XMMS and/or multitasking issues on linux?
 

I haven't been running linux long enough so I don't know what's the cause of this problem. I have RH 7.3 and using the default XMMS that came with it (can't remember the version #).

My machine is an AMD Athlon 1.6 GHz with 512 MB Ram and I have about 600 MB of swap space allocated. I'm using Gnome for a window manager.

Whenever I use XMMS to play MP3s while copying a bunch of files from my CD-ROM to the hard drive (same drive that XMMS is using to pull files from), whatever I'm playing gets choppy and is interrupted, (similar to having a poor audio stream from some net site..)

Is this problem due to limitations of XMMS or the linux file system, or something else? Is there a better MP3 player that can be used? Perhaps one that buffers more data or something?

Thanks,
Jay

Try commanding nice -n 19 before moving the files or run x at a higher priority.

You may want the preempt patch in your kernel.
The Linux kernel preemption project

check to make sure that there aren't any plugins enabled that you don't want (like echo and others)