I haven't found a good and succinct description of what the -ck patch set does and that I could link to here, but here's what it says on the Arch -ck page:
"..many Archers elect to use this package for the BFS' excellent desktop interactivity and responsiveness under any load situation. Additionally, the bfs imparts performance gains beyond interactivity"
I don't know if there are objective benchmarks that one can use to demonstrate an improvement in 'responsiveness and interactivity'. Subjectively, however, I feel that there's a slight improvement. You decide for yourself.
Begin here
sudo apt-get install kernel-package fakeroot build-essential ncurses-dev mkdir ~/tmp cd ~/tmp wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/linux-3.9.2.tar.xz tar xvf linux-3.9.2.tar.xz cd linux-3.9.2/ wget http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/3.0/3.9/3.9-ck1/patch-3.9-ck1.bz2 bunzip2 patch-3.9-ck1.bz2 patch -p1 < patch-3.9-ck1patching file arch/powerpc/platforms/cell/spufs/sched.c patching file Documentation/scheduler/sched-BFS.txt patching file Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt patching file fs/proc/base.c patching file include/linux/init_task.h patching file include/linux/ioprio.h patching file include/linux/sched.h Hunk #6 succeeded at 2738 (offset -10 lines). patching file init/Kconfig patching file init/main.c patching file kernel/delayacct.c patching file kernel/exit.c patching file kernel/posix-cpu-timers.c patching file kernel/sysctl.c patching file lib/Kconfig.debug patching file include/linux/jiffies.h patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_ondemand.c patching file drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq_conservative.c patching file kernel/sched/bfs.c patching file kernel/sched/Makefile patching file include/uapi/linux/sched.h patching file include/linux/sched/rt.h patching file kernel/stop_machine.c patching file include/linux/swap.h patching file mm/memory.c patching file mm/swapfile.c patching file mm/vmscan.c patching file arch/x86/Kconfig patching file kernel/Kconfig.hz patching file kernel/Kconfig.preempt patching file Makefilemake-kpkg clean cat /boot/config-`uname -r`>.config make oldconfig
You might now be asked a long series of questions about how the kernel should be configured (or you might not be -- depending on what kernel version you're currently running). In MOST cases you can select the default option (i.e. hit enter) but you should still read each question and consider it. Making a mistake won't break your computer, so don't be scared.
Next, start the compilation (will take a while):
time fakeroot make-kpkg -j4 --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers sudo dpkg -i ../linux*3.9-ck*.deb
where 4 is the number of cores on your machine (note: it only has to do with compiling -- you can use the compiled binaries on any number of cores).
Anyway, that's all -- you've now patched, compiled and installed a new kernel. And it didn't even hurt.
