Tag: intel

Disable CPU mitigations on Linux Mint

To disable mitigations on Linux Mint, you need to edit the GRUB configuration file and add a kernel parameter. Here are the steps to do that:

  1. Open Terminal: You can open the terminal by searching for it in the application menu or by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T.
  2. Edit GRUB Configuration: 
    sudo nano /etc/default/grub
  3. Modify the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT Line: Find the line that starts with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. It usually looks something like this: 
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

    Add mitigations=off to this line. After editing, it should look like this:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash mitigations=off"
  4. Update GRUB: Save the file and exit the editor (in nano, you can do this by pressing Ctrl + X, then Y, and Enter). Then update GRUB with the following command: 
    sudo update-grub
  5. Reboot: Reboot your system for the changes to take effect: 
    sudo reboot

After rebooting, the mitigations should be disabled. You can verify this by checking the kernel command line:

cat /proc/cmdline

You should see mitigations=off in the output.

Optimize Intel WiFi Driver Settings in Linux

# Disable 802.11n to potentially improve stability
options iwlwifi 11n_disable=1

# Disable hardware encryption to offload encryption to the CPU
options iwlwifi swcrypto=0

# Disable Bluetooth coexistence to potentially improve WiFi performance
options iwlwifi bt_coex_active=0

# Disable power saving features to improve performance at the cost of higher power consumption
options iwlwifi power_save=0

# Disable Unscheduled Automatic Power Save Delivery (U-APSD)
options iwlwifi uapsd_disable=1

# Set power scheme to maximum performance
options iwlmvm power_scheme=1

# Enable antenna aggregation to potentially improve WiFi performance
options iwlwifi 11n_disable=8

To apply these settings, you would typically place them in a configuration file under /etc/modprobe.d/. For example, you could create a file called iwlwifi.conf:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf

Then, paste the configuration options into this file and save it.

Finally, to apply these changes, you will need to reload the iwlwifi module:

sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
sudo modprobe iwlwifi

Or, you can simply reboot your system for the changes to take effect.