Abstract
This paper is submitted as the final work for obtaining the title
Cand. Scient. at the Dept. of Informatics at the University of Oslo,
Norway.
The paper is a case study of working implementations of soft real-time
features for Linux. The problems raised by multimedia applications
running alongside normal applications is discussed. A comparison of
the architecture of modern Linux versus traditional UNIX is given, and
the implications for soft real-time applications are highlighted.
Finally, some contemporary projects that implement various soft
real-time features for Linux are compared in a practical experiment
involving video, and software to support this activity is developed. A
workload is designed, and the use of a sophisticated profiling tool is
explained.