3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

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Count
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3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

I've been using Linux DEs for over 10 years now. I have generally settled on a KDE desktop flavour as I have found it all round the best, and so when I discovered KXStudio it was a natural go to.

As part of that transition I have gotten used to the experience being categorised by steep, if somewhat sheer, painful, sometimes lengthy, learning curves followed by long, calm, rewarding plateaus of deliriously happy productivity.

Once initial issues are sorted and productivity is engaged, then it's about 10% marshalling resources, 90% productivity - the inverse was true of my Windows experience where it seemed that marshalling resources WAS the experience!

HOWEVER - I am having a number of fundamental issues with my current major project build. I am trying to build my own bespoke 'music performance centre' from the ground up but I don't have the technical know-how to start with something like Arch.

My No1 use for my the music performance centre is to perform live - whether out on stage, or playing live in my home studio. I don't really 'compose' songs in a digital form as such - each song is played as 'live' as possible.

THEREFORE my main requirements are low-latency, stability, and infinite desktop customisation with save/return states.

So here I am with KXStudio fulfilling MOST of that above.

What I am lacking is the ability to 'freeze' the system and pick it up in the same state it was before. To be able set it in stone as an ABSOLUTE state. i.e
* 12 Virtual Desktops, each App in the desktop it is assigned, each App in a default state
* Patch-bay EXACTLY as configured
* Capture devices/interface settings/states remaining EXACTLY as configured

And these three MUST-HAVE FUNDAMENTALS are where I am having difficulties!

For instance, I spent a good few hours getting Rakarrak set up with my Ibanez electric guitar. I was so happy! I had everything routed in the patchbay through my M-Audio Fast-Track Ultra, with all 8 I/O channels identified so I could route and capture individual channels into my amp, I even had Youtube on it's own output channel so I could play along with the guitar in the same amp it was glorious, I was SO CLOSE to my end goal with this system right there and then that night!

This was the state at some point when I was happy with the basic setup.
canvas2.png
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Then I rebooted the machine... oh dear... (Darth sinks to his knees...) Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo

* When it rebooted it lost the M-Audio.
* I was also unable to get ANYTHING from the browser
* NonMixer did not open
* Jack settings in Cadence been lost - I/O interface had been reset to hw0 (although UltraUSB was in the list, it had been deselected), and also so everything was repatched to
canvas3a.png
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So there were some really bad fundamental problems there! Not the least was the loss of the M-Audio!

DESKTOP ISSUES:
* Losing minimized windows?!!
This seems such a simple issue - yet it is foxing me! When a window has minimized, I can no longer retrieve it from that desktop? (Alt+Tab is not really appropriate as all it will do is toggle that app between min/restore and swap it back. Alt+Tab wont allow me to max/restore ALL windows on a particular desktop)
So for instance on the 'Synth' Desktop the Arp and Synth have minimized but are still running on that desktop, I just can't get to them.
snapshot1.png
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DESKTOP SAVE STATES:
* Is there a way to save the state of ALL VIRTUAL DESKTOPS ABSOLUTELY?
That means window position on the virtual desktop it was placed in. When I reboot, and restore saved session from Claudia then not all apps open in the Desktop they were assigned to.

I am looking into KDE Desktop Activities, I'm not sure if this will solve some of my desktop issues?

CLAUDIA ISSUES:
I am just discovering using Claudia as a session management tool. However, I find some applications don't launch from it.
* NonMixer - either won't launch or will launch either without I/Os in patchbay, or just 1, despite loading saved project with 12 channels.
* Bristol synths wont load from Claudia.

===========

I am aware that I may be approaching some issues from the 'wrong end' - I have fallen fowl of the 'wrong approach' before. For instance when I first moved over to Linux I spent some frustrating time trying to get MuTorrent working, at one point may have been trying to run MuTorrent in Wine? So, as you can imagine... it took a leap of conceptuality being a MS Windows user for me to understand the breakdown of the Linux experience, and that Transmission was already installed and was EXACTLY the same as MuTorrent, once I got used to GUI particulars it help me in the rest of my computing. Instead of thinking abut getting Photoshop to work, I started using GIMP.

I have no particular attachment to any particular application or software, it's about producing my effective and dynamic workflow.

I am using a desktop PC at the moment, but I am aiming to using a touchscreen laptop eventually (funds hahahaaar!). You can see from my desktop environment some of my intentions. On the taskbar I have 12 Virtual Dekstops running, all named.

Manager
PatchBay
Drums
Synth
Looper
Effects
Guitar
Sampler
(Unused)
(Unused)
Browser
Mixer

It's pretty self explanatory what is happening on each desktop! The aim is for live performance - to be able to quickly change over to any given instrument or set - which are split into desktops. I can see all in the Mixer. I can quickly go to the Effect desktop and switch an effect on in the middle of a song without fumbling around, or go and start a sound sample playing while I play over it. It means having everything I want/need for my live performance all under my fingertips!

Hope that all makes sense? I feel KXStudio is SO close to at last fulfilling my wishes and total desire for an AV! Just a few tweeks and issues to get over!
Last edited by Count on Sun Jun 30, 2019 1:15 am, edited 2 times in total.
Count
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

================= WORKFLOW REQUIREMENTS AND USES =====================

This is the 'Music Performance Centre' as it is developing.
52743974_10157178513024993_7086065721884540928_n.jpg
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There is a very basic central element to the whole set-up, and that is based around looping.

This is my one man band; I have keyboard, drums and guitar, and with the loop pedal, a drum machine and sequencer I can produce my own backing arrangements on the fly all live.

There are three levels;

* Instruments - At the front end I need things to press, hit, strum, etc to make a noise.
* Hardware Looper - The ESSENTIAL ingredient in my set up is a loop pedal. The instruments INPUT audio direct into the external Loop Pedal.
* Effects - This is where a centralised Computer in the workflow is really designed to be placed. It will give me an infinite array of effects and instrumentation that I can add to the hardware setup.
workflow.png
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When we play live, the set up is modular and can be set up in many ways.

The MAIN ELEMENT is the KORG EMX - which I use as the MIDI MASTER CLOCK. It provides the main tempo and beat for each song. The Loop pedal is slaved to the MIDI CLOCK from the KORG. This means that it will quantize the Loop pedal to both the tempo and bars of the KORG.

There is a Yamaha PSS-680 Synthesier, a MIDI drum kit, and an electric guitar, all of which can happily make there own sounds to be fed into the looper/end-point audio mixer.

So why KXStudio?

Even without this project I would still be using KXStudio for home playing and recording. So, it's there, so why not use it?! The more I explore the more possibilities I see. Without wanting to over complicate my setup.

* Effects
* Sequencing
* Sound files
* Guitar amp/effects - the sounds I could get out of that guitar on Rakarrak is incredible (I'm going to look at putting that on a Pi so I can use it standalone with the guitar.)

We can perform without a PC. And in fact, the design will still be around hardware, the KORG or something similar, to prevent a dependency on a computer setup. But it provides so much more additional depth and possibilities to add a full KXStudio system into our live set up.
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by sysrqer »

* 12 Virtual Desktops, each App in the desktop it is assigned, each App in a default state
This is easy, use window rules.
* Patch-bay EXACTLY as configured
I use qjackctl's patchbay feature for this but non-session-manager can also do it with jackpatch. I have used claudia for the same thing and worked pretty well (although I do note your comment about this later on)
* Capture devices/interface settings/states remaining EXACTLY as configured
Not sure why any of that should change if you are using the same jack settings.
* When it rebooted it lost the M-Audio.
* I was also unable to get ANYTHING from the browser
* NonMixer did not open
* Jack settings in Cadence been lost - I/O interface had been reset to hw0 (although UltraUSB was in the list, it had been deselected), and also so everything was repatched to
This sounds very odd and I suspect you have some deeper system/hardware issues. It's not what should happen and isn't what happens in most cases.
DESKTOP ISSUES:
* Losing minimized windows?!!
I've never experienced this either but I would say it hints that something is not right with your installation. Are you still using KDE4? It has come a long way since then and I suspect at least this particular issue would be fixed by upgrading.
DESKTOP SAVE STATES:
* Is there a way to save the state of ALL VIRTUAL DESKTOPS ABSOLUTELY?
That means window position on the virtual desktop it was placed in. When I reboot, and restore saved session from Claudia then not all apps open in the Desktop they were assigned to.
You need to create window rules. There is also an option in the KDE settings to restore previous session upon login, you might find it useful (not sure if it is in KDE4 though).
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by jonetsu »

About jackd settings, there's a process starting it with what it thinks are good parameters. If you use pulseaudio for firefox, mpv, etc.. then there's also a pulse jacksink package and the result of this is a .jackrd file in the home directory. This is where jackd get started in that case. Mine contains this:

/usr/bin/jackd --sync -P80 -ndefault -dalsa -dhw:M1010LT -r44100 -p512 -n8

The M-Audio 1010LT is clearly identified. No other process in the system restarts jackd. So I'm always certain that jackd starts from that .jackdrc file. If there's ever a problem with jackd I look there.

The configuration of jackd I do manually by editing that file in a text editor. No GUI, no 3rd party app, nothing else than a text editor.
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

sysrqer wrote:
* 12 Virtual Desktops, each App in the desktop it is assigned, each App in a default state
This is easy, use window rules.
Ah thank you that looks excellent! Looks like what I may be looking for! Never been in those screens before, of course it seems so obvious now... windows rules...! I shall try tweeking those settings.
sysrqer wrote:
* Patch-bay EXACTLY as configured
I use qjackctl's patchbay feature for this but non-session-manager can also do it with jackpatch. I have used claudia for the same thing and worked pretty well (although I do note your comment about this later on)

* Capture devices/interface settings/states remaining EXACTLY as configured
Not sure why any of that should change if you are using the same jack settings.
* When it rebooted it lost the M-Audio.
* I was also unable to get ANYTHING from the browser
* NonMixer did not open
* Jack settings in Cadence been lost - I/O interface had been reset to hw0 (although UltraUSB was in the list, it had been deselected), and also so everything was repatched to
This sounds very odd and I suspect you have some deeper system/hardware issues. It's not what should happen and isn't what happens in most cases.
I'm pretty sure this is related to the same thing - in that it is not keeping/saving the Jack settings after I have altered them. The main 2 things are setting the FastTrakUltra instead of hw0 as the hardware I/O source, and selecting fail/ignore reconnect requests.

I've not looked at non-session-manager as yet - I guess more reading and on the hoof suck-it-and-see learning is needed!
sysrqer wrote:
DESKTOP ISSUES:
* Losing minimized windows?!!
I've never experienced this either but I would say it hints that something is not right with your installation. Are you still using KDE4? It has come a long way since then and I suspect at least this particular issue would be fixed by upgrading.
It's a fresh install of the latest KXStudio (64)
KDE - 4.13.3

I'm not sure I've explained it properly? In the screen shot below, I'm on Desktop I've called Synth: There are 2 jack keyboards, a QSynth and a QMidiArp open on that Desktop. However, only one jack keyboard and the QMidiArp can be seen, the others are all minimized on that desktop. If I hover over the desktop icon on the taskbar I get a box that tells me what is running on that desktop - but I'm unable to select the minimized windows/apps? There's nothing I can click on to select the minimized programs. I've ended up adding another taskbar that shows all currently running programs, but it is not the best if there are maybe 20 or more things running it's a crowded list to pick from.
snapshot1.png
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So should I be looking at docking/locking these app windows via the windows rules to prevent them from minimizing at all?
sysrqer wrote:
DESKTOP SAVE STATES:
* Is there a way to save the state of ALL VIRTUAL DESKTOPS ABSOLUTELY?
That means window position on the virtual desktop it was placed in. When I reboot, and restore saved session from Claudia then not all apps open in the Desktop they were assigned to.
You need to create window rules. There is also an option in the KDE settings to restore previous session upon login, you might find it useful (not sure if it is in KDE4 though).
Okay, I am way off the curve. You speak of KDE4 as if there is another...?! What is this KDE5 you speak of?! No seriously, I'm only just vaguely aware of KDE4/5 - I've generally just installed whatever default along with the ISO, usually Mint KDE or Kubuntu. I know I could compile my own system entirely, but I'm not an 'Arch' level user. How does a fairly lay user use KDE5 on KXStudio?

Yes, I found the option to restore previous setting - that is useful. However, this being a desktop PC it's not 100% reliable. For instance I accidentally booted without a keyboard (alphanumeric, not musical!) and so the pc/bios had a meltdown about that and when I plugged the keyboard back in it booted it had 'forgotten' the last session and just booted into a fresh session.

That's why I was looking at something like a save/restore state, instead of throwing fate to the wind by relying on one vaguely saved system state. It would be nice to have some manually saved desktop states to be able to restore from.

I had a look at Activities... I saw a suggestion about putting the environment into an activity - then stopping that activity. Next time you can just 'restart' that activity and it picks up from where it left off. I've tried that a couple of times and it seems to work okay so far... if still a little hit and miss for me. For instance, a sudden power cut could exit you from an activity whilst it is in a mess, will you still be able to restart the activity in that glorious nice state it was before?

I eventually want to move onto a laptop, which should help solve a number of issues; especially as I could practically run the thing forever without it ever switching off, and at least if it does it is more likely to have facilities to recover into previous states than desktop pcs.

Thanks for your help so far - plenty to go on for now! :)
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

jonetsu wrote:About jackd settings, there's a process starting it with what it thinks are good parameters. If you use pulseaudio for firefox, mpv, etc.. then there's also a pulse jacksink package and the result of this is a .jackrd file in the home directory. This is where jackd get started in that case. Mine contains this:

/usr/bin/jackd --sync -P80 -ndefault -dalsa -dhw:M1010LT -r44100 -p512 -n8

The M-Audio 1010LT is clearly identified. No other process in the system restarts jackd. So I'm always certain that jackd starts from that .jackdrc file. If there's ever a problem with jackd I look there.

The configuration of jackd I do manually by editing that file in a text editor. No GUI, no 3rd party app, nothing else than a text editor.
Okay interesting thank you.

So this is a file where the default settings that Jack starts with are stored?

Reminds me of my early days of Windows computing, always messing with autoexe and config files!
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by sysrqer »

You're using Claudia right? I think you have to make the settings in there for it to be persistent. As far as I can tell Cadence follows Claudia's settings so changing something in cadence is just temporary, do it in claudia and save it as your studio.

I don't think you necessarily need to use non-session-manager, I think Claudia can do what you need (not sure about bristol though, I thought it could launch those?) in terms of launching applications and having the connections remembered.

i understand your problem with the toolbar but I can't explain it. Perhaps create a new test panel and add the application tray and see if it works in a more vanilla configuration. Alternatively, you could create a new user and test there, at least then you would know if it's a messed up config somewhere.

KDE 5, or Plasma as it is called now I think, is the next major version of KDE after your version. It is well matured now and much better in a lot of ways in my opinion. If you have installed kxstudio from an ISO then it is based on ubuntu 14, as in the ubuntu version first released in 2014. At that time KDE4 was mature and stable but a major version of KDE came soon after. This is the problem with kxstudio ISOs at the moment, they are very out of date, there have been two major releases of ubuntu since then. If your install works then that's fine (and I suspect it could) but it's kind of frozen in time. One option is installing KDE Neon or Kubuntu and adding the kxstudio as a repo, this means that your desktop and system will be somewhat current and your audio stuff will have the same versions as you have now. You could do a dist upgrade but only try this if you have everything backed up because it would be quite a big jump, in the long run it might be quicker just to do a new install.

I dislike the KDE session restore for similar reasons that you've outlined, if something is wrong then it's going to be wrong every time you reboot. I don't think it is needed if you have all your wanted programs set in the Autostart options and window rules to place them where you want, and some kind of connection manager to make the connections again automatically.

I was going to suggest looking in to activities but I don't know if the session is restored after reboots, if it doesn't then it doesn't help you much. They are powerful though so might be worth a look. I can't imagine a heavy session with DAWs etc dealing well with being set to inactive and then turned on again on the fly.

By the way, window rules work with activities as well so you could place everything on an Audio activity and just autostart applications.
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by sysrqer »

Actually, after reading your post again I wonder if you set strict window rules to place applications on certain desktops then it might solve your taskbar issue. Perhaps, for some reason, they are just on another desktop. Rules would rule that out but certainly what you are showing is weird. When was the last time you updated your system?
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

sysrqer wrote:You're using Claudia right? I think you have to make the settings in there for it to be persistent. As far as I can tell Cadence follows Claudia's settings so changing something in cadence is just temporary, do it in claudia and save it as your studio.

...

By the way, window rules work with activities as well so you could place everything on an Audio activity and just autostart applications.
Yeah I've started using Claudia, as that seemed to be the one umbrella for patching and settings.

It's keeping/saving those jack settings that seems to have been a problem - just going to investigate that further...

I have a feeling I may have been duplicating tasks around the place, will scale back a bit and start a fresh with a blank Claudia.

Activities are looking really good yes - I have 2 very distinct uses for the music machine - 1) Live performance and 2) Studio recording, composing. So I can create a separate Activity for each one.

So where does Carla fit into all this? I was using Carla instead of Claudia, but am now using Claudia instead. HOWEVER, I do find that the Carla patchbay shows more than Claudia - i.e. when I use non-mixer through Claudia it only shows 1 I/O, when over in a Carla instance it will show all 12 Channels.

Also I liked the effects rack in Carla, I guess I can separate that in a Calf or Jack rack, it was only a slight preference. But is there any conflict with Claudia? there's certainly a lot of overlap.

---

I installed it fresh from the KXStudio ISO this week. Never updated anything after install. It's a habit of installing Linux ISOs, I'm of the Mint variety it works out the box no need to update/modify.

I had some horrors in my early days of discovering Ubuntu after an update all or two killed my system!

I'm working on a fresh install of a spare pc I've put to one side for this purpose, so I wont lose anything by reinstalling or updating right now, that's what this exercise is all about... :)
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

sysrqer wrote:Actually, after reading your post again I wonder if you set strict window rules to place applications on certain desktops then it might solve your taskbar issue. Perhaps, for some reason, they are just on another desktop. Rules would rule that out but certainly what you are showing is weird. When was the last time you updated your system?
Yes, after looking at the windows rules I think the same...

... and answered below... never updated...
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by sysrqer »

Count wrote:
Yeah I've started using Claudia, as that seemed to be the one umbrella for patching and settings.

It's keeping/saving those jack settings that seems to have been a problem - just going to investigate that further...
I do remember battling with this a little when I was using cadence and claudia but I thought it was solved by setting in claudia. I could be wrong though. However, I recall there being some uncertainty in this area.
Count wrote: Activities are looking really good yes - I have 2 very distinct uses for the music machine - 1) Live performance and 2) Studio recording, composing. So I can create a separate Activity for each one.
Yeah they are good. I've got one for audio with renoise set to open there when I launch it with a different desktop (folders of samples and projects showing on desktop with a different background) but since I've been using other tools recently I don't tend to use the activity as I've been using renoise less (and ardour which was also set up like this originally). Sounds like they might suit you well, I never really used them as 'sessions' to sleep and wake up as you choose, it was more of a 'I want to use renoise so I'll click it and it will be on Audio Activity' kind of organisational way.
Count wrote: So where does Carla fit into all this? I was using Carla instead of Claudia, but am now using Claudia instead. HOWEVER, I do find that the Carla patchbay shows more than Claudia - i.e. when I use non-mixer through Claudia it only shows 1 I/O, when over in a Carla instance it will show all 12 Channels.

Also I liked the effects rack in Carla, I guess I can separate that in a Calf or Jack rack, it was only a slight preference. But is there any conflict with Claudia? there's certainly a lot of overlap.
Carla and Claudia are very different even though they appear similar. Carla is a plugin host and the reason it has the graph is for you to patch things as you wish and save/recall it as a patch if desired.

Claudia is a jack session management system. You can set up your connections and jack applications and save it as a studio. This means you can have them all loaded and connected when you start the studio, and the studio can start on boot. Combined with window rules I think this solves a lot of your issues. I found this link really helpful to learn what Claudia can do - http://www.penguinproducer.com/Blog/201 ... on-handler. It is based around ladish but (as far as I know) Claudia is a front end to this, or something like that. It works the same anyway. One main studio and perhaps some rooms for different tasks is what you need.
Count wrote: I installed it fresh from the KXStudio ISO this week. Never updated anything after install. It's a habit of installing Linux ISOs, I'm of the Mint variety it works out the box no need to update/modify.
If you are connected to the internet then you should definitely update, there have been a lot of security updates since 2014. Even mint provides security updates.
Count wrote: I had some horrors in my early days of discovering Ubuntu after an update all or two killed my system!
It's quite painless these days, I went from ubuntu 16 to 18 as an upgrade and nothing major happened. I had to fix a couple of things but very minor issues. If you upgrade now though you would be doing a substantial jump in many deep areas - it should work but be prepared if it is a mess.
Count wrote: I'm working on a fresh install of a spare pc I've put to one side for this purpose, so I wont lose anything by reinstalling or updating right now, that's what this exercise is all about... :)
My personal recommendation would be install kde neon and add the kxstudio repo as described here https://kx.studio/Repositories. With neon you get up to date but pretty stable KDE with a solid ubuntu LTS base. You can update and be secure with kernels and browsers but have the well built kxstudio stuff.
Last edited by sysrqer on Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by jonetsu »

Count wrote:Reminds me of my early days of Windows computing, always messing with autoexe and config files!
1) If you think that using GUI apps is evolution when it comes to system configuration ...

2) If you think that a text file can modify itself on its own ...

:mrgreen:
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

jonetsu wrote:
Count wrote:Reminds me of my early days of Windows computing, always messing with autoexe and config files!
1) If you think that using GUI apps is evolution when it comes to system configuration ...

Errm well yes and no! I think there is a growing recognition these days of the increased distance between user and system, which is why the Pi and emulating 8bit systems is so popular, people getting back to basics!
jonetsu wrote: 2) If you think that a text file can modify itself on its own ...
I was a Windows pc user for many years, and yes they can and do!
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by Count »

[quote="sysrqer"
My personal recommendation would be install kde neon and add the kxstudio repo as described here https://kx.studio/Repositories. With neon you get up to date but pretty stable KDE with a solid ubuntu LTS base. You can update and be secure with kernels and browsers but have the well built kxstudio stuff.[/quote]

OK, I have an ISO of Neon, I was going to use that instead of Kubuntu on my media pc, but it's getting a bit old and is 32bit bound, so I've tended to stick to stripped down distros for that.

For my music pc I ended up at KXStudio still due to latency considerations.

I've just started reading about the Ubuntu issue and it being a 2014 core, didn't realise the ISO was that our of date...

So the latency of Neon will sort itself out and not be an issue if the environment is set right? I've not messed with kernels as yet...?

So the process would be

1) Install KDE Neon from the ISO as normal
2) Once installed then add the KXStudio Repo and install what I want/need
3) Then go with that? Or are there more tweaks to be done with kernel etc?

All been gold info so far, thanks :)
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Re: 3 Steps Forward 2 Back: Progress and Frustrations with fundamental DE issues

Post by sysrqer »

Count wrote: So the latency of Neon will sort itself out and not be an issue if the environment is set right? I've not messed with kernels as yet...?
So the process would be

1) Install KDE Neon from the ISO as normal
2) Once installed then add the KXStudio Repo and install what I want/need
3) Then go with that? Or are there more tweaks to be done with kernel etc?

All been gold info so far, thanks :)
Yes, there's shouldn't be any reason why it wouldn't work for you with a bit of simple tweaking. Those steps should more or less be all you need to do, I think kxstudio has a package called 'kxstudio-default-settings' or something that will set most things up for audio. You can install a better kernel by installing 'linux-lowlatency'. You should be good to go after that.

And no worries, glad to help.
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