Hello! New Linux fan - and I need some help :)

[Aleks]

Hello everybody! My name is Aleksandar, I'm from Republic of Macedonia, I'm a guitarist, and got interested in Linux some time ago. I tried Ubuntu Studio, but it didn't work for me somehow. so I returned to Windows. Anyway, recently I read a lot of good stuff about KX Studio, so I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the Ubuntu 10. 04 Lucid Lynx, coz I read that I can use the RT Kernel in that version, and not in the more recent ones. So, I have few questions, and I appreciate your help:

1. How much of a disk space will I need for the Ubuntu Lucid and the KX Studio alltogether, because I want to do a dual boot with an already installed Windows?
2. Can I use VST's in Ardour in KXStudio, and can it be done in real time?
3. Since this is an older version of Ubuntu, will it update automatically to 11. 10 or something, so I'll loose my RT Kernel option?

Thank you very much!

[Thad E Ginathom]

Hello everybody! My name is Aleksandar, I'm from Republic of Macedonia, I'm a guitarist, and got interested in Linux some time ago. I tried Ubuntu Studio, but it didn't work for me somehow. so I returned to Windows. Anyway, recently I read a lot of good stuff about KX Studio, so I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the Ubuntu 10. 04 Lucid Lynx, coz I read that I can use the RT Kernel in that version, and not in the more recent ones. So, I have few questions, and I appreciate your help:

I wonder how important the RT kernel is really going to be to you? I suspect you may find it doesn't matter that much, and especially of you are not using Firewire devices.

(I went through hell trying to get a firewire interface to work, with Jack, in U. 10.04. The real-time kernel gave me some success, but, with KX studio, I could use it (for playback at least) even with a generic kernel.)

1. How much of a disk space will I need for the Ubuntu Lucid and the KX Studio alltogether,

I'm on 11.04+KXStudio now, but my root partition has only just over a 10 Gb in it, and I am a squirel for software. Keep a seperate partition for "/home" and perhaps yet another for your music, etc, data. Remember: Linux can see and use Windows partitions, but Windows cannot see or use Linux partitions. So, if you are dual-booting, you may be using NTFS for a while yet.

I've been 99.99% Linux for over a year now, but until last month, I still had all my data on Windows NTFS "drives".

2. Can I use VST's in Ardour in KXStudio, and can it be done in real time?

Don't know. IANAM (I am not a musician ) --- but I think KXStudio offers something for this.

3. Since this is an older version of Ubuntu, will it update automatically to 11. 10 or something, so I'll loose my RT Kernel option?

No. The update function will offer you, err... updates, regularly, but it will not upgrade to a new release unless you tell it it can. It won't even offer to, unless you have ticked that option which is somewhere (in "Software Sources?"). Just read the list of what Update is offering you. You can always untick.

11.04+KXStudio, by the way, comes with a pre-emptive kernel option. It's not real-time but it's ...no, wait, I don't actual have much of a clue on kernel questions. I know jack, firewire, and stuff seems to work very nicely with it though.

Ubuntu Studio didn't work out for me, either. Start with plain 10.04 and add KXStudio to that. I think that is what you are planning, anyway.

because I want to do a dual boot with an already installed Windows?

If you need to re-organise your disc[s] then Parted Magic live cd is your best friend --- but you will back up everything first, right? Drive Image XML is my best friend, for when I want to make an image that allows me to return to a Windows install I had before I messed things up somehow. Defrag[ler] the ntfs drives before you start resizing and/or shifting stuff. And did I mention backups?

[Aleks]

@ Thad E Ginathom,

Thanks for the reply, and I wish I listened to your advice about the realtime kernel. I don't know much about Linux and how it works, so I'll do my best to explain how things went downhill.

First, I installed the Ubuntu 10. 04, updated it, and all went well. After that I went on the KXStudio site and followed the instructions from their website. As I downloaded and installed things in the terminal there were no errors. As a final step i installed the damn rtkernell, then restarted the PC and....it wont load!!!

I did all the dual boot procedure perfectly. During the install of Ubuntu I installed the Grub in the Ubuntu partition, and then from the Win7 with the EasyBCD I added a new entry in the boot menu. All went well. After the update of Ubuntu in the...how should I call it...boot submenu? (when I reboot the PC I have Win7 and Ubuntu in the menu, and when I select Ubuntu, it takes me to another boot menu) after the update there were 4 Ubuntu entries - the old version with recovery mode, and the updated one with the recovery mode. After the installation of KXStudio and the realtime kernel, there are 6 of them, that is, the previous 4 plus real time kernel with its recovery mode. So, when I select that, it shows the Ubuntu screen shortly, and then the screen just goes black, and soon after that it goes in a sleep mode...and that's that.

Is there anyway I can fix this, or I should just delete the KX Studio partition?

Oh, as for the disk space, for Ubuntu I dedicated 13 GB, and for the swap 2 GB.

[Thad E Ginathom]

On a new installation, when things go really wrong, it usually is quicker and easier to start from scratch --- unless you just want to do go into technical-challenge mode. Educational, but also time-consuming.

My Windows experience stops at XP, so I have no idea at all about Vista or 7 and how they do things. In XP, there is no need to do anything to get it to boot from the Grub menu: it just does.

I'm not a Grub expert either, and it is quite powerful ---read... potentially tricky and breakable, even though generally robust. Once you get your Ubuntu/KXS sytem up and running, I recommend you get a piece of software called Grub Customiser. It will help you keep the menu organised and offer you only what you want to see.

Every time you install a kernel, it will get added to the list that Grub offers you to boot from. Grub also finds other OSs, eg other Linuxes or Windows, on the system and offers you those as well.

That it adds kernels to the list, rather than just running the latest, is good --- because the latest just might not work, and you can always boot a previous one. I don't understand how you can have two levels of menu --- but have you tried booting a different kernel on the list?

For my initial experiences with KXStudio, I mostly followed the instructions and experience in another thread on this site: KXstudio without branding and KDE. It's a good starting point. For my current install, I accidentally installed all the KXStudio stuff, although I use Gnome-2, not KDE, and stick to my own themes.

Here is another good place for specific technical problems with KXStudio

[Thad E Ginathom]

Oh! spotted some inaccuracy above. My current kernel is not "pre-emptive" it is 2.6.38-8-lowlatency.

Hope you are making progress.

[Aleks]

Well, I deleted the partition. I had problems with Ubuntu in the past too. Once I did a dual boot with Ubuntu and XP, it was working fine for a while and then it just wouldn't load, then I had the same problem with Ubiuntu Studio 9 or something, can't remember which version was it exactly, then with Ubuntu Studio 10. 10 finally I got it working, but I found it hard to work in that environment somehow or I was too lazy to do complicated stuff then , so I got back to Windows. KX Studio was promising something, but since it's based on Ubuntu, and I had some bad experience with it, I tried today the AV Linux Live, and it looks great, and pretty much stable and working from the DVD, which was quite a surprise, so I might try that instead. I'm still not giving up on Linux

[Thad E Ginathom]

Oh fine... Your choice of Linux is your choice of Linux!

I thought about AV Linux too. I took a look at Tango, but the distributor's site is all in French. I'd been working with Ubuntu for nearly a year with no problems except Firewire Audio, which was a nightmare. KXstudio fixed all that for me, so I needed to look no further.

I don't like Ubuntu's User Interface ideas for the future, though, so either I stick at this version, or jump ship ...maybe to Arch.

All the best...

[Aleks]

Well, it's funny how things end up in the end. I tried the the AV Linux, couldn't boot again, The reason why I want to use a third party boot loader is because when I installed the Ubuntu for the first time, I was booting via GRUB, so when Ubuntu crashed, I had to fix mbr and all that hassle. So anyway, I'm back on Ubuntu I installed the plain Ubuntu 11.10 version and just installed the software I need from the Ubuntu Software Center. All works fine now. The interface looks great to me, very eye-catching, It has similar features to Win7 that I like, for example fixing two or more windows so you can see them all at once, and I like the workspace switcher too.

Cheers

[Thad E Ginathom]

Quick fixes for a broken grub is something that we all ought to know, or keep a check-sheet for, but being human, we tend to think of it only when it breaks . if we have another PC handy to google on, we can usually get out of trouble.

I usually have at least two versions of Linux installed on my machine. If I can't boot one of them, I can fix grub using the other, and Grub Customiser, although it is not really meant to be a rescue tool, has, so far, got me out of trouble. It's "install to MBR" should put a working grub there, from the version of Ubuntu that you booted.

Obviously, there is a lot more to it, and Grub Masters are probably giggling at my naivety. But it has worked so far. And Grub is very robust.

If you overwrote a Grub MBR by installing Windows --- then you'd need, at least, a Ubuntu live CD and some techie knowhow...

Version-wise, I'm waving to you as you whizz past! I'm sticking with 11.04 for quite a while yet.