On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Scott Lavender <<a href="mailto:scottalavender@gmail.com" target="_blank">scottalavender@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> Brian, A few thoughts about the -rt kernel. My understanding is that the -rt kernel is a product of the -generic kernel with a -rt patch that is provide from upstream. Ingo NMolnar use to make the patch, but I believe someone, or a couple of someones, make it now. It should be noted that this patch was neither created nor available for all released kernel versions. This yields trouble keeping the kernel versions in Ubuntu Studio and Ubuntu aligned, which is desirable to many, many peoples and groups. Therefore, the official decision was to remove the -rt kernel was removed from the official archives (repositories). However, we are working towards getting the -lowlatency kernel into the official archives and hope to have that as the default installed kernel in Ubuntu Studio. That being said, many people still prefer the -rt kernel, among these I believe firewire audio interface users are the primary audience. As noted, Alessio has a PPA with the -rt kernel, which appears to be version 2.6.33. I should note that the kernel is maverick is 2.6.35, so using the -rt kernel from Alessio's PPA may yield better performance but with the loss of some hardware drivers and other improvements. This may not be a problem from some people, but it should be noted so that people are aware of the possibility. Finally, you might have experienced optimal (or at least satisfactory) results with the previous -rt kernel. This may have been the 2.6.31 -rt kernel. I contrast this with the 2.6.33 -rt kernel currently in Alessio's PPA. I hope this provides some useful information. If you have further questions, or if anyone has corrections to anything I said, please reply. Regards, ScottL </blockquote></div> That all makes sense. I'll do some more testing with Alessio's kernels and see if I can get them to work well. Mike, I have been able to get this particular MacBook to run very solid in the past, so I know it's possible. -- -Brian David