Which sources to choose for a desktop?

[jonnevers]

going back a while there were some patch sets that offered a serious gain in responciveness and speed.

When lovechild was providing love-sources (c. 2.6.4 IIRC) they offered great improvements. That's history now but I just insert that in his honour , he descerves a medal.

I couldn't agree more. There was one point were I needed to run love-sources b/c it was the only patchset that fully supported my hardware. Thats all gone now, since those pathces went upstream.

I'm currently running beyond-sources. These sources have always worked well for me.

[Dominique_71]

I can not argue about the stability of my rt-kernel against another one, because it is more as one year ago at I use exclusively the rt-sources with the realtime-lsm. I can only say at they have been 100% stable. A must with such a kernel is at it must be no hardware shared IRQ, and if it is the case, it just run.

It still remain some applications that don't like it (old versions of xdtv as exemple). It doesn't come from my kernel but from bad coded applications not being realtime safe. And it is a shame when multimedia is becoming an essential part of the computer experience.

[Dralnu]

I can not argue about the stability of my rt-kernel against another one, because it is more as one year ago at I use exclusively the rt-sources with the realtime-lsm. I can only say at they have been 100% stable. A must with such a kernel is at it must be no hardware shared IRQ, and if it is the case, it just run.

It still remain some applications that don't like it (old versions of xdtv as exemple). It doesn't come from my kernel but from bad coded applications not being realtime safe. And it is a shame when multimedia is becoming an essential part of the computer experience.

I agree. Multimedia is nice and all, but trying to focus your efforts on such is kind of narrow-minded. Alot of linux folk code, write, and do some rather harsh things to their systems (trying to get Vista Pirated Edition to run in VMware...), while media (music, video, whatnot) is pretty much, if anything, easy on your system. Compare that to, say, compiling 2.6.19 && OO.o && kde-meta will make playing audacious (pre-leak-fixed version) and mplayer look like its idling.

I know, I've (almost) done that (only missed audacious. I use MPD, if I can get it to work. Grrr...). Patchsets are a Good Thing (tm). Some can focus on one thing while another focuses on another. Let the vanilla kernel just handle the basics it has to, and supply a good, versatile, working enviroment (while adopting patches from others if they are found to improve on a specific area which needs looking into).

[Dominique_71]

I can not argue about the stability of my rt-kernel against another one, because it is more as one year ago at I use exclusively the rt-sources with the realtime-lsm. I can only say at they have been 100% stable. A must with such a kernel is at it must be no hardware shared IRQ, and if it is the case, it just run.

It still remain some applications that don't like it (old versions of xdtv as exemple). It doesn't come from my kernel but from bad coded applications not being realtime safe. And it is a shame when multimedia is becoming an essential part of the computer experience.

I agree. Multimedia is nice and all, but trying to focus your efforts on such is kind of narrow-minded. Alot of linux folk code, write, and do some rather harsh things to their systems (trying to get Vista Pirated Edition to run in VMware...), while media (music, video, whatnot) is pretty much, if anything, easy on your system. Compare that to, say, compiling 2.6.19 && OO.o && kde-meta will make playing audacious (pre-leak-fixed version) and mplayer look like its idling.

I know, I've (almost) done that (only missed audacious. I use MPD, if I can get it to work. Grrr...). Patchsets are a Good Thing (tm). Some can focus on one thing while another focuses on another. Let the vanilla kernel just handle the basics it has to, and supply a good, versatile, working enviroment (while adopting patches from others if they are found to improve on a specific area which needs looking into).

I know that. I play music and a linux kernel + alsa + jack is the best cheap solution for doing music with my box. And the result is outstanding. It is why I use the rt-sources. But I speak for me, and it is also why in my first post, I say at one must first define what he or she want to do with a linux box.

I am also using electronics CAD as the geda. A rt-kernel is maybe not the best optimization for that kind of work, but I don't care so long I can play some music when spice is running its calculation.

On the other hand, many feature of Ingo Molanr's rt patchset are slowly migrating into the vanilla kernel, and portage have a pam version that is r-Limits enabled. (r-Limits is just another way to do what the rt-lsm is doing, it mean to fix the priorities of a rt-system). As realtime preemption slowly come into vanilla implies at the applications must become realtime safe. And I am very happy at this stuff will come into vanilla, because at in a multimedia oriented world, an OS that don't have a very good multimedia support will just disappear.

I think at it must even be possible to run a rt-kernel on a server. Choose a Hz value of 100 in the kernel config, and do a config for pam-rlimits or the rt-lsm that will set a higher priorities for the network and the user that run the server. It will be interesting to do a test. Maybe at it will not be so good, but maybe at it will be great. I don't know.

[luqas]

My own . I like to stay semi current with my kernels, even the pre builds. CK patches dictate what version I use (2.6.20-rc7 is out, but only ck patch for 2.6.20-rc6 is out). I add some of the Gentoo patches with fbsplash and vesa-tng.

Probably doing it the hard way as there are probably kernels out their that already include these patches, but it keeps me semi up to date with the newer patches out there.

[batistuta]

In my particular experience, ck shows a more responsive system than gentoo-source. I'm not talking about benchmarking, I'm talking about starting a terminal and it popping up directly. I'm talking about audio not interrupting. I'm talking about smoother internet browsing. All subjective, which is what I care about. I don't run a server so I don't care about background services, just how the thing "feels" on me.

One point about CK scheduler: sometimes hyper-nice applications execute too often. For instance, I was running a dd_rescue on a CD that was talking about a week, and I wanted to give it nice 19. Even though I was expeting it to run on idle time only, the thing was still hoging my machine. Con states that with his sources, even nice 19 applications get a chance to run, which is not what I wanted. This was the only case when I've rebooted into gentoo-sources and felt better there.

So as everyone said, you are free to try for yourself. I encourage this because you might see a difference. Ck-sources are quite stable (in portage) and I personally find beyond an excellent kernel. Iphitus does an outstanding job in testing the thing before releasing it. I've never had a compile issue or crash with his kernel.

I would stay away from highly experimental kernels like no-sources. Don't take me wrong, they are great kernels to play and their maintainers are quite active and helpful. Cheater is a nice guy, always listeting and helping people around. I find experimenting with different schedulers lots of fun and I've done it in the past. But I would not consider them because you've explicitly said you want a stable kernel, which they are not. If you are able to compromise for some compile errors and unlikely (but more likely than with other kernel) crashes for fun and possibly more performance or responsiveness, give them a try.

Never forget that playing with kernels is not that dangerous ofr a normal "hobby" or "fun" machine. You try a kernel. Doesn't work? Crashes? Just reboot and select a new one. Keep a gentoo-sources always there (unless you need reiser4) and play with them. This is not as risky as playing with a new compiler or testing ~x86 branch. I mean, going back to gentoo-sources is a matter of seconds.