Since some time already, different patches are being written for the Linux kernel, which improve the CPU scheduler. The CPU scheduler, is that part of the kernel, that's responsible for assigning CPU time to the different task running on your system. If you sometimes experience problems with sound stuttering or your mouse becoming jerky while running other CPU intensive tasks, then this is definitely a problem caused by the task scheduler.

Con Kolivas has been maintaining an alternative scheduler for some time. His Staircase scheduler was designed with interactivity in mind, especially for desktop systems, where people want their system to be quickly responsive under all kinds of workloads. This scheduler has been optimized a lot through the years, and as such is very stable. Still there are some rare cases where "starvation" is possible.

At the start of March, Con Kolivas published a new scheduler, which was called RSDL (Rotating Staircase DeadLine scheduler) at first, and has been renamed to SD (Staircase Deadline) afterwards.

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