Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/29/05, Dave Nebinger <dnebinger@××××.com> wrote:
> > Were I you, I would consider:
> >
> >  - If keeping X, switching to the absolute most minimal wm possible
> > (twm, ratpoison, ion), to see what effect that had.
> >  - If downstepping from X, investigating what programs run under
> > DirectFB  and seeing what effect that had.
> >  - If going cold-turkey off X, seeing how far you get with the
> > command-line and ncurses programs.
>
> I would also add the following: remoting X.  X is a hog, as Holly said, but
> there's no reason the X server would need to run on the same box as the
> ongoing recording session.
>
> Running two systems, one running X and handling the gui operations, and one
> running your audio apps, might provide enough of the separation to reduce
> the latency on the audio box.  Of course the two cards should probably be
> connected with at least a 100mb Ethernet connection (to eliminate the
> overhead of dealing with the network conversations for X).

This is an interesting idea actually. I currently run two boxes
anyway. All audio is connected between them using ADAT optical (i.e. -
red laser) or spdif so I've got 26 digital audio channels going
across. Maybe running remotely could solve some of this. Thanks.

>
> Another possibility might be your choice of filesystems (assuming the
> recordings are going to disk).  Different filesystems have inherent latency
> based upon their design - journaling adds overhead, btree maintenance in
> reiser adds overhead, etc.  Just using a simple ext2 filesystem for the
> initial recording followed by backups to a modern filesystem may have a
> measurable impact.

In fact it does. I wrote a short online paper about that a few years
ago. I use ext3.

>
> Going back to X, it is a hog both in cpu cycles and in memory; you mention
> having an amd64 but no quotes on memory.  My assumption is that such a
> system has a big chunk of memory, but I've learned what happens when one
> assumes.  Obviously a lack of sufficient memory can cause you some swapping
> issues whether you were aware of it or not.

Thisis a good point also. The machine has 512MB. This has been more
than enough on my previous 32-bit machines, but on this AMD64 running
the Gentoo 64-bit kernel it seems that memory usage is significantly
higher. On the 32-bit machine I seem to use about 300-350MB by the
time I have Gnome up and maybe Firefox open. I alomost have never seen
swapping.

On the AMD64 I'm seeing 450-500MB and a small amount of swapping every day.

I'm unclear about the 64-bit environment anyway. OK, it's 64-bit, but
I also have a pile of emulation libraries emerged to take care of
dependencies. I don't know when they are getting used, except for the
32-bit Firefox I'm running so that I get more multimedia stuff.

Anyway, more memory may well be a good thing to do.

Thanks for the ideas.

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