On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 7:52 AM, Fritz Meissner <meissner.fritz(a)gmail.com> wrote: Caveat: I doubt I'm the level of expert you're looking for but I have written some kernel code and I read lwn too. :-) I don't think this particular lock has that much impact on audio. The low-latency gripes with the state of Linux had more to do with the ability to acquire RT privileges as non root and the risks of allowing user processes to have so much scheduling power over the rest of the system. Also, the lock has been in the process of coming out for years. So most of the benefits of it being gone have been available to us for quite some time now. That it's now unused by "core code" is noteworthy but if your audio driver still uses it then you still have it, and it might not even matter for your particular use case. The impression I have is that the latency provided by a default by the newer kernels is usually quite good. I'm running Arch linux which has 2.6.35.x available and on an i3 box I built this year and things are going swimmingly for me. -- Darrin