LinuxMusicians

Hey Filipe, just make both.

duck and run away . . .

I've just this week bought a 2009 iMac so i've been giving dual boot audio some serious thought.
I'd love to see a kxstudio iso as the chances of just installing it and firing it up would be high. It would be good for noobs as well and driver compatibility is at an all time high, I think.
However, the difficulties that you have had in getting neon to boot plus the hard work involved in maintaining it, plus the fact that the Ubuntu studio team are going to move to KDE plasma - https://ubuntustudio.org/2018/05/ubuntu ... y-14-2018/ plus the fact that fedora jam already uses kde plasma leaves me wondering if there is any real point in another KDE plasma distro. The fact is that it looks lovely and works well.
And also, I would like to use fedora jam which already uses KDE plasma as I prefer selinux to apparmour, but there is no current way of installing the kxstudio repos.
I've also been really liking gnome 3, for its capacity to rapidly switch apps and to keep me clutter free, so I will vote to improve the repos and documentation.
If fedora packages could be sorted that would be a dream come true.
The fedora jam spin is not well supported and there is currently no installable low latency kernel that I can see as the planet ccrma repos are not updated, so I have to build one anyways and the security/limits file needs to be edited etc. So having the wealth of apps and plugins available that kxstudio offers would be of real use.
Otherwise I will go with Ubuntu studio when it is realeased as plasma.
Will you continue to maintain 32 bit repos? Ubuntu studio are dropping support for 32 bit which seems a bit of a shame, as Linux works well for older machines and still hold their own with audio production, but if the general trend is to drop 32 bit support then it will mean less work for yourself.

KXstudio repos are much more important for the whole linux audio community than a conventional ISO-packed distro.
i think, the latter should be considered as a bonus that used to be, nice to have, but could be sacrificed.

how about putting a shout out for maintainers for the iso?

rghvdberg wrote:And don't we have avlinux which incorporates the kx repos anyway?

It kinda used to be that AVL represented the light side of DE's with LXDE (and later XFCE4) and KXStudio gave folks a full-featured experience with KDE so with both projects available people could at least get in the neighborhood of what they were looking for, for everyone else the KX Repos are reasonably compatible aren't they? For AV Linux I don't know of any packages or plugins that have given me any problems that were specific to the Desktop Environment. If you're mostly installing DAWs and plugins they are pretty DE-agnostic anyway.

IMHO KXStudio should continue with a really nice balls-out KDE-based ISO, many people who use the so-called Audio Distros are newbies coming from other platforms and ISO's are a great way to test hardware and dip their toes in, If you have fast hardware and are coming from the latest Windows and Mac experience KDE doesn't appear as a step down. I would use KDE but my comps are all 10 years old plus so XFCE is a better fit and I know it inside and out.

I would agree with you there about the iso, but then ubuntu studio are dropping XFCE and moving to KDE plasma in the next release. They are also dropping support for the 32 bit platform, just in case any of your machines are old enough to use that.

As it happens, what you said about the balls out KDE distro of KXstudio for the sake of Windows users testing the water and noobs dipping their toes, is a really valid point.
If there are just repos, then I would imagine that they won't necessarily be as widely known as the case where the iso is also available. I don't know how important that might be, but I would hope that users of other distros were aware of the KXStudio repos because they are so totally useful.
The only thing that I'd really like to see is them being extended in terms of their packaging to other systems, such as redhat variants like Fedora, and if possible to Gentoo or other distros as well (if they don't use debs or rpms). However, out of all the things that one might do, that sounds like an inordinate amount of work.
If I can be of any help, at any stage, then please let me know.

Hi all,
I think the idea of having an ISO for windows / noobs is great in theory, in reality installing kxstudio is not necessarily an easy process for a windows user / noob (it wasn't for me). Adding repositories is the least of your worries if you are installing linux for the first time, even making a usb stick that worked took an evening.

And unless the ISO stays up to date with support for hardware, it's even less likely to support new users. I for instance have not been able to install kxstudio 14.04 on my main laptop because neither the wifi nor ethernet works and I couldn't be bothered troubleshooting that.

So yea, although I was exicted about kxstudio 18.04 I think it's best to focus on the repositories.

XIL

kx studio and av linux are great distro simply used for audio/video/grafichs and more productions.....Ubuntu studio is ok...... I want in the future av linux,kxstudio,ubuntu studio optimize for arm architetture (raspberry pi and other single board) Now for this architetture there is Tracktion Waveform 9...it's don't open source but on raspberry pi 3 work great....ciao

gennaro

FWIW, reaper & pianoteq also run on armv7.

Jack Winter wrote:FWIW, reaper & pianoteq also run on armv7.

hi,good notice,but a open source program with qtractor,ardour,and other daw I hope that in the future they can be optimized for arm architecture

gennaro

The last time I tried a KX ISO (a few years ago) I couldn't get it working and I wasn't a fan of KDE. I've been happy with the repository (more than happy, elated). However, lately I've become quite interested in Neon and I'm checking their Twitter feed everyday anxiously awaiting a release to try out. In fact, I'm on the verge of abandoning anything not built with Qt. While I think the ISO is a great idea, I'm currently more interested in an up-to-date repository with a working wine-staging / wineasio, though I can see this changing by the next Ubuntu LTS in 2020.

That was a good read. I think everyone has made good points, and it really made me go back and forth between the ISO and the repo sides. I am still not sure what is best, but I just wanted to chime in and say:

FalkTX, we're really thankful for your work so far, and maybe something that needs to take quite a bit of weight in your decision is: which one gives you more motivation? Which one sounds exciting to you? Which one do you think will be more pleasurable to keep working on?

A lot of us here rely heavily on your generous work, and I would hate you to work on something you are not interesting in, and risk dropping it in the near future because of the little satisfaction it brings you.

Cheers

And would you like some help with anything?

Having the .ISO allows me to burn it onto a DVD and hand it to a friend who wants to try linux out.

I think it's important.

$0.02

Luc wrote:

stanlea wrote:using Debian, Arch, and others is possible but requires some tweaking (...)

I assume you mean falkTX has been doing all the tweaking on his side, because I use vanilla Debian and I hardly have to tweak anything to make KXStudio work hunky-dory fine.

Jodax wrote:(...) but when I attempted to run KXStudio on a a Debian version of my system using the repo-packages I ran into all kinds of problems with Cadence and the Debian RT kernel.

I swear, I have no idea what these people are talking about.

I understand that Linux can be a little bit of a terror for newbies so I understand the importance of a turnkey distro that will relieve the user of many worries and troubles before they run back to hide under Microsoft's apron, but... WHAT are these problems that people are having with the KX repository? Can we solve them?

Pardon me, but you sound more like a linux enthusiast than a musician looking for a quick and easy solution to the problems of simplifying their work-flow.

But I digress...

After my install, a lot of the configurable parts of Cadence (CPU Scaling, etc) were blank or just not functioning. In retrospect, I suspect that had I installed KDE and its many packages Cadence might have actually worked. But this wasn't the show stopper...

The Debian RT kernel caused my system to become unstable. In the past I have had other hardware issues trying to run Debian on this particular system. So, I wasn't really that surprised. (Perhaps in a few more development cycles Debian will have caught up to my hardware.)

This was the point where I decided that reinstalling from the ISO was the quickest way to get back to actually producing music rather than sitting around tinkering with my system.

Luc wrote: I think that forcing people to use any one distro or DE goes against the grain of the Linux philosophy. KXStudio should work as an add-on, on as many distros as possible. I don't know how feasible that is, but I think that is the wisest path if possible. It seems that people only really want the ISO because of some perceived problems with other distros. Well, if those problems are fixed, nobody will need the ISO anymore.

I agree with you here. In a perfect world, I wouldn't need to set-up my machine to dual boot into a Debian based system and would be able to just install the packages onto my superior performing, heavily customized Gentoo system... using my very own custom configured RT kernel. It's a great system, but the reason I use KXStudio is because Cadence and Carla make my work flow easier. It is what it is and I suppose, ultimately, that will bend to the will of the creator.