I'm experiencing nasty latency problems (stalls X cursor, Maelstrom arcade game :), etc) with Linux kernel 2.4.4. I did not have this problem with 2.4.3. I have Mandrake 8.0. I made sure that I compiled the 2.4.4 kernel with the older egcs 1.1.2 (although I did try it with the controversial gcc 2.96 with the same results). Both kernels were downloaded off of kernel.org (not Mandrake modified) and I used the same .config. Heres a description of my system: I'm using reiserfs Linux version 2.4.4 (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release / Linux-Mandrake 8.0)) XFree86 4.0.3 CPU: AMD K6 550 MHZ Memory: 128 MB HD: WDC WD300BB-00AUA1, ATA IDE DISK drive Chipset: VIA VT82C586 Both kernels had the following hard disk tuning parameters (excerpt from hdparm): /dev/hda: multcount = 0 (off) I/O support = 1 (32-bit) unmaskirq = 1 (on) using_dma = 1 (on) I even set the multcount to 8 with a slight increase in hdparm -t read performance, but still bad latency. The latency issues mainly occur with compiling programs. Compiling my autoconf based program and running Maelstrom at the same time served as a crude test. 2.4.4 would have large skip outs in sound and pauses in gameplay, whereas 2.4.3 runs very smooth. I also did an hdparm -t while running tests, I did not perceive the problem in this case though, suggesting something besides hard disk access. If anyone has any info on what could be causing this, please let me know. CC me as I'm not on the list. If there isn't any knowledge of this problem, I will try to track it down myself. I guess perhaps narrowing it down to a particular pre version and maybe doing some kernel profiling (I have no idea how) if all else fails. Lates.. Josh Green - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/