[PLUG] Thanks! -- linux on 166?

[Michael Smith]

The preemptive patch works as follows:

Normally multitasking is done by time slicing.  Processes wait in a que and are
dealth with in order (generally).  What the preemptive kernel patch does is if a
process needs attention right now, it sends a little preempt (like a hangup
signal) and the kernel attends to its needs.

It's like Joe at home with his Significant Other (SO).  Joe has all the things
that he needs to do for himself, such as reading the perl documentation and
building his relational database on his personal mysql server.  So he's working
away.  His SO needs the trash taken out.  She sends a preempt, making Joe quit
working immediately so that he can take out the trash.  Joe takes out the trash.
Joe then returns to processing his own job que as he sees fit.

The cool part about it is that the processes that usually send the preempts are
either processes that are part of user interaction (mouse and keyboard drivers)
or IO activities (buffering MP3's to play so they don't skip).  You get a small
speed increase usually with the preemptive kernel, but your MP3's don't skip, and
your mouse is more responsive.

The patch has been folded into the 2.5 series of kernels so in the future you
won't need to patch.

--Mike

Craig wrote:

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> Plug Gurus,
>
> I really appreciate all the tips.  All of your posts were helpful.
>
> Although I haven't had a chance to fully read all the links, ROX, RULE and the
> laptop howto are all bookmarked.  (ROX might just go for a test drive on my
> daily driver.)  I'll be googling the preemptive patch since I have no clue
> what it is, but it sounds interesting. (smiley face goes here)
>
> Thanks again,
> Craig
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--
"Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he'll come up with something
that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that
will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas *Fscking* Edison."  --Neal
Stephenson, Cryptonomicon