Omarchy Has Its Own Kernels Now - And One Of Them Is Special
Omarchy now ships its own kernels — and one of them, the BORE kernel, is genuinely impressive. In this video I explain what a kernel actually is and does (from the ground up, no assumptions), break down the differences between…
Omarchy now ships its own kernels — and one of them, the BORE kernel, is genuinely impressive. In this video I explain what a kernel actually is and does (from the ground up, no assumptions), break down the differences between stock Arch, Omarchy's own kernel, and BORE, then benchmark all three. The gaming results were a complete waste of time — so I wrote an app to prove what BORE really does.
CMD for the bore kernel
sudo pacman -S linux-omarchy-bore linux-omarchy-bore-headers
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OMARCHY NEWS FIRST
DigitalOcean's head of infrastructure has joined the project. American Cloud and another patron have signed up. There's now an OmarchyM section dedicated to Apple M-class chip support — after my M2 video, I can tell you how far that's already come. And a team has formed to bring Omarchy to Qualcomm Snapdragon. A unified Linux distro running across every chip architecture — that's the goal, and it's a smart one. Blackmagic do the same thing with Resolve and it's why you can dip into their world on any platform.
Also on the plugin store — I built a fish tank. Years ago I had to animate fish in LightWave, which meant buying a fish from the fishmonger, skinning it, and scanning it flat on the office scanner to get the texture map. I was not popular. Now AI does it in seconds.
WHAT IS A KERNEL
Proper ground-up explanation. It sits between your apps and your hardware. Apps make system calls, the kernel talks to the metal. It schedules what runs next, allocates memory, handles files and network packets, and drives everything through drivers. Windows has NT, macOS has its own — they just never talk about it. On Linux, the kernel is the conversation.
THE THREE KERNELS COMPARED
Stock Arch 7.3.3 — the baseline.
Omarchy 7.2.5 — security hardening, bug fixes, extra laptop drivers (speakers, webcams, keyboard docks — that Dell relationship showing), additional Intel tweaks. Android binder dropped, so no Waydroid.
BORE — same hardening and drivers, plus the BORE CPU scheduler. There's also an AD iOS I/O scheduler in there that isn't enabled by default.
All three are identical builds otherwise — 1000Hz timer, preemptive, same decisions throughout.
THE GAMING BENCHMARKS — A DEAD END
Cyberpunk, Doom: The Dark Ages, and Returnal across all three kernels. Average FPS difference: 0.4%. 1% lows: nothing. Frame pacing: nothing. Why? Because I play everything in Gamescope, where the desktop is already shut down and nothing is competing for CPU time. The scheduler has nothing to arbitrate.
SO I WROTE KBENCH
To actually demonstrate BORE, I built an app that simulates a foreground game while generating background load to fight it for CPU priority.
Idle — all three kernels identical, exactly as the game benchmarks showed.
Heavy CPU load — compiling code behind a game, BORE pushes the foreground app to maximum priority and holds the frame rate. It's noticeably better than stock.
Bursty load — processes kicking in and out. BORE wins consistently.
The key insight: there's no extra performance in the hardware. BORE doesn't make your CPU faster. It just apportions what's already there far more intelligently towards whatever you've got in front of you.
I also ran kernel operation tests — wake times, program launch, process creation. Same pattern: identical at idle, BORE ahead under contention.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Omarchy owning its own kernel means they can fix things. Hardware doesn't work? Recompile, patch, ship. That's a huge step up from waiting upstream.
KBench is going on Git so you can test your own setup. The BORE install command will be in the description — Ryan posted it publicly, so it must be fair game, but don't blame me if it explodes.
ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
I make videos about Linux, Omarchy, gaming, creative tools, and self-hosting. Subscribe if that's your thing.
00:00 - Start
00:03 - INTRO
04:03 - THE KERNALS
08:00 - OMA SHOW
12:56 - BENCHMARK
14:49 - K BENCH
19:41 - FINAL WORDS