[PLUG] Thanks! -- linux on 166?

Craig myboysherman at attbi.com
Mon May 6 19:20:16 UTC 2002


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I thought linux did that already.  Perhaps I am confusing something else.  I 
thought I read something about preemptive multitasking vs cooperative 
multitasking with respect to Macs.  Don't Macintosh and Windows operating 
systems currently support pre-emptive multitasking?

Is 2.4.x cooperative multitasking?

Is there more to this?

I've been bragging about this feature for over a year now, and your telling me 
I've been full of sh*t?  Crap!  I'm going to get a ribbing over this.  My Mac 
addicted friend (ironically named Joe) will find out that I really don't know 
what I'm talking about.  My faked "savvy user" status will evaporate!   :-o

At any rate, this sounds like a feature I want.  Thanks again for the tip.

Craig




On Monday 06 May 2002 10:51 am, Michael Smith wrote:
> 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
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