I recently applied the SuSE version of the low latency patch to the SuSE 8.0 2.4.18 kernel. This is one of many ways to do it. CAUTION: Use at your own risk, no lifeguard on duty, YMMV, etc. 1. Install the SuSE kernel source from CD/DVD (package kernel-source). 2. Download the SuSE low latency patch from the SuSE FTP site: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/tiwai/suse-patches/2.4.18-suse-ll.dif.bz2 3. Make a backup copy of your kernel modules. I did this in case creating new modules deleted the ALSA sound modules or anything else unpleasant. su root cp -R /lib/modules/2.4.18-4GB /lib/modules/2.4.18-4GB.old 4. Make a backup copy of the fresh source. This is not really necessary, but I wanted an easy way to restore the original source if things went really bad without reinstalling it from CD. cp -R /usr/src/linux-2.4.18.SuSE/ /usr/src/linux-2.4.18.SuSE.old 5. Unbzip2 the low latency patch to create 2.4.18-suse-ll.dif. 6. Copy the patch to the kernel source directory: cp 2.4.18-suse-ll.dif /usr/src/linux 7. Apply the patch: cd /usr/src/linux patch -p1 < 2.4.18-suse-ll.dif 8. Search for rejected patches: find . -name "*.rej" -print find . -name "*#" -print 9. If no reject files found, do make xconfig (or your favorite kernel config utility), under processor options, set "low latency patch" to Y, and optionally "control low latency with sysctrl". Change any other options you want. 10. Proceed with normal kernel compile/install. Note: Since I only changed the low latency options and set the processor type in my kernel .config, I did not recompile my kernel modules (no make modules, make modules install). If you change other kernel options, you will probably need to do those steps. Results: The main reason I wanted to apply the low latency patch was to get my sound working smoothly in Quake 2. In previous kernel versions without any patches, my Quake 2 video was fine but sound was always choppy which I suspected was due to interrupt latencies. Now, Quake 2 is the smoothest, best running version I've played on any platform! On my laptop, I am getting between 80-100 frames/sec and the sound is awesome. I ran a very limited benchmark program I use for raw processing throughput and noticed a very slight decrease in background performance, but the trade off is well worth it for a desktop oriented machine. Best Regards, Keith -- LPIC-2, MCSE, N+ Got spam? Get spastic http://spastic.sourceforge.net