Run back-end and front-end on different machines.

There is a 64 bit version here
www.linuxcnc.org/testing-stretch-rtpreempt/
Most of us compile the kernel for whatever version of Linux we are using, mostly Linux Mint with Mate desktop environment.

PCW wrote: , really long latencys are _very_ often power management related

And failing hard drives and graphic cards with power saving options active.

Wow thanks!

"Most of us compile the kernel for whatever version of Linux we are using"
- Yep, that's what I did too. but I'd like to try something that has been packaged by the creators of LinuxCNC.

If you want an easy way to run the hardware and GUI on different hardware then you should probably look at Machinekit, which seems to specialise in running the realtime on a Beaglebone with a remote GUI.

But Machinekit has diverged quite a bit from LinuxCNC now, so this forum is likely to be less helpful.

Thanks, I'll look into it. But after the answers I received to my questions, I've changed my mind. Now I think, an educated an detailed setting of the machine both in BIOS and software are the solution to my problem. But thanks anyway It'd be useful to know how thinks work separated.

Hi,
It should be possible to run the graphics frontend on different machine and not having the Xwindows on rtai machine. This would help a lot when the PC works well in low latency setup but the graphics is bad, which is the case for a lot of older AGP cards - there was a "X regression" event, which dropped DRI support in drivers for most cards other than nvidia and ati. This means pentium 2 is quite enough for controlling the hardware, but it bogs down on axis display. The machine with X server can be any linux box with any kernel, but keep in mind that with this situation the backend machine still needs to generate and process the interface stuff.
More information can be found when searching for "remote X desktop", that can work on short distance LAN or with ssh over internet (but I'm not sure how bad it will be). The simpliest way:
on backend: on frontend: but THAT is certainly NOT suitable for any production as it is too insecure, there are better ways to securely connect X workstations. This is just typed from my head I did not try that now... It should work as a proof of concept if anyone wants to see if it helps in machine load or timing. There can be some iptables rules making it not work on some distributions.