> >> This is something to consider.  While nVidia and ATI do not
quoted text
> >> actually make native OpenGL cards they do dominate the market to
> >> the detriment of the *NIX graphics market.
> > 
> > Solaris is some form of open source now, right?  What graphics/video 
> > chips do Sun's machines use?
> 
> Their 2D board is based on an ATI chip.  I presume that ATI gives them
> full details.
> 
> The 3D boards use 3DLabs chips.
> 
> I haven't checked to see if there are Open Solaris drivers for them.
> 
> AFAIK, they don't yet offer linux drivers for them.

If there are open source drivers for them, someone could port the
drivers to *BSD, Linux, etc.  Or use the info in the drivers to
write BSD/Linux/etc. drivers if the licence prevented porting.

It sure would be nice if Solaris, *BSD, Linux, etc. all used the
same driver interface and could share drivers.

quoted text
> > What versions of Unix block I/O to do other things?  It is normally 
> > I/O that gets preference.
> 
> I am talking about user I/O -- mouse and keyboard.
> 
> > You mention "distros", so is this something specific to linux?
> 
> My 400 MHz Linux box (with CONFIG_PREEMPT=y) stops accepting keyboard or
> mouse input from time to time.  This happens often with Thunderbird and
> Konqueror but happens with other apps as well.  While this happens, the
> disk access LED is flickering so it must be disk access that is blocking
> keyboard and/or mouse I/O (i.e user I/O).

I'm guessing that Thunderbird and Konqueror are large relative to the
amount of main memory, and Linux is paging/swapping.

quoted text
> >> I think that what you need to address this without rewriting parts
> >> of the Linux Kernel is to have a CPU dedicated to running X.
> > 
> > If so, someone needs to rewrite the Linux Kernel.
> 
> Yes, this may be needed.  The major issue is that GUI apps do not run at
> higher priority than other processes (user apps can not be set to nice <
> 0 except by root).  Also, the app for the window that has focus needs to
> have its priority increased automatically.

If you change focus to an app that is swapped out, it will take awhile
for it to become responsive.

Try running top(1) in a window and then getting the problem to happen.
If it is memory/paging/swapping, you could add memory, and/or add
RAID.

You could look into hacking your kernel to give the mouse and keyboard
a higher SPL (or whatever this is called in Linux) than disk.
Standard warning: Backup your data before running the new kernel, just in case.
_______________________________________________
Open-graphics mailing list
Open-graphics@duskglow.com
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics
List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)