Comment 395 for bug 131094

It's very true that years ago I/O latency was much less of a problem
with Linux. When I first started using Debian full-time about ten
years ago, I never had problems with music skipping or anything like
that. I guess in the kernel development since then, throughput has
been prioritized over latency. Nowadays with 3.8 kernels and the same
hardware, it's trivial to make my music player skip under load, even
when its buffer is set to 30000 ms.

I haven't thought of trying the lowlatency kernel, so thanks for that
idea. I will be trying that!

Besides that, I wish Ubuntu would make BFQ the default I/O scheduler
(or at least build it in by default so we can easily switch to it,
instead of having to build kernels or install from third-party repos).
 Check out this video from a year ago:

http://youtu.be/J-e7LnJblm8

Seems obvious to me that BFQ is the way to go for desktops.

I have noticed lately that Deadline seems to result in less music
skipping than CFQ, so I can see why Deadline is the default now. But
Deadline doesn't support ionice, so I can't do things like run backups
or upgrades in the background at minimum I/O priority.