[PlanetCCRMA] FC2 and Planet CCRMA: status report

[Ryan]

Hi Nando et. al. from the "early adopter"!

I've been off-list for awhile (mainly due to fc2's miserable default
kernel).  Madwifi and networking sucked big-time for me with the 2.6.5
krap kernel.

On Fri, 2004-05-21 at 20:26, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano wrote: 
> Hi all... there is preliminary _applications_ only support for Fedora
> Core 2 in the usual place[*] (but no updates to the web pages yet).

Awesome!  Thanks for you efforts!

> Fedora Core 2 includes the newer kernel 2.6.x, and ALSA instead of OSS,
> so if you do a clean install you will have ALSA running (hopefully).
> Regretfully the Fedora Core 2 kernel (2.6.5 with pathes that make it
> almost 2.6.6) does not have preempt turned on (ie: does not have the
> best possible latency),

Yes, as noted above 2.6.5 sucks for me too and doesn't really seem tuned
in any way for that coveted "desktop" crowd.  Jackd performance is
miserable on my lappy.  And alsa most certainly *didn't* start out
"running" on my clean install.  Thanks to the good ole CCRMA
instructions it is currently working though.

> and has firewire turned off.

And for a good reason, it doesn't work :-), seriously even with the
2.6.6 arjanv kernel I can't get firewire working (at least not enough to
be able to mount a firewire drive).

> I have an alternate kernel based on 2.6.6 (based on
> Arjanv's unofficial 1.370 build) almost ready but there are latency
> problems with video (at least with the Radeon chipsets) that I'm (ahem,
> well, actual kernel gurus, not me) trying to pin down - and apparently
> with other stuff as well.

Other than firewire issues I'm finding Arjanv's unofficial
kernel-2.6.6-1.376 build to be quite useable.

> So, in the meanwhile you could use Fedora's
> kernel but you won't be able to run jack with realtime priority as a
> non-root user. I should probably try to release a kernel asap even with
> the latency problems, better than nothing...

Eh, might be better to wait and just let people use the shite-tastic
default kernel... I have a feeling there's going to be a whole lotta
updating going on with this kernel.

> No need to say it if you have read this far, but just in case: I would
> recommend against upgrading to FC2 at this point :-)
> So, that's all for now....

Having gone through it, I'd have to strongly agree with Fernando.  Don't
do it yet.  Wait for a good kernel.

> It's been busy!
> Enjoy!
> 
> -- Fernando
> 
> [*] If you _still_ install FC2 :-)
> 
> Add this to /etc/apt/sources.list (the new Planet CCRMA apt comes with
> this preconfigured)

BTW, this worked wonderfully for me, thanks.

-ry