[pulseaudio-discuss] Distribution kernels and glitch-free (Packagers, read this!)

[Ozan Çağlayan]

Lennart Poettering wrote:

> Heya!
> 
> As one result of the alsa-time-test testing (see that last mail of
> mine regarding broken sound drivers) input I got from folks, I learned
> how very different the different distribution kernels actually
> behave. They are much more different than i actually assumed.

I'll try this test with Pardus to see what's our situation among the *popular*
distros :)

One of the fact of this huge difference between distributions is that a lot
of popular distros don't prefer to ship alsa-driver as a separate package, leaving
their alsa outdated in case of a lack of interest/time to backport the needed
upstream changes. I'm trying to keep up with alsa upstream by being a little bit bleeding
edge as we're shipping it as a separate package.

> 
> Apparently OpenSUSE ships a kernel (2.6.27.7-9-pae) that causes
> scheduling latencies of > 210ms. That is a lot. That is really really
> really a lot. Other non-Fedora distributions apparently do something similar.

Is that latency value obtained through your alsa-time-test or by another means
like verbosed PA output? I'm not good at PA stuff, sorry for this offtopic question.

> 
> 0) Fedora is awesome, other distributions suck ;-)

Every distribution has pros and cons, :)

> 
> 1) For fucks sakes: get your bloody kernels fixed. Enable preempt, set
>    HZ to 1000. Get rid of low-quality drivers that block the
>    CPU. Latencies of 210ms is *REALLY NOT NECESSARY*.

Is there *really* any distribution around who doesn't enable preemption? The timer frequency
can be a choice but not preempting the kernel is not sane nowadays.

> 
> Thank you very much,

Thanks for your interest.



-- 

Ozan Çağlayan
<ozan_at_pardus.org.tr>