I believe that the whole low latency issue has pretty much been
talked to death and that all parties have pretty much given their
points, and nobody is going to budge on their thought processes.
Linus has stated his piece allready, so it is pretty much written
in stone.
So, since it has allready been stated that Linus will not include
Ingo's patches - WHY BOTHER ARGUING ABOUT IT? If ANYTHING, it
will just piss off Linus and other developers, and not accomplish
ANYTHING AT ALL for your cause.
Linux is all about "show me the source". In other words, if
nobody is willing to write what YOU want, then you need to either
write it YOURSELF, or get someone else to do so for you, or HIRE
someone to do it.
In order for ANY of that code to get included in the FORMAL
kernel, it will need to get past numerous 'code goons' (spoken
affectionately of course) and finally Linus. This procedure has
been occuring since 1991 and wont change soon. It has proven
quite effective in keeping the QUALITY of code extremely high in
the Linux kernel. It is also to note, that regardless of any one
individual's motives or operating system needs, the QUALITY of
code in the kernel ALWAYS comes before the QUANTITY.
In other words, if code is not deemed the right way of doing
things, or comes with bad side effects - such as poor
maintainability, then it just will NOT EVER get included PERIOD
regardless of the amount of complaining, whining, discussion, or
threats of using another operating system. Nobody that uses
Linux cares 2 shits, if someone threatens to use BeOS, Mac,
Windows or any other operating system because Linux "can't do
what they want." Other operating systems exist just for that
purpose.
So, now that we understand that unless a miracle occurs, the
official Linux kernel will NEVER do 100% hard real time, we can
move on to bigger and better things.
How can audio people get their software for Linux then? By
following other approaches. I myself would LOVE to use Cakewalk
for Linux, and many other audio apps, including multitrack
recording, mixing and digital effects, midi, etc.. NOT at the
expense of turning Linux into a blob operating system. I don't
want my system slow or kludgy just so my audio programs run
well. That is rediculous.
Here are thus some suggestions for the audio people and companies
to persue for their cause:
1) Patch the kernel on your own, or devise your own kernel
addons, etc.. and distribute your OWN CUSTOM Linux
distribution based upon RedHat or some other popular
distribution. Call it "Audiophile Linux". Since you have the
muscle with the audio software companies, it shouldn't be
difficult to get it going, and also it shouldn't be difficult
to get a niche market of customers interested in your low
latency version of Linux. Recommendation is to come up with a
fancy name illustrating the dist's high points of audio.
2) Use RTLinux, and distribute it as above.
3) Make a mutually beneficial business deal with RedHat or
another popular distribution to distribute the 'audio-kernel'
with the distribution as an install time choice for audio
folk, or to create a custom dist for you and put their stamp
on it. You could INCLUDE the audio apps such as Cakewalk, etc
WITH the distribution. This would likely entice would-be
users into purchasing the distribution.
Brainstorm mixtures of my suggestions above.. I came up with
them fairly quickly, so I'm sure that numerous other
possibilities exist. So long as the kernel interfaces used are
compatible between the audio kernel and the normal kernel, the
software will not be stuck to a small crowd so long as the low
latency patches are maintained by someone outside of the
mainstream kernel. Perhaps you could supplement Ingo's income
for doing so.
Just some suggestions and food for thought to try and see this
problem come to an end. I too would love to see professional
audio apps running under Linux some day, however not until it is
done CORRECTLY. That probably means a slight fork for this
special purpose which is definitely NOT general purpose.
Good luck with your solutions!
Take care,
TTYL
-- Mike A. Harris Linux advocate Computer Consultant GNU advocate Capslock Consulting Open Source advocate... Our continuing mission: To seek out knowledge of C, to explore strange UNIX commands, and to boldly code where no one has man page 4.
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