[LAU] Best realtime audio dstro for Eee

Ken Restivo ken at restivo.org
Thu Jul 2 19:11:19 EDT 2009


On Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 03:00:18AM -0700, Justin Smith wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 2:39 AM, david<gnome at hawaii.rr.com> wrote:
> > Raffaele Morelli wrote:
> >> 2009/6/30 Norval Watson <norv2001 at yahoo.com.au>:
> >>> Hi y'all,
> >>> I want to install a realtime audio distro on my new Asus Eee 901.
> >>> I need a 2.6.29 realtime kernel or higher to support the hardware on my Eee.
> >>> I have got the 2G RAM (haven't swapped it in yet).
> >>> AFAIK, options include:
> >>> DebianEeePC http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC
> >>> ArchLinux http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Asus_Eee_PC_901
> >>> Eeebuntu http://www.eeebuntu.org/
> >>> Indamixx USB stick, when it's available, (and it's not free)
> >>>
> >>> I have been using Debian unstable for some years so I'm most familiar with that.
> >>> Any suggestions welcome, particularly regarding optimizing the kernel.
> >>> TIA
> >>> Norv
> >>
> >>
> >> Debian testing here, 2.6.29.5-rt22, ASUS Mobo (don't remember exatly
> >> what model... I am at work now)
> >>
> >> Optimizing the kernel? ... it depends from your hardware but, apart
> >> from binary size, I can not really say if turning off wireless stuffs
> >> from kernel config could improve RT performances. I am sure somebody
> >> else can comment bettere on this.
> >
> > I'm slowly turning my wife's old laptop (2.8GHz Celeron, 768MB RAM,
> > saddled with older Intel chipset) into a synthesizer/effects box. It
> > currently has Ubuntu Studio on it. While I have the wireless antenna
> > turned off (we have no wireless network around here), I've never
> > disabled the wifi kernel modules or drivers. And it runs along quite
> > happily at latencies between 5-10 msec using an external USB audio
> > interface ...
> >
> > I seem to recall that the problem with wifi wasn't the presence of the
> > drivers, it was the fact that the system was incessantly trying to make
> > a wifi connection. Maybe that's something Network Manager does that
> > doing your networking using command line stuff doesn't?
> >
> > --
> > David
> > gnome at hawaii.rr.com
> > authenticity, honesty, community
> > _______________________________________________
> > Linux-audio-user mailing list
> > Linux-audio-user at lists.linuxaudio.org
> > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
> >
> 
> Yeah, there is a command line utility that searches for wireless
> access points and lists their respective signal strength etc.
> (iwlist), and I only run it if I think an access point should be there
> and I am not finding it or getting a poor connection.
> 
> It seems like networkmanager runs iwlist or does some equivalent on a
> frequent basis (even if it already has a wifi connection), and uses
> quite a bit of CPU doing it. I no longer need to worry about this
> since switching to debian, where the /etc/network/interfaces config
> file plus the ifup/ifdown commands that reference that configuration
> have served me just fine.

I have an EEE 1000 and I use it constantly with Debian, and have performed with it a good half-dozen times now, and rehearsed and practiced on it many more. I'm very happy with Debian-EEE. I created packages for the RT kernel and relevant drivers for it, and uploaded them here in case anyone wants them:
http://restivo.nfshost.com/projects/eee/debs/

I dislike the Network Manager intensely, so I turned it off. I just type "sudo iwlist ra0 scan" when I need to find what's out there. Nowadays I just use a Sierra Wireless USB adapter with the Sprint PCS network instead, and very rarely fire up the wifi anyway.

-ken



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