Enhancing Your Gaming Experience on Linux With Sched_ext - Changwoo Min, Igalia Gaming on Linux has improved dramatically in recent years, with platforms like SteamOS now seamlessly running Windows games. For a smooth and enjoyable gaming experience, the system must not only deliver high average frames per second (FPS), but also minimize stuttering — sudden FPS drops that disrupt the game-playing experience. On battery-powered devices such as the Steam Deck, it is equally important to balance performance with power efficiency. In this talk, we will explore how the Linux scheduler influences these aspects of gaming performance. We will introduce the sched_ext framework, which enables pluggable, user-defined schedulers, and dive into LAVD, a cutting-edge scheduler designed specifically with gaming and responsiveness in mind. You will gain insight into how modern scheduling techniques can optimize performance, reduce latency, and improve power efficiency for gaming on Linux.