[GnomeMeeting-devel-list] Re: GnomeMeeting on 2.6

[Craig Southeren <craigs postincrement com>]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 11:41:03 +0100
"Damien Sandras" <dsandras seconix com> wrote:

> Who is using the 2.6 kernel and is ready to test the latest changes with
> it?
> 
> Craig, given the fact that many packagers will compile on 2.4, what is
> your suggestion?
> 
> I tried on the 2.4 kernel to force the P_HAS_SEMAPHORES to 0 and I have a
> bad sound quality when compiling, which I had not with P_HAS_SEMAPHORES
> set to 1.
> 
> The problem becomes complex. Having a bad sound quality is not
> problematic. What was problematic on 2.6 was to have people having bad
> sound quality as soon as they were moving a window.
> 
> What are your comments?

As I am not a user of GnomeMeeting on 2.4 or 2.6, I cannot speak from
personal experience, but my feeling from the reports I have seen is that 2.4
works best with P_HAS_SEMAPHORES = 1, and 2.6 works best with
P_HAS_SEMAPHORES = 0;

Regardless, I think it is too much to expect that any system (Windows or
Linux) can provide the real-time performance required for VoIP when
performing compute intensive tasks like compiling. It would appear that
2.6 has altered the kernel scheduler in order to provide the best
interactive user feedback for actions like moving a window. While this
gives a good user experience for GUI users, it will inevitably affect
real-time performence for other tasks. For what it is worth, many
Windows users report a similar problem. Perhaps Windows and Linux are
not so different after all :)

I do not know what we can do about this trade-off. Either way, users
will be upset and it is always impossible to keep all of the people
happy all of the time.

  Craig


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