Re: a joint letter on low latency and Linux

[Thomas Dodd]

Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> We understand that we could try to maintain a version of Ingo's low latency
> patches in parallel to the current kernel. But this is not a good situation
> for us. We would like to persuade several companies that produce applications
> and API's for audio+MIDI work to make their code, designs and programs
> available for Linux. We would like to be able to produce our own "real-time"
> applications and not have to tell users (who will likely know nothing about
> Linux, or computers in general) that they need to patch their kernel before
> using them. Neither of these goals are realistic given the current state of
> low latency support in the emerging 2.4.

My $0.02.

Choose a few distributions to "support" and
supply packaged kernels for them. Updating
the kernel for most distributions is simple
enough for average users. Now you aren't
asking end user to patch+compile the kernel,
just install an update. Some of the distributions
may even include the patch in their kernel releases.
(RedHat usually has a large patch list to the stock
kernel to fix bugs or add drivers.)

The apps you release coud handle all of this
in the installer. Just write a smart installer
that doesn't do bad things to the current system.
It could install the new kernel, update LILO's
config to include the new kernel, run lilo
to update the disk, and start the needed reboot
with the correct kernel. It should ask before
doing this though. Don't just install the kernel
and reboot. If LILO (SILO or MILO) isn't used
the user probably knows enough to reconfigure
their bootloader, so just tell them they need to.

	-Thomas