Preemptive Kernels

[Zaxon]

I was wondering when using the patched gentoo kernel, and having the preemptive option selected....does that make my kernel preemptive or do i still need to go get the preemptive patch.
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"Penguins can't fly, but they sure look cute!"

[phong]

The preemptive patch is already applied to the gentoo-sources, so you should be all set.
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"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."
-- Eric Hoffer

[Milez]

Yeah, to have the option you have to have the patch, so you're good to go.
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-=Miles Stoudenmire=-

Adopt a post initiative

[elzbal]

So I know, in theory, what this patch does. I'm not trying to run a real-time system, just a desktop machine. Will this patch actually provide any real benefit to me?

In other words, would you recommend this to 'regular folk'?

[kemical]

yea i dunno about the rest but it fixed my system nicely, no mouse stutter during compile etc. i loved it, of course that was gentoo1.2 with gentoo-sources-r5

i use vanilla now, but i would still recommend the gentoo-sources they are excellent
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.. ...kemical. ... .. ..

[rac]

For a contrary viewpoint, I would not recommend the preempt patch for regular folk. Many people swear by the Gentoo kernel patches, and I know that lostlogic and others do a lot of work to make them of as high quality as possible. That being said, they get nowhere near as much testing as the vanilla kernels, just because of the numbers of people using them, and there have been many threads in these forums where people have had strange and varied problems that went away when they switched to vanilla kernel sources. There was a point in August or so when kanuslupus suggested that I put "does the problem persist even when using vanilla-sources" in my .sig.

I would only recommend the gentoo sources to people who know what the various patches are doing, can recognize when problems might be kernel-related, are comfortable setting up multiple kernels alongside one another for testing, and are willing to do some kernel debugging if necessary.
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For every higher wall, there is a taller ladder

[jondkent]

Its depends upon what you wanna do with the system. If you are gonna use it as a workstation then then preempt patch should help you speed up the application you are using at that time as it is given a higher priority etc etc. If you are gonna use it as a server you would not want to enable it as there is no benefit and, in fact, might slow the server down.

Its also worth trying it out and seeing if you can gain any improvement, although this may be a little subjective. I always use this patch as I have found that it does improve the performance on my various workstations.

FYI in the 2.5.x series this patch has been folded into the main kernel source.

Have fun

Jon