[LAD] palm pre [was Re: [ANNOUNCE] Safe real-time on thedesktop by default; Desktop/audio RT developers, read this!]

[james morris]

On 24/6/2009, "Patrick Shirkey" <pshirkey at boosthardware.com> wrote:

>It would be helpful if things that could make a big impact will
>continued to be discussed within the LAD community. However this is a
>difficult situation. No matter if the discussions are starting prior to
>implementation or post implementation the general direction of the
>arguments tend to be quite emotional.
>
>Is it just because audio guys have a bit more artistic temperament than
>most other developers?

I don't think this adds much to what has been stated by Fons and others,
but perhaps it explains a little?

I'm not a hardcore audio developer like most of the guys here, but I've
been making audio/music/noise, and coding, since the days of 486sx25s
and windows 3.1. Back then, and for many years after, it was a real
concern to be able to disable as many irrelevant (to audio) processes in
the system as possible (as I'm sure you're aware).

Now I have a pretty capable system, but when I want to run RT audio apps
I still want to disable as many irrelevant processes on the system as I
can.

For this reason I really dislike the big monolithic desktop environments.
There are several applications tied into them (some serious, plain
useful, or just fun) which I'd love to have working but which force me
to install all sorts of software I really don't want or need - along
with all sorts of processes running in the background.

So it feels a bit freedom eroding. The choice seems to be between a
system which 'just works' but which wastes system resources on things
I don't want, or a system which I have to spend hours setting up,
constantly have to deal with the idiosyncrasies of, but which is as fast
and powerful as it could be.

The notions of old, to raise the potential for system resources to be
only used for the job at hand (ie audio) are still strongly rooted and
people don't like it when they feel their freedom to use systems in
this way is threatened by forcing them to install software and have
running processes they don't want.

James.