I'm ok enough with it to follow CLI instructions (recklessly, my first Linux experience was setting up a headless server for audio at home lol) - whats it like with packages for audio? Thats one thing I like about Ubuntu and which sounds good about Fedora is the external repositories for audio, and a lot of sites seem to offer deb or rpm packages. Would I end up having to learn about compiling and dependancies quite quickly ?

*notes to check the livecd*

Each one has successful users, that largely share thew same software base.
Your hardware, and the kernels you get tangled up with, will either taint,
or expedite your experience, the old addage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
is especially true.

Rolling release tends to reduce borked update attempts when a distro changes
core shared libraries, gui toolkits, and kernels in one swoop, without $adequate$
testing. And still, some linux forum heavies hate hate hate rolling release,
for their own good reasons.

If you did a headless server, Arch should be a stroll in the park, as
reading and following instructions are as important as memorized commands,
since linux is always on the move, never really mastered. (Linus slyly
guarantees he will always be $needed$ )

To me, its good luck to use one rpm linux, one debian linux, and a
puppy linux, each having a code source, that may fall a step back in the
race for perfection, having one of each lets you stay atop the heap at all times.
The alien command from apt/dpkg allows making rpms and debs of each other,
should one distro should lack the hottest new app in package form, you
might find it elsewhere and convert it.

alien -r libopenjpeg2_1.3+dfsg-4_i386.deb then
rpm -i libopenjpeg2-1.3+dfsg-5.i386.rpm

would convert a deb to an rpm, and install it.
(Oh please, Paul, don't read this )

And sometimes creates a trail of related dependencies, and in dark times, it all becomes a trash heap to be deleted but half the fun is trying

avlinux
arch linux
tango studio
puppy studio
ubuntu studio
fedora ccrma
suse generic
dynebolic
bhodi linux
remix os
pclinuxos barebones + debian sid
debian sid audio planted elsewhere
on and on and on

If you have ubuntu working, the record button
is a much better friend, than endless experiments.

synaptic, yum, smart, and yast are gui based package managers, and
puppy has it's own package thing.
Last edited by glokraw on Mon Jan 16, 2012 2:53 pm; edited 1 time in total

My linux install is cramped into a very small partition cause I wasn't expecting to use it much, so I'm definately needing to install something new on the 80gb i'm going to have free - and I do like tinkering as I've viewing it as an interesting way to learn more about computers.

Cheers for the comments and I'll have a good look into the options.

making a separate /home partition can save reconfiguring your web browser
and other settings during the experiments, choose not to format it in
the new install. If a major update shambles down the path, you can do
a clean install in a few minutes. Rename a nicely full .wine folder, and
copy over it's vsts folders once the new .wine is in place.
Cheers

give / 12 gigs if you will use lots of hydrogen kits, samples,
or need a root .wine for a special app. Also useful for some
remastering, and media burning space, when a glitch knocks out
your username from using an app normally, during bug season
Last edited by glokraw on Mon Jan 16, 2012 3:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

Thankfully I'd already read about doing this

Arch Linux has all the audio programs I've ever wanted to play with either in the regular repositories or the AUR. For example, Ardour 3 is in the AUR if you want to play with it before the final version is released.

Arch uses the pacman package manager, a command-line program similar to apt-get from the Debian families. It's very powerful. I love that it will remove all unused dependencies when you uninstall a program so you don't end up with lots of packages you don't need hanging around. Anyway, there are graphical front ends available for it for more casual installations but it's really trivial to use.

The nice thing about a rolling release is that you'll be up to date with current packages. I tried Ubuntu Studio a few times in the past but got tired of a lot of packages being neglected so you're stuck with older versions unless you want to compile them yourself. Since audio software is updated frequently you can stay on top of the latest features and bug fixes.

Arch makes for a small install. On the 1999 laptop that I mentioned earlier, I have ArchBang install on a 12 GB hard drive. I still have 9 GB free after installing all my goodies, pics, movies, tools, etc.

i am still confused with linux stuff - i upgraded to a Profire 610 and i am trying to use it with ffado under Ubuntu 11, but i am not sure if i am doing it right - i have no sound from any application.. jackctl starts and Rosegarden links to that.. i see some things appear in the ffado mixer, but also the blue link light stays flashing,, any suggestions where i go next?

Not familiar with the Profire 610 myself but this post might have some direction.

http://forums.m-audio.com/showthread.php?17006-profire-610-w orking-on-linux

here is an avlinux how-to, that might have crossover ideas.

http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?action=printpage  ;topic=516.0

main forum

http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=speii8 dd185cllsil74j644gk3&board=20.0

google trulan firewire
for lots of firewire-in-linux things, as Trulan posts a lot of solution ideas.

also https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudioPreparation

has info and links

I would use this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToQjackCtlConnections
and try to get connections to one instrument, before using Rosegarden,
which has even more prefs to fiddle with before success

http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/wiki/doc:manual-en#devices_in struments_and_connections

cheers

thanks.. it looks like i need to 'build' ffado before jackd so that it can recognize the firewire output..

I've used the Gentoo distribution for a good long while.

However, I discovered the "Cadence" toolkit provided by the KXStudio folks, which goes a long way toward a unified session management interface. This is an absolute godsend when dealing with a large number of programs that you need to string together, and which you will want to return to again later. However, the biggest advantage to this framework, an audio program launcher app called "Klaudia," only recognizes Debian and Arch frameworks when looking for applications to list for your convenience.

Since it would not work with my distribution of choice, and since I'm serious about making as much good, understandable documentation as possible for these tools, and since I am targeting people who may not have a 10-20 year experience with Linux, I've decided to jump over to Ubuntu (specifically, for me, Lubuntu) to resume writing from a distribution that has access to more of the tools my audience will need.

Hopefully, those of you who want to know how to use the tools, feel free to peruse my blog (link's in the signature), and let me know what you think.

I use Linux (Debian) most of the time in VirtualBox to have some development stuff running (Nginx webserver,the whole PHP stack and Git) and use the native Linux partition (Ubuntu) very rarely.
Last week I tried to use Jack because of testing what has changed the last month with audio and Linux.. Lol... It needs half of the day to get Jack running with Ubuntu Needs reading of manuals how to disable pulseuaudio and stuff.
Maybe it works better when using Ubuntustudio or other similar distribution but to be honest it's sometimes always a nightmare.

It needs a proper distribution where all this stuff works out of the box. Bundled with Harrison Mixbus, Ardour3 or in the future with Bitwig if it's released.
There is this time a growing desktop market with Linux (no idea why but there are some statistics with the same results). So it's not bad at all but with audio I see the same problems than in the past.

Lampros's blog is definitely great stuff. I've also written a few articles about Linux audio topics for the Linux Journal, an updated list of which can be found here:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/users/dave-phillips

Apologies for the shameless self-promotion, but people tend not to know where to find reliable resources for this topic.

Best regards,

Dave Phillips

http://linux-sound.org

Actually, I've found that Lubuntu is pretty light on the resources, allowing a better recording session. Additionally, it's nowhere near as dependent on PulseAudio, meaning that Pulse can be uninstalled without a lot of work.

Let me know if you're still having issues, and I'll try and help you avoid the nightmare parts.