KXstudio without branding and KDE

[paldepind]

Hello. I'd like to use KXstudio in LXDE. Is it possible to do this without installing any branding packages (Oxygen cursor, etc) and KDE parts (Phonon, etc)?

I only want the jack infrastructure thing and all the nice packages. I'm not interested in changing the way my desktop looks or pulling in any unneeded KDE/GNOME/Unity/Xfce stuff.

I previously used KXstudio in Unity with the Unity specific package, and even though I tried to avoid it I ended up with KDE stuff.

[paldepind]

So, I ended up installing kxstudio-metapackages-audio and kxstudio-desktop-base. I don't know if it's optimal (couldn't help to get Phonon) but everything is working.

[paldepind]

Thanks for your respone. Why is 'kxstudio-welcome' needed?

[kokoshmusun]

Is there a particular advantage to using KXStudio with KDE?

[kokoshmusun]

Thanks! After few months of playing around with some live CDs (e.g., puredyne, which was nice) and finally finding a PCI card that was recognized (ESI Maya44), I decided today to install a clean xubuntu natty and KXStudio. I appreciate the work you put into it (hopefully, everything will work well and I'll be using this as my home music studio) and I really think it's a great move to focus not on being a distro but a set of tweaks/apps that can be installed on top of the user's distro of choice. Can't wait to compose and record some music with xubuntu + KXStudio.

[kokoshmusun]

So I'm done with the installation, which consisted of this:

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kxstudio-team/kxstudio
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kxstudio-repos
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install kxstudio-desktop-xfce
sudo apt-get install kxstudio-meta-all
sudo apt-get install kxstudio-kernel-lowlatency

I have both a generic onboard soundcard and the ESI Maya44 PCI installed. At first, I got no sound, but then I managed to configure jack to use ESI and can play sound now. There is slight crackling however. And I don't have much clue as to what's next in terms of configuring my system to perfection. There doesn't seem to be much document on the KXStudio website. And I don't expect falkTX to answer everybody's questions, but if there is a how-to guide for post-install KXStudio tweaking and troubleshooting, can anybody direct me to it?

cheers!

[kokoshmusun]

'kxstudio-default-settings' apparently is already installed with whatever else I installed.

I would like to contribute to the documentation, but I have little knowledge about linux audio. My thought is that if I could get my system running neatly, I'm going to detail what I did and post it around forums or youtube to encourage other users.

Also, if I can get KXStudio running well, I'd like to make a monetary donation to support your efforts.

Don't even know how to turn off pulseaudio, so I might post a thread in this forum for other users to help me with my problems.

[kokoshmusun]

When I can get my system set up, I'm going to produce a video of my specs and how I got things working. Then I'll share it with you and if you think it's helpful, we can post it in your youtube account.

For anyone following this, just posted a new thread to try to get help setting up my system.

[angelsguitar]

Hello. I'd like to use KXstudio in LXDE. Is it possible to do this without installing any branding packages (Oxygen cursor, etc) and KDE parts (Phonon, etc)?

I'm trying it right now - KXStudio with LXDE. Just did a CLI install and added KXStudio's repos along with LXDE. Let's see how it goes.

Hey Falktx: Any plans on making an LXDE-KXStudio metapackage? LXDE is a very lightweight DE, ideal for audio work...

[angelsguitar]

Hello. I'd like to use KXstudio in LXDE. Is it possible to do this without installing any branding packages (Oxygen cursor, etc) and KDE parts (Phonon, etc)?

I'm trying it right now - KXStudio with LXDE. Just did a CLI install and added KXStudio's repos along with LXDE. Let's see how it goes.

Hey Falktx: Any plans on making an LXDE-KXStudio metapackage? LXDE is a very lightweight DE, ideal for audio work...

This is not a very hard task, but it sucks I don't have a proper theme for it...
I'll get there in time.

Why are you installing LXDE and not XFCE?

Hi FalkTX! You trully are everywhere

Just a personal preference I have for LXDE. It runs a little lighter than XFCE on my pc's (at least that was my experience previosly).

Maybe I'll do another XFCE with KXStudio on the same machine and compare.

[Capoeira]

Just a personal preference I have for LXDE. It runs a little lighter than XFCE on my pc's

ever tried E17?

[GMaq]

Hi,

Yes LXDE uses gtk2 themes like Gnome 2.x and XFCE, and it runs significantly leaner than XFCE, however as I mentioned in another post LXDE uses Openbox WM by default which is a bit more 'plain' looking than others but Openbox has a lot of neat features and truly is what helps make LXDE leaner than XFCE.

For a start I'd suggest looking at http://box-look.org/index.php?xcontentm ... 6f48948f3f they have a nice selection of Openbox WM themes there that I'm sure would go nicely with one of the gtk2 KXStudio themes.

In my opinion kwin or even metacity would be a bad idea to use with LXDE and would undermine most of the advantages it has, I think a thoroughly thought out and unique LXDE/Openbox theme would be killer and it would open up KXStudio to a lot of folks with older hardware.

Just sayin'

[GMaq]

Hi,

Yes LXDE uses gtk2 themes like Gnome 2.x and XFCE, and it runs significantly leaner than XFCE, however as I mentioned in another post LXDE uses Openbox WM by default which is a bit more 'plain' looking than others but Openbox has a lot of neat features and truly is what helps make LXDE leaner than XFCE.

For a start I'd suggest looking at http://box-look.org/index.php?xcontentm ... 6f48948f3f they have a nice selection of Openbox WM themes there that I'm sure would go nicely with one of the gtk2 KXStudio themes.

In my opinion kwin or even metacity would be a bad idea to use with LXDE and would undermine most of the advantages it has, I think a thoroughly thought out and unique LXDE/Openbox theme would be killer and it would open up KXStudio to a lot of folks with older hardware.

Just sayin'

Thanks for the tips,

I should probably just use one as a base, and replace the pngs. Can't be that hard...
thanks again

Hi,

Yeah, as you've probably already figured out Openbox doesn't use pngs or pixmaps of any kind, it uses these difficult highly compressed and simple 'xbm' files. That said the 'openbox-3' configuration text files are pretty easy to hack and change sizes, borders and colours etc. I managed to do a few customized ones if you'd like them for a starting template I'd be glad to share them.

[GMaq]

Hi,

I'm working right now, but I'll collect some stuff together and PM you a link later today probably this evening, yes you should be able to change the colour to whatever you want, I usually use GIMP or something with a colour picker to get the hexadecimal colour I'm looking for and then enter it into the appropriate line of the 'themerc' file.

[WRC]

Does dropping support for unity in the future mean that it will be completely unusable with unity? I like the functionality of the system (it is the only one that I have tried where Jack Audio actually works for instance)but the KXStudio theme itself is not very usable and KDE drives me crazy having to dig around in convoluted menus to find and launch anything. I am currently using KXStudio with Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 and it works well for the most part, and the retracting flyout sidebar helps to maximize usable working area on an old standard format screen.

On my machine the KXStudio theme itself is difficult at best to work with so I have a different theme (and uncheck the use theme box in the welcome script). The dark flat style themes may be good with a bright full contrast laptop screen but with an old on-its-last-legs CRT it is often difficult to tell where the various toolbars and things like that are at a glance with multiple windows open because it all blends together in a flat dark muddle. It also tends to put very low contrast gray text into gray backgrounds in Firefox and other apps which is not readable. Brighter 3d themes with more colors (like the old 'aqua' style themes or to a lesser extent unitys native theme) to make the window features stand out and higher contrast text boxes work best so being able to switch themes and still have the system functional is critical for users like me.

Another related question is whether the WM/DE is pen (and easystroke) friendly. I use the computer more for visual arts than for music and unity is convenient since I do not have to drop the pen and dig out the mouse to control the desktop which is less disruptive to workflow when doing artwork.