Can't help with compiz since I've disabled it permanently
Unfortunately, Ubuntu has jumped on the PulseAudio bandwagon, which means you'll be having issues with sound for a long time. I don't think that there is an easy way to turn that thing off.
For the pulseaudio issue :
- "embrace" ( cit ) pulseaudio :
http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3458.msg29083#msg29083 ,
http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3458.msg29253#msg29253 - update openal :
http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3458.msg29270#msg29270- uninstall pulseaudio in favour of alsa
[...] renicing [...] would require root privileges.
Uhm ... not exactly : you must be root to launch OA with nice or to renice it by command line , but you can manipulate /etc/security/limits.conf for assigning to your user or your group a higher priority ; the default content of the file appears as following :
$ sudo cat /etc/security/limits.conf
# /etc/security/limits.conf
#
#Each line describes a limit for a user in the form:
#
#<domain> <type> <item> <value>
#
#Where:
#<domain> can be:
# - an user name
# - a group name, with @group syntax
# - the wildcard *, for default entry
# - the wildcard %, can be also used with %group syntax,
# for maxlogin limit
#
#<type> can have the two values:
# - "soft" for enforcing the soft limits
# - "hard" for enforcing hard limits
#
#<item> can be one of the following:
# - core - limits the core file size (KB)
# - data - max data size (KB)
# - fsize - maximum filesize (KB)
# - memlock - max locked-in-memory address space (KB)
# - nofile - max number of open files
# - rss - max resident set size (KB)
# - stack - max stack size (KB)
# - cpu - max CPU time (MIN)
# - nproc - max number of processes
# - as - address space limit
# - maxlogins - max number of logins for this user
# - maxsyslogins - max number of logins on the system
# - priority - the priority to run user process with
# - locks - max number of file locks the user can hold
# - sigpending - max number of pending signals
# - msgqueue - max memory used by POSIX message queues (bytes)
# - nice - max nice priority allowed to raise to
# - rtprio - max realtime priority
# - chroot - change root to directory (Debian-specific)
#
#<domain> <type> <item> <value>
#
#* soft core 0
#* hard rss 10000
#@student hard nproc 20
#@faculty soft nproc 20
#@faculty hard nproc 50
#ftp hard nproc 0
#ftp - chroot /ftp
#@student - maxlogins 4
# End of file
A reboot is required after introducing changes to this file, but
pay attention to not do anything strange here .
Anyway the default kernel coming with Ubuntu ( GENERIC ) is not optimized for a low latency interactive desktop :
# GENERIC
...
CONFIG_HZ=250
CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY=y
...
For a low-latency desktop the kernel should be recompiled with :
# GENERIC
...
CONFIG_HZ=1000
CONFIG_PREEMPT=y
...
As alternative you can use a realtime kernel ( linux-image-rt ) or compile your own RT kernel ( I wrote a
generic guide - a bit outdated - ) with FULL Preemption
Another alternative is compiling your own kernel by patching the latest vanilla (
http://www.kernel.org/ ) with zen patch (
http://zen-kernel.org/ ) which allows a lot of tuning and offers also the opportunity of using another scheduler that improves the system interactivity ( BFS = Brain F u c k Scheduler )
