2.6.29-rc6-rt Linux Kernel README (Mar 10, 2009) Ivica Ico Bukvic http://disis.music.vt.edu This kernel is primarily designed for MSI Wind netbooks/Ubuntu. While in theory, it should also work on other platforms, YMMV. The kernel was compiled against default Ubuntu 8.10 config with minimal changes to accomodate RT patches. For those interested in compiling their own kernel, attached is the config file used by this version. WHAT WORKS *Stable latency down to 256x2 (likely limited by my netbook's Atom-based hardware) using internal and external soundcards *Suspend *Hibernate *SMP (MSI Wind has hyperthreading-enabled CPU, not sure about genuine SMP machines) *All (yes, you heard me right) hardware is supported out-of-box including webcam and rt2860 wireless *Everything feels a bit snappier *All of the aforesaid features work with Compiz enabled WHAT DOESN'T WORK *Currently, I am unaware of anything that does not work on my MSI Wind (as unbelievable as it sounds--this must be the first such statement I've ever uttered since I began using Linux over a decade ago, Yay!). However, battery life is definitely lower. Using "idle=mwait" kernel boot option makes battery life manageable, effectively doubling it. Still it is considerably below the vanilla kernel's setting. On a 6-cell battery on the MSI Wind, expect to get close to 3 hours of battery life with average use, whereas with vanilla kernel you could get as much as 4 1/2 hours. INSTALL *Use dpkg to install headers and kernel and you should be set *To improve battery life add "idle=mwait" (without quotation marks) at the end of the "kernel" line in the /boot/grub/menu.lst, so that the line reads as (not sure if the root value will be the same on your machine): kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.29-rc6-rt3-disis root=UUID=53428a43-9b59-47fa-8647-3495b876f0c8 ro quiet splash idle=mwait IMPORTANT! When installing on Ubuntu 8.10 you will need to move nvidia-common out of the /etc kernel/postinst.d/ folder. This is a known Ubuntu bug. On my netbook, I have permanently removed this file with no side-effects (obviously in part since I have no NVIDIA hardware). Others have reported that once the kernel is installed they could move nvidia-common back into the said folder without any observable side-effects. YMMV. DISCLAIMER As usual, kernel packages included in this folder come with no guarrantees. For all I know, they may make your computer explode. That being said, it has been purring happlily on my hardware now for several days without a hitch. LICENSE All packages are released under the GNU/GPL license. For more info on the license please visit: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. For the sake of reducing redundancy, the kernel source and rt-patch are not mirrored here. They can be obtained from http://www.kernel.org and http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/ respectively.