A "desktop" kernel in debian?
Hi everyone,
I've recently recompiled my kernel again, after running the standard
debian one, to include stuff such as preemption and a higher tick
frequency (1000Hz). It is hard to test whether this makes any
noticeable difference on performance, but I've found that it seems to
make the desktop a lot snappier. Especially using compiz (which is
still having problems on this box, but that's the crappy nvidia
drivers). Since I changed a few other things (notably target cpu and
apic) I can't be entirely sure that this is due to preemption, but it
seems the likely candidate.
Anyway, I'm writing this mail since it's quite troublesome to be
compiling your own kernel as a desktop user (even if you know what
you're doing) and many people out there seem to be doing exactly what
I did, e.g. download debian sources, change 3 options or so and
recompile. At least, it comes up regularly on debian-user. Therefore I
would like to ask whether people think it a good idea to add a lower
latency version of the kernel to the repository. It would then only
differ from the stock image in about 3 kernel options
(CONFIG_PREEMPT*, CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL and CONFIG_HZ_*).
I don't follow LKML myself so I'm not sure what the general consensus
among kernel devs is about the value of preempting. I realise my own
appreciation of the subject is quite vague. I'd love for someone to
fill in the gaps.
greets,
Wim
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