Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

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protozone
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Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by protozone »

Does anybody have any experience with Bodhi Linux?
I am considering an attempt to turn it into a DAW system.
I like that it only comes with about 5 programs; that's maybe even ideal as a starting point.
But it seems to have slightly mixed reviews. It's based upon Ubuntu.

What do you think?
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by ssj71 »

I used it a little for just a generic computer, its fine but as soon as I needed to install something from source it was a bit of a pain since its pretty basic. I had to install a bunch of stuff manually. Personally for a DAW I'd rather start from Debian or vanilla ubuntu and add the KX repos, install your preferred DE, etc. My preference isn't necessarily right though. You might consider arch or even gentoo if you really want to get your hands dirty and pick all your apps. I've only used those a little bit so I can't comment much other than I know there are people making music on nearly every major distro. If you have time it doesn't cost to try them all, if you don't have time, well, thats why I stick with kxstudio on Debian (or ubuntu).
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by English Guy »

I tried it but in the end opted for Debian. I found it clunky compared to Debian and Xfce.

Whether you use Bodhi or Debian make sure to add the kxstudio repos to get the best most up-to-date music packages.
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by glowrak guy »

protozone wrote:Does anybody have any experience with Bodhi Linux?
I am considering an attempt to turn it into a DAW system.
I like that it only comes with about 5 programs; that's maybe even ideal as a starting point.
But it seems to have slightly mixed reviews. It's based upon Ubuntu.

What do you think?
I've used Bodhi when Enlightenment was the default gui, and it was fine,
as you say, you get a barebones system to customize.
The default Moksha gui is very ugly compared to the many
Enlightenment themes which were well crafted over the years. Moksha is first to go
in my book. I use lxde as a session alternate to 'E', if some temp compatibility arises.
The audio part is down to adding a few repositories, and one's config skills,
thankfully that's well documented these days,
and RT or low-latency kernels are easy to install.
On an SSD install, you should have a speedy system.
Cheers
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protozone
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by protozone »

Thanks for all the replies! Wise words. I appreciate it.

I guess I will just have to try and see.
I will probably try Debian again as well. And maybe Gentoo, if I can handle that.

I really like the idea of starting with almost nothing, and just adding in what I like.
I've done the KXstudio repo thing before, but it's not my favorite technique. It's OK though.

But I do like the idea of keeping the system as minimal as possible.
It seems like Xubuntu is getting slightly bigger than I expect.
Even Puppy Linux comes jam packed with stuff.

I truly only want audio playback, wine, and a file manager which doesn't insult me :lol: . Everything else it would be nice to install myself.
Of course stuff like display settings is OK, but preferably not too much stuff.

I'm tired of having to remove Samba, ssh stuff, cups stuff, graphics stuff, office junk (YUCK!!!!), games (ah, c'mon!), and bluetooth is a nice gimmick, but it's a profound security risk according to historical security sites. Even if it's ok these days, I really don't need/want that. Networked printers?!??!! are you kidding me? :lol:

It would also be cool to have only the fonts I chose. I'd probably start out with about 10 tops.
Probably 2 linux fonts, 2 windows fonts, 2 mac fonts, 2 aesthetic fonts, and 2 technical fonts. I can't read any other languages, so it doesn't matter to me if they show up in a wierd way due to lack of international font support. Ubuntu Studio kicked my arse with it's about 500-1200 fonts installed.
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by tramp »

Even, if I ain't like what you wrote, (sorry me, but what you wrote sounds to histrionic to me), I'll give you a hint for a debian/sid based distribution which provide iso's for no-X (no desktop, no X-manager, even without X-org)(nox) or if you want a bit more, (xorg) only desktop with fluxbox manager (nothing more). Anything else you've to install by your choice. So really bare bones, but debian based.
Check out one of the mirrors for nox or xorg mentioned here:
https://forum.siduction.org/index.php?page=8
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protozone
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by protozone »

tramp wrote:Even, if I ain't like what you wrote, (sorry me, but what you wrote sounds to histrionic to me), I'll give you a hint for a debian/sid based distribution which provide iso's for no-X (no desktop, no X-manager, even without X-org)(nox) or if you want a bit more, (xorg) only desktop with fluxbox manager (nothing more). Anything else you've to install by your choice. So really bare bones, but debian based.
Check out one of the mirrors for nox or xorg mentioned here:
https://forum.siduction.org/index.php?page=8
hey thanks, i'll check that out.
I'm not histrionic, by the way. I know somebody who has that and read about the diagnosis.
That's definately not me. I'm just enthusiastic about linux DAW stuff as a hobby and I type fast.
So I can easily flood the average forum with tons of content because unless I hold back, I think a lot and type a lot.

I recently gave myself an "internet-curfew" because I need to spend more time making tunes than talking on the internet.

One good thing, though, I took a look again at WattOS, and it's pretty much nearly everything I'm looking for, no more, no less.

I know how to use Ubuntu-compatible stuff really well now, so it works out.
It's not much bigger than your average Puppy Linux download and I already installed it and it didn't take much time to do the main stuff I like to do.

I was able to install linux-lowlatency too.
So now all I need to do is maybe install WINE-staging and my typical other stuff and I think it really might outperform my current other system.

It doesn't usually matter, but when I get into large amounts of audio multitracks, nowadays I have to increase my audio buffer in REAPER and that starts to hamper MIDI overdubbing. And earlier in the year I even had some recorded buffer underruns which messed up my WAVs. That's pretty rare for me and I fixed it, but I lost the otherwise pristine contents of that tune. So trying to get a leaner system is actually worth it.
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by Jack Winter »

protozone wrote:It doesn't usually matter, but when I get into large amounts of audio multitracks, nowadays I have to increase my audio buffer in REAPER and that starts to hamper MIDI overdubbing. And earlier in the year I even had some recorded buffer underruns which messed up my WAVs. That's pretty rare for me and I fixed it, but I lost the otherwise pristine contents of that tune. So trying to get a leaner system is actually worth it.
You could also start freezing or rendering tracks when you are finished with them, so that the daw only has to playback audio files. Also if using reaper, check out sub projects. With that you can select tracks and turn them into a sub project that contains the midi/audio tracks and fx. In the master prj you'll have a rendered audio file that you can even edit, but you can still enter the sub prj to change fx, content or what have you. Kind of a freeze on steroids :)
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Re: Experiences with Bodhi Linux?

Post by protozone »

Jack Winter wrote: You could also start freezing or rendering tracks when you are finished with them, so that the daw only has to playback audio files. Also if using reaper, check out sub projects. With that you can select tracks and turn them into a sub project that contains the midi/audio tracks and fx. In the master prj you'll have a rendered audio file that you can even edit, but you can still enter the sub prj to change fx, content or what have you. Kind of a freeze on steroids :)
Thanks Jack. I do regularly freeze. I freeze a lot and have assigned keyboard shortcuts to those commands.
If I didn't freeze, I wouldn't be able to accomplish a lot of the sounds I get because I do a lot of dsp of WAV files from recorded VST instruments. For example, I like to slow down the playback rate of some recorded sections to 0.5 and allow it to go down and octave. And then I'll freeze the results and crossfade mix that with some other frozen sound.

Probably the main reason why I freeze alot, isn't just because of the CPU, but because I can then examine the waveform for transient spikes or dropouts and even them out without having to compress.
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