[SLL] technically speaking, what might the vendor do?

[Mathew D. Watson]

I am struggling with a gigabit ethernet machine vision camera that 
randomly sends corrupted images when I run my app as a regular user 
(even when I renice it to -20 and set the frame rate really low, like 5 
frames per second). When run by root at 30 fps with no renicing, the 
camera almost never sends corrupted images. The problem is, I _really_ 
think it's a bad idea to run user apps as root. I said as much to the 
vendor and threw in that I consider requiring to run as root an API 
defect.  I received the following reply.

"
Machine Vision applications and processes are highly demanding on the 
host OS.  Since Linux is a non RTOS, we need to run the application as a 
super user to prevent other (non [Vendor] API) threads from interrupting 
the process.  This is not a "[Vendor] API defect", it is beyond our 
control or influence.
"

To my eye "it is beyond our control or influence" is not true, but I am 
not an expert (I just know enough to be dangerous).  Technically 
speaking, what might the vendor do? (short of using something like 
rtlinux or rtai)

Mat