KX mini manual

Unofficial support for the KXStudio Linux distribution and applications.
More info at http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/

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daeavelwyn
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by daeavelwyn »

And so, how am I supposed to install correctly wine and reaper ? Which wine version (wine-rt ? wine 1.6?) should I install reaper in my /home or in the /opt as it was done before ? If someone could give me some help about the steps I should follow :)
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

I can't say I've tried the latest KX wine packages out yet - F?

I needed to update the wine / REAPER chapter on this very issue and planned to do so soon but in the mean time, have you tried Tracktion 5? I prefer its interface to REAPERs, Tracktion is Linux-native and free (as in beer).

Tracktion is still in beta but is already more stable and feature complete than Ardour 3 and from what I hear maybe Bitwig too. As for running Windows/wine plugins under Tracktion, I'm looking into that later. T5 supports Linux native VST and LADSPA plugins currently.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

In another thread, falkTX corrected my erroneous presumption that Carla 2 can currently work as a VST plug-in although it is a planned feature so if you really wanted to use Windows VSTs under Linux Tracktion right now you'd prob need to use Jackass, Carla (or another external VST host) and a session manager. I don't like to rely on wine and windows VSTs anyway and such a config involves too much for me to seriously consider using it.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

daeavelwyn:

I though you might be interested to know that there is now limited support for Windows VSTs under Linux Tracktion:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 6acc96b499

Compat. leaves a lot to be desired but should improve as Tracktions general VST support improves.

Have you got round to trying T5 yet or are you set on using REAPER under wine?

F / Mr Wolf /everyone interested in KX:

As for updating the wine/REAPER section of the manual, I'm not sure what its fate should be for a few reasons. The manual was targetted primarily at the DVD distro of KX, which no longer includes wine nor REAPER. Also, T5 wasn't available when I wrote the manual. I doubt F will be including T5 on the KX ISO r even in the repos for the same reason he took REAPER and wine out but these days I recommend Tracktion instead off REAPER to Linux users who aren't happy with the open source DAWs. I think its prob worth keeping at least the bits that relate to Cadence but the REAPER config might make more sense being moved onto the wiki?

If good compat wth Windows VSTs is a priority, you'll have more luck with REAPER currently but Tracktion's plugin compat has been improving with every release and it gets updated frequently. We may never see a fully native/working REAPER for Linux and even if we do it'll likely be non-free like the Windows and Mac versions.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

Added gxtuner to the apps list, which should've been there all along. I'm pretty sure I've tried all the tuners for Linux but gxtuner is the only one I've ever had work properly.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

I finally installed KX 14.04b this weekend. I've not got to use it much yet but I just wanted to give falkTX some initial feedback on its installation.

Despite having my laptop connected to the net via ethernet, I was unable to read the release notes during installation. Firefox opened but it said it couldn't connect to the release notes page.

A small problem that has been carried over from the 12.04 installer is that the text in the 'Edit partition' window is hard to read as its a dark grey font on a darker grey background.

The good news (for me at least) is that VAAPI hardware video decoding for Intel HD GPUs works fine under 14.04, which wasn't the case for 12.04. Playing a 1080p h264 video under VLC used about 37% of my CPU under 12.04 - this dropped to about 10% just by upgrading to 14.04 but after installing and enabling the VAAPI driver it fell to 1% CPU usage.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

falkTX wrote: That's because I never wrote them.
That explains that one then!
falkTX wrote: I wanted to fix the Cadence auto-start issue and network password saving first, those 2 were showstoppers.
The 1st is fixed, the 2nd to be very soon.
I forgot to mention the Cadence auto-start issue. Hopefully your fix will also cover the issue with the ALSA bridge that has emerged in 14.04 where both Stop and Start are often greyed out after starting JACK and you need to do a 'Force Restart' before you can enable the ALSA bridge. I never saw this happen under 12.04.
falkTX wrote: A screenshot of the issue is very welcome.
I have emailed the screenshot to you.

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that 14.04 would auto-detect SSD drives and auto add discard to the fstab mount options. No such luck, which is a shame as Windows has done this (TRIM auto-enabled for SSDs) since Windows 7.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

I need to clarify the ALSA bridge bug under the current Cadence package / 14.04.

JACK and the ALSA bridge both auto-start on boot successfully but if you stop JACK, both Start and Stop for the ALSA audio bridge get greyed out until you hit 'Force restart'.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

The start and stop buttons for aloop become greyed out (when JACK is running - I know aloop depends on JACK being started) only when Cadence/JACK has been started automatically at boot, stopped and then started again. If I manually start Cadence via terminal or shortcut I don't see this bug.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

If you can't spare 10GB or so for a 14.04 partition then you could install it under Virtualbox, qemu or whatever.

I have successfully shrunk Linux (and Windows/NTFS) partitions using gparted many times before without any issues.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

Have you had chance to look at this yet Mr F? 14.04 being the new LTS and the base of the KX distro now, I'm sure you'll need a 14.04 install to debug something else like this before long!
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

F:

You can reply here http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12786 instead of us getting OT and clogging this thread.
tangerine
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by tangerine »

Thank you for this manual. Helped me decide that I need to switch to 64-bit KXstudio.
Initially I downloaded the 32-bit version of KXstudio, as I thought that would improve compatibility.
But then I noticed that all ubuntu packages come with -i386 suffix, which supposedly means that they are poorly optimized for even as old a hardware as my 2007-made laptop with Core2Duo CPU.

I'd suggest this little bit of useful information appear in the "Downloads" section on the KXstudio site, somewhere around the .iso download links, so new users can make a better judgement than my initial one:
If your machine allows for it, the 64-bit version is recommended as it usually works faster. Note that you can still run 32-bit software under a 64-bit installation but not the other way around.
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by danboid »

Now that 14.10 is out, its prob about time to update this manual.

The chapter that needs the largest overhaul is 'KXStudio and Free Software' as most of the non-free software has been removed from the KX ISO so much of it no longer applies, esp. the 'Specific KXStudio non-free software' section. This chapter was largely the work of Mr Wolf so I'm hoping for his input in updating it.
daeavelwyn
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Re: KX mini manual

Post by daeavelwyn »

Hey guys !

Just want to mention that a french version of kxstudio manual now exists in french here : http://www.linuxmao.org/KXStudio

See you
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