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

Ralf Mardorf ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net
Wed Jun 24 10:45:55 UTC 2009


james morris wrote:
> 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.

I guess (if needed) separating rt and bread-and-butter Linux by having a 
dual-boot is an acceptable solution. A user with nearly no knowledge 
could install a comfortable distro for the everyday desktop environment 
and another for real-time usage. Even if somebody don't have any trouble 
with his Linux install, he might wish to have a safe Linux for 
productions and another Linux to have fun and fun sometimes means to 
risk things, you won't risk for a installation that needs to be stable 
all the time, that's why a dual-boot has also an advantage, if there 
will be a joint venture for distro/ desktop developers and rt 
hardliners. I have a bad mobo and for rt e.g. I need to set irq priority 
for especially the one port where the MIDI is connected to. I don't 
think things like that should be done by the desktop environment. This 
seems to be impossible.



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