[linux-audio-user] Unnecessary Services

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Thu, 2004-12-30 at 17:08, Russell Hanaghan wrote:
> tim hall wrote:
> >Last Thursday 30 December 2004 06:34, Bill & Kath Worsfold "Songs" was like:
> >>Should I get DeMuDi, or can I make the music applications work with
> >>Mandrake? Is latency the main issue to watch out for, or are there
> >>others I'm not aware of?
> >
> >I'd seriously recommend DeMuDi-1.2.0
> >http://download.agnula.org/1.2/1.2.0/demudi_1.2.0_i386.iso
> >Probably the easiest install so long as you know your hardware doesn't need to 
> >use non-free drivers.
> >
> >Just for balance I have to say that PlanetCCRMA is also worth looking at.
> >http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
> >Mandrake also works well with thac's rpms;
> >http://rpm.nyvalls.se/index10.0.html
> >http://rpm.nyvalls.se/sound10.0.html
> >Mandrake doesn't use apt, so it can be slightly more fiddly for Linux newbies 
> >to install all the music apps. If you already know you prefer Mandrake, then 
> >stick with it. You should have access to a similar range of software.
> >
> >It's probably best to get a working system going with most of the available 
> >Linux Audio packages. If you use one of the music-oriented distros then you 
> >can let people like Free Ekanayaka, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano, Thac and 
> >the rest of the LADs who populate these lists worry about things like latency 
> >issues for you. It's hard to talk about these things in the abstract.
> >
> >Have Fun.
> >
> >tim hall
> >http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
> >
> The AGNULA folks need to do some serious updating to their website?? 
> Unless all they have is 7 audio applications...I assume there is more 
> recent stuff in a repository somewhere?
> 
> I use Mandrake and Thac's but it is a bit of a pain at the moment with 
> the 2.6 kernel stuff and the latest distro is not likely to work at all 
> with the 2.4 kernel.
> 
> I've been tempted many times to try CCRMA but untill someone can spout a 
> reliable RT kernel in packaged form with all the most recent updates, 
> whatever the distro may be,  I don't want to try anything new.

[I don't understand the 'I don't want to try anything new' part... :-]

Ha, a "reliable RT kernel" does not really exist at this point in time
(IMHO). The best low latency performance in the 2.6.x series can only be
obtained by using Ingo Molnar's realtime preempt patch. The latest
version (and maybe also the underlying 2.6.10-rc3-mm1 as well) is not a
model of stability... But when it works, it works very well indeed. 

Check out the top entries at the Planet CCRMA log:
  http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/changelog.html
There are now a couple of new kernels there, both bleeding edge (with
the realtime preempt patch version 0.7.33-04) and conservative (vanilla
2.6.10). 

-- Fernando