From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261682AbUGLS6C (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:58:02 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261724AbUGLS6C (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:58:02 -0400 Received: from mtvcafw.sgi.com ([192.48.171.6]:31475 "EHLO omx3.sgi.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261682AbUGLS55 (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:57:57 -0400 Subject: desktop and multimedia as an afterthought? From: Florin Andrei Reply-To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Type: text/plain Organization: SGI Message-Id: <1089658659.15341.56.camel@stantz.corp.sgi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.6 (1.4.6-2) Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 11:57:40 -0700 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org I'm not a kernel developer. I don't watch this mailing list too often. I use Linux for pretty much everything, and especially for multimedia (capture, process and edit video, music and sound processing, MIDI, etc.). I'm interested in anything that could make my system work better for my multimedia apps. I used the Con Kolivas patches very early on, and i'm also watching with interest the recent preemption patch posted by Ingo Molnar. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that at least a part of the kernel development team has the desktop and multimedia issues very low on the priority list. The CK patches floated around as separate patches for a long time, even though they brought significant improvements to the kernel w.r.t. desktop and media. Now the stock 2.6 kernel has a pretty bad problem with the latency. Also, there seems to be a reluctance in accepting the autoregulated swappiness patch, even though it markedly improves the overall behaviour of the system as a desktop. I am not familiar with the intricate technicalities of the Linux kernel, so there might be purely technical reasons for keeping multimedia improvements at an arm's length. But on the other hand, there are many Linux users, myself included, that repeatedly noticed how bad the stock Linux kernel is from a multimedia perspective and how big are the improvements brought by these seldom-if-at-all-included patches. The CK patches have devouted "cult followers". Projects such as PlanetCCRMA, which attempt to build a multimedia-ready Linux distribution, are running kernels patched with the CK patches by default. On the Linux multimedia mailing lists and forums, one can often hear advices in the vein of "use such-and-such patch if you want your system to do any serious multimedia work, the vanilla kernel sucks." And rightly so. If i reboot my computer into Windows and perform the same multimedia tasks, there are fewer chances of it skipping frames or otherwise behaving improperly for multimedia work than on Linux running the vanilla kernel. I mean, go read the forums. No one in the multimedia community uses the vanilla kernel. They could be all wrong, sure, but there's lots of them. :-) There's a feature of the human brain to see patterns everywhere - i think i see a pattern here. :-) It's like the desktop in general and multimedia in particular matter a whole lot less than anything else on Linux. It seems like there's a split-brain situation within the Linux community, with the core kernel developers sitting on one side of the rift, and the multimedia people on the other side. Now, i remember someone saying, a while ago, that the server stuff is pretty much done, and the interesting things are going to happen on the desktop. That sounds plausible, but if the kernel has poor support for typical desktop scenarios, how are those big desktop improvements going to take place? I'm not saying that the whole thing happens on purpose. I'm just saying that perhaps the latency and swappines issues and all might deserve a bit more attention. Thank you, and i'm looking forward to constructive criticism. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/