Linux 7.2-ck1 was announced today along with an updated MuQSS CPU scheduler for the Linux 7.2 kernel. Con Kolivas still isn't aiming to upstream the code to the mainline Linux kernel but is maintaining it on his own. This stems from being frustrated over the mainline Linux kernel development process over the past two decades.
Interestingly what led to Con's return to this Linux kernel work is that it becoming easier to maintain these out-of-tree patches thanks to AI/LLMs:
"The -ck patchset aims to improve desktop/mobile device responsiveness, interactivity, and gaming, mostly by replacing the CPU scheduler en-bloc with my EEVDF, configurable runqueue sharing, MultiQueue Skiplist Scheduler.
It's been 10 years since I originally abandoned the patchset for time reasons, but LLMs have made merging and development infinitely easier."
With these new patches, there is I/O aware CPU scheduling work, Intel P/E core hybrid aware load balancing, and various bug fixes.
"Changes since the last publicly announced release are features I planned years ago and never implemented that are new:
I/O aware CPU scheduling which accounts reads and writes to the calling task.
Kthread work on behalf of a calling task is accounted back to that task.
P/E core aware load balancing.
Skiplist structure size minimisation & micro-optimisations.
The mother of all resyncs to bring it up to 7.2.
Numerous bugfixes."
The announcement by Con Kolivas in full can be read on the Linux kernel mailing list . I'm now very eager to see how the -ck patches and MuQSS are performing in 2026 and working out on modern hardware... Benchmarks soon.