[linux-audio-user] Re: favorite window Manager for making music?

[Mark Knecht]

On 2/21/06, Lee Revell <rlrevell at joe-job.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-02-21 at 13:19 -0600, Jan Depner wrote:
> > There's a bunch of information on that on my site (albeit outdated).
> > Tuning the disk drives is a must and it *will* help but there are
> > instances where the disk drive is busy and you can't get to it no
> > matter
> > how well tuned it is.  I prefer to minimize any chance of that.  You
> > have to remember that unless you're running RTLinux or VXWorks (or DOS
> > or VMS) you're not running a hard real time system.  Shit happens.
> >
>
> The -rt kernel with fuill preemption actually is a hard real time system
> (no one claims it is in the same league of reliability as QNX or
> VXWorks, yet...) - it should be able to guarantee response times.
>
> Of course the best RTOS in the world won't save you from apps that do
> disk or GUI stuff in a non RT safe way, or from buggy ACPI
> implementations that disappear the CPU out from under the OS for
> milliseconds...
>
> Lee

Just speaking logically, if badly written apps can cause a real-time
kernel to have some xruns, then isn't it true that a badly written WM
could do the same thing?

Either the kernel is safe and handles this stuff or it isn;t 'safe'
and cannot stop it. I understand from other conversations that some
apps are considered to be non-realtime safe. I do not understand how
anyone could ever know that a WM is truly rt safe. How?

Just because one uses Gnome, fluxbox or fvwm and doesn't see xruns is
not proof that it's truly rt safe. You cannot prove a negative,
etc....

- Mark