Linux Performance Tuning in 2026 – A Question of Balance (Part 1: Setup & Tools)
Tired of outdated “magic sysctl” advice that doesn’t work anymore?
In this no-BS series, I show what actually matters for tuning modern Linux (Devuan, Fedora, Arch) on real hardware in 2026.
In Part 1 we:
- Bust common myths (“old PC + Linux = fast”, “zram = free RAM”, “2–3× speedup from tweaks”)
- Set realistic goals — why we tune, and why 2–3× is usually impossible
- Install & validate the only tools you really need (top, vmstat, mpstat, iostat, sar, stress-ng)
- Run first stress-ng baselines to see what “normal” looks like on fresh hardware
- Share 50+ years of hard-earned lessons (mainframes to Ryzen)
No hype. No snake oil. Just real measurements, stories, and rules that survive testing.
Next video: Reading vmstat, mpstat, iostat, sar like a pro.
If you’ve ever chased “magic tweaks” that made things worse — drop your story in the comments.
Like & subscribe for more tuning that respects reality over hype.
Chapters
00:00 - Intro
03:31 - Mythjs
03:48 - Performance Tuning Servers
04:05 - When Performance Tuning Makes Sense
04:12 - Workloads
04:25 - How to Performance Tune
05:07 - Getting Started - Gather Information
05:33 - btop
05:44 - atop
06:05 - Setting a Goal
06:31 - Measure First and Gather Data
09:06 - Stress Everything
11:19 - hardinfo2 (aida64 like)
12:13 - sar
13:22 - Graphs from SAR
13:45 - A Few Thoughts