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* Re: desktop and multimedia as an afterthought?
@ 2004-07-12 20:45 Albert Cahalan
  2004-07-12 23:54 ` Paul Davis
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Albert Cahalan @ 2004-07-12 20:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-kernel mailing list; +Cc: florin

Florin Andrei writes:

> 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.

You're right, but you imply that this is bad. It would only be
bad if _all_ of the kernel development team had the desktop and
multimedia issues very low on the priority list. It would be
far worse if everyone worked on multimedia issues.

> 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.
  
Reluctance is good. Reluctance keeps out bloat. Reluctance supplies
time to investigate alternate ideas that might be better.

> 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.

This is expected. It's how proposed features get widespread testing.

> 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."
...
> 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.
     
It's too bad that the multimedia community didn't participate
much during the 2.5.xx development leading up to 2.6.0. If they
had done so, the situation might be different today. Fortunately,
fixing up the multimedia problems isn't too risky to do during
the stable 2.6.xx series.
  
> 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.
  
Nah. People do forget about problems if nobody is reporting them.
Since the problem reports came in late, you get to be last.
 
> 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?

Much of that is about hot-plug, laptops going to sleep,
busy disks being ripped from the machine, support for
recent video card features, and so on. Multimedia is only
a small part of the big picture, even for desktop usage.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* desktop and multimedia as an afterthought?
@ 2004-07-12 18:57 Florin Andrei
  2004-07-12 19:12 ` Mark Hahn
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Florin Andrei @ 2004-07-12 18:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-kernel

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/



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2004-07-13 22:42 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 25+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2004-07-12 20:45 desktop and multimedia as an afterthought? Albert Cahalan
2004-07-12 23:54 ` Paul Davis
2004-07-13  0:18   ` Con Kolivas
2004-07-13  1:11     ` Paul Davis
2004-07-13  3:25     ` Florin Andrei
2004-07-13  0:24   ` Andrew Morton
2004-07-13  1:49     ` Thomas Charbonnel
2004-07-13 10:22       ` Andrew Morton
2004-07-13 11:01         ` Thomas Charbonnel
2004-07-13  3:22     ` Florin Andrei
2004-07-13  8:30     ` Takashi Iwai
2004-07-13 11:09     ` Kasper Sandberg
2004-07-13 12:09     ` [linux-audio-dev] " Martijn Sipkema
2004-07-13 14:55       ` Paul Davis
2004-07-13 22:37         ` Martijn Sipkema
2004-07-13 22:31           ` Fons Adriaensen
2004-07-13 19:12       ` Bill Huey
2004-07-13 20:00         ` Lee Revell
2004-07-13 22:44         ` Martijn Sipkema
2004-07-13 22:08           ` Bill Huey
2004-07-13 23:37             ` Martijn Sipkema
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2004-07-12 18:57 Florin Andrei
2004-07-12 19:12 ` Mark Hahn
2004-07-12 20:47   ` Paul Davis
2004-07-12 21:25   ` Florin Andrei

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