The linux DAW thread

[audiojunkie]

Has anybody ever had any luck with successfully upgrading computer BIOS on Linux?
A lot of hardware vendors really only support MS Windows systems for BIOS upgrades (and BIOS upgrade software).

I was considering upgrading my BIOS but the software is labeled as "experimental", so I backed off.
What are your thoughts on this?

YMMV, but I upgrade everything every time an update comes out. It works flawlessly for me. I’m using Fedora, and it comes with FWUPD by default—such a great program!

[Tiles]

Has anybody ever had any luck with successfully upgrading computer BIOS on Linux?
A lot of hardware vendors really only support MS Windows systems for BIOS upgrades (and BIOS upgrade software).

I was considering upgrading my BIOS but the software is labeled as "experimental", so I backed off.
What are your thoughts on this?

The BIOS or better said the UEFI is OS agnostic. It starts before the operating system boots. It is part of the motherboard. So you don't update BIOS ON Linux or Windows. But simply boot into the UEFI, and follow the update instructions from your motherboard manufacturer. Usually you place the BIOS flash file on an USB drive, plug it in. And in the UEFI settings there should be an explicit option to flash the BIOS from the USB drive then. The rest is waiting.

Usually you can run the motherboard with the initial BIOS / UEFI that it came with as long as you don't need the newest features. A new processor for example that wasn't supported when your motherboard came out.

So my first question would be, are you in eager need to update? If not, leave it alone

[mjolnir]

@Tiles, you thoroughly answered all of my implicit questions. Thanks! Yeah, I don't really need to update. At first I was having sudden errors, but I found out that it might have been as simple as me erasing part of my GRUB commandline and needing to put it back. It turns out that I had accidentally changed the error log level to be too verbose and so I was getting flooded with infos, even after bootup and during shutdown. But I accidentally found the ArchWiki page on that topic ("Silent Boot") and it said to enter:

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="loglevel=3 systemd.show_status=auto rd.udev.log_level=3 

After I put that back, (without the "quiet splash" parts), everything has been normal and good again.

I had been temporarily worried that various parts of my system were failing, but I guess it was a false alarm from the verbose logging.

But you answered the questions in my mind about BIOS upgrade stuff. Since you know about it, I will trust your judgement and just leave it alone.
With my dumb luck I'd end up bricking the whole device. I just got this system about 1-2 years ago, so I probably don't need anything new.
Thanks again.

[audiojunkie]

@Tiles, you thoroughly answered all of my implicit questions. Thanks! Yeah, I don't really need to update. At first I was having sudden errors, but I found out that it might have been as simple as me erasing part of my GRUB commandline and needing to put it back. It turns out that I had accidentally changed the error log level to be too verbose and so I was getting flooded with infos, even after bootup and during shutdown. But I accidentally found the ArchWiki page on that topic ("Silent Boot") and it said to enter:

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="loglevel=3 systemd.show_status=auto rd.udev.log_level=3 

After I put that back, (without the "quiet splash" parts), everything has been normal and good again.

I had been temporarily worried that various parts of my system were failing, but I guess it was a false alarm from the verbose logging.

But you answered the questions in my mind about BIOS upgrade stuff. Since you know about it, I will trust your judgement and just leave it alone.
With my dumb luck I'd end up bricking the whole device. I just got this system about 1-2 years ago, so I probably don't need anything new.
Thanks again.

Seriously, look into FWUPD. As I mentioned previously, it is installed by default in the Fedora distro. This project has seriously made my Linux life so much better!!

[mjolnir]

Thanks, I will look into FWUPD.
Ahhh. At initial look, it looks kinda complicated.
I'm not sure if I'm up to this:

https://idroot.us/install-fwupd-manjaro/

...but it is also for Manjaro... so.... hmmm

[audiojunkie]

It’s not too bad. Those commands are simply installing the software, enabling the service and making it permanent, showing some commands you can use, and showing you how to install a GUI for it. It’s pretty straightforward.

[mjolnir]

Thanks. Actually, I'm just going to continue to install manually. Automatic services doing major things makes me kinda nervous. I don't even have an EFI partition. I'm running on MBR-BIOS mode (which is incompatible with FWUPD according to the page). Since my system is running okay without problems, I don't want to take any more risks by adding anything. When I was on Windows, disabling services was the thing to do anyhow.

On a totally different topic, today I found out that I'd somehow accidentally installed Gnome Desktop system items (even though I don't use the Gnome desktop). Some of them were even running in the background wasting CPU. So I removed them and everything's fine. It's funny noticing stuff like that sometimes.

[ThomasHelzle]

So: On an ASUS ROG STRIX laptop with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU with Radeon Graphics and a Nvidia Geforce 3070, I contemplate installing Linux in parallel on a spare external SSD. Scarlett 18i20 1gen interface, 32 GB Ram.

I tried several Linux distributions in the past (starting with Suse in 1996...) but always ran into trouble sooner or later, so never became a serious linuxer.
Now in light of the latest developments, I'd like to try again and wonder if for above laptop you guys would have any specific suggestions regarding distribution or settings.
I'm quite tech-savy on Windows, know my way around Linux but not a command-line-wizard I am.

Cheers and thanks!

Tom

[mjolnir]

I recommend using Manjaro without the AUR. You get the advantages of the ArchWiki without it being as difficult as Arch Linux. You can install pretty much only what you need and it's not hard to remove individual items with pacman (sudo pacman -Rndd theItemToRemove); it doesn't come with too much bloat. You don't have to fuss with repos as much as in the Ubuntus and Debian, and there's less risk of getting incompatible ones. Octopi is a nice front-end to pacman; you don't have to use Pamac; it's a bit like Synaptic Package Manager. Or, you could use Pamac for some things and Octopi for others. Again, it's safer to avoid using the AUR. I never use the AUR and my system is very stable lately.

I do use TimeShift for incremental backups, which I recommend also. It runs with an external drive via USB and is pretty fast.

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks.
I was trying AVLinux first and that gave me a security warning because of old certificates.
Then I looked at Ubuntu Studio, which seems pretty decent and worked right away with my audio system.
It has the advantage for me that it's already configured for audio.

I guess Manjaro would need more manual setup there? I'm not command-line-savy so having basic things already configured feels more like where I am right now. I can always grow into more involved distributions with more knowledge...

[mjolnir]

Manjaro isn't as hard as Arch. There's plenty of visual GUI stuff. You don't have to rely on the commandline for much unless you want to.
I wouldn't do AV LINUX even though it's okay because the whole distro is maintained by just one guy. If he gets sick or quits or dies then the whole distro will probably be kaput too. That's too big of a risk for me. Also, i didn't like the recent DE GUI choices on AV LINUX.

I found that I did more commandline fussing with Xubuntu and Ubuntu Studio because of apt/aptitude issues. And I didn't like that. I find pacman to be much easier.

I think almost all of the linuxes would require some adjustments to work better for audio, even if it's just selecting your hardware in the configurations. But that's not really hard.

If you are able to learn and use a DAW then you're already smart enough to learn and use Linux.

[planetearth]

So: On an ASUS ROG STRIX laptop with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU with Radeon Graphics and a Nvidia Geforce 3070, I contemplate installing Linux in parallel on a spare external SSD. Scarlett 18i20 1gen interface, 32 GB Ram.

I tried several Linux distributions in the past (starting with Suse in 1996...) but always ran into trouble sooner or later, so never became a serious linuxer.
Now in light of the latest developments, I'd like to try again and wonder if for above laptop you guys would have any specific suggestions regarding distribution or settings.
I'm quite tech-savy on Windows, know my way around Linux but not a command-line-wizard I am.

Cheers and thanks!

Tom

Linux is still having trouble with drivers for Nvidia cards—either their own, or ones provided by Nvidia. You should at least get decent graphics performance from the Nvidia, but you almost certainly won't be able to harness all of its power. (And in general, that's not a problem on a DAW computer, anyway.)

If by "installing Linux in parallel" you mean dual-booting Linux with Windows, I've been doing that for a few years (with an Nvidia card, too). Every now and then, the Linux bootloader ("GRUB") gets corrupted and has to be fixed. This can happen from Windows updates or Linux updates. The usual result is that you can no longer boot into Linux by default (assuming that's how you had it set in the first place). A backup copy of the GRUB file usually fixes this fairly quickly and painlessly.

Steve

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks guys!

Yeah, I had Linux installed in parallel in the past when I used a desktop machine, but these days I'm only using a laptop, so I'm using an external SSD for Linux.

And I got a deja-vu: The live version of Ubuntu Studio worked great, audio worked right away with my Scarlett 18i20, all seemed fine.
Installed on the external SSD and Tada, no audio from the Scarlett. I think I had exactly that problem the last 10 times I tried Linux. Had even some friends look into it who are more Linux savy to no avail.
And I thought in times of Pipewire it would finally work out of the box - as the live installer did...

Don't have the time for endless debugging ATM but if any of you have a hint what I'm even looking for, I'd be thankful.
The Scarlett shows up just fine, but doesn't make any sound. I tried the "Pro Audio" option (which worked in the live installer) and the full duplex. System audio of the laptop works, but not the Scarlett.

[mjolnir]

I think probably in reality, it would be better to install Linux to the hard drive and Windows to the external drive.
You are dual booting, right?

[planetearth]

For what it's worth, Windows really doesn't like booting from an external drive. Setting that up can be difficult and maintaining it would be even more difficult. And depending upon the BIOS/UEFI "secure boot" options on the PC, it could be even more difficult and lead to many problems down the road, especially with updates and application installations.

On the other hand, almost every Linux distro offers an option to run the OS "live", from a bootable USB drive or optical disc. Linux easily runs from pretty much any medium with enough space to support it.

Steve