[PD] Real-time Linux; hard req. and suggestions?

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Charles Henry hat gesagt: // Charles Henry wrote:

> I've started learning a bit about alternative kernels for real-time
> linux, and I've got some masochistic notion to investigate Linux From
> Scratch.  One of my friends says this is his favorite way to build a
> system...I have a lot to learn.
> I'm currently using Fedora Core 4 with the 2.4.19 kernel on a 1.6 GHz
> Sempron processor (could be upgraded to an Athlon64).  I'm not sure
> which system specs are most important for getting good throughput,
> front side bus, memory access speed...how to balance them?

If you run a stock 2.4 kernel you will get really bad latency
behaviour. You can fix this by using some realtime-patched 2.4 kernel
but I would recommend to go a different route: Just install a recent
2.6 kernel, enable preemptible kernel etc. in the config and live happily
with it.

Stock 2.6 kernels now have excellent latency behaviour in the range of
1-3 msec. The so called "hard realtime" latency that can be achieved
with Ingo Molnar's rt-patches will give latencies even below that, but
do you really need them? In my opninion most Pd users don't need them
and the time spend figuring out a good combination of rt-patch version
and kernel version is better spent optimizing your Pd patches.

Use Linux from Scratch if you are bored and have too much time on your
hands. It will not give you relevantly better performance and IMO is
not worth the effort. If you like to watch the output of make and gcc,
Gentoo will satisfy you as well, but if you rather spend your time
using, than compiling software, something like Fedora, Ubuntu or
Debian (my fav.) is a better choice. 

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__