USB based linux for live performance?

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Shadow_7
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Re: USB based linux for live performance?

Post by Shadow_7 »

I've been looking at a cubieboard 2. But I'm in no rush. And I'd rather have something debian centric. I did get a powered USB hub in preparation. But that's about the only pro-active thing in that direction.
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autostatic
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Re: USB based linux for live performance?

Post by autostatic »

Ah yes, the Cubieboard 2. After ordering my BeagleBone I had something like, let's check the Cubieboard site. Dang, they now got a low-cost dual core dev board . Grmbl.
Fwiw, I'm using Debian on both the TV stick and the BeagleBoard.
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Re: USB based linux for live performance?

Post by briandc »

Shadow_7 wrote:I seemed to have inherited a laptop from my sister-in-law. Some acquaintence of hers wanted her to wipe the harddrive and toss their old laptop. So I wiped the hard drive and installed linux on that laptop. About the same specs as my old laptop, but it's hardrive still works, and the fan on it works to (unlike my old laptop). The video card is worse, but the cpu is faster.

It's kind of depressing how little (web browser wise) you can do with only 0.5GB of RAM these days. Anything flash / adobe runs almost completely on swap. I wouldn't exactly call that running though, more like waiting. And if it's ads that swap every 30 seconds, an endless cycle of waiting with no results. As in stop the browser, disable flash, and maybe you could get something useful done.
Try installing "flashblock" on your browser. (If you are using IceWeasel or Mozilla you should find it in the add-ons search.) That helped me with my oldest laptop (256MB RAM). That way you can browse almost normally.


Side question: instead of a USB stick, I suppose a distro could be installed on an SD card, right? Would that be any faster than USB?

Anyone know?


brian
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My sound synthesis biome: http://www.linuxsynths.com
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briandc
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Re: USB based linux for live performance?

Post by briandc »

Shadow_7 wrote:
Any recommendations for drum soundfonts?
I used some good-quality drumkits (free!) from here: http://www.hammersound.net/


brian
Have your PC your way: use linux!
My sound synthesis biome: http://www.linuxsynths.com
Shadow_7
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Posts: 175
Joined: Tue Jun 08, 2010 3:35 pm

Re: USB based linux for live performance?

Post by Shadow_7 »

Yes, linux boots from an SD card. But you need an SD card reader. Which wasn't standard equipment on my old laptop. I have a usb transcend reader and it's good up to 32GB SDHC cards. I also have a targus one that gets quirky with anything > 8GB. I cloned my laptops debian sid on a 32GB class 10 SDHC card. It works about as fast as the native 30GB HDD on that machine. I also have a class 6 transcend card that fails in terms of write speed for my camcorder (class 4), that I have a debian wheezy install on. And I have a cute PNY 32GB stick that is soooo painfully slow I opted to remove linux from it. Shutting down took several minutes on that thing, even on my beefy desktop.
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