What distros are you using?

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

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psychicstate
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by psychicstate »

I started dabbling in linux on slackware, moved to Studio64, then triple booted UbuntuStudio / Studio64 / Fedora +CCRMA, still never had a perfect working system to be productive enough and gave up and bought windows and went to Ableton. :oops: I was dual booting Mint / Windows for a while and one day decided to try Ableton in wine and to my surprise it ran great. I decided a few months ago to trash my Windows install for a full Linux Mint+KXStudio system (i have yet to set up windows as a virtual machine for certain things like hardware firmware upgrades...soon.)

$ cat /etc/*release
DISTRIB_ID=LinuxMint
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14
DISTRIB_CODENAME=nadia
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 14 Nadia"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="12.10, Quantal Quetzal"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu quantal (12.10)"
VERSION_ID="12.10"

$ uname -a
Linux 3.5.0-34-lowlatency #36-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Sat Jun 8 16:07:07 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

So I have Ableton running in wine with wineasio and full vst support (massive, fm8, razor) and midi support (APC20, Akai LPK25, Quneo, Korg NanoKontrol). There are xruns (however not all audibly noticable) and its maybe not perfect for live performance, but definately stable enough for daily use. I run daily updates and have had zero issues. You can also route audio/midi from different sources in and out of Ableton very easily with catia / claudia. It is the perfect setup. 8)
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The Aviv
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by The Aviv »

I am using Linux Mint 13 (Maya) (with KXStudio PPAs). I am also suffering from the freeze problem (see bug). It's about time I switch to a different distro. I am downloading Ubuntu Studio 12.04 - it looks like the best and most popular studio. TheSafePlaces uses it - he's an experienced user with a similar line of work to mine.
lazyklimm
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by lazyklimm »

Debian Sid + liquorix kernel + KXStudio PPAs.
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The Aviv
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by The Aviv »

The Aviv wrote:I am using Linux Mint 13 (Maya) (with KXStudio PPAs). I am also suffering from the freeze problem (see bug). It's about time I switch to a different distro. I am downloading Ubuntu Studio 12.04 - it looks like the best and most popular studio. TheSafePlaces uses it - he's an experienced user with a similar line of work to mine.
It seems like the freeze problem has been fixed.
aicram
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by aicram »

I am using Dreamstudio with kxstudio. I love it. It does make the pulse jack connection so easy through qjackctl. I do not mind unity at all. I have read many complaints, however, I find it to be fine.

I think Dreamstudio is the best distro I have used in a long time as well.

Sincerely,

aicram
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Chipfryer
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by Chipfryer »

Read this a while back and didn't give it justice at the time since I was so busy. Invaluable information Shadow thank you for sharing. Actually I had a nuts idea. Head to a cabin someone I know owns and record there. (Vocals). I don't mind the air around my voice, I like it natural in a way of speaking. I know every engineer will scoff at me, but my results aren't too bad frankly. Noise from neighbours however I'll never keep out.
Wonderful information, sorry again for being late on this.
Please keep well, Chippy
Shadow_7 wrote:It depends on your needs in terms of a portabooth. I got the sE Electronics reflexion filter. It's not really that great if you need to filter out more than the fan of the desktop or the echo off the walls. But it does make things better per say. Last time we had carpet put down I saved the scraps and made a little carpet cave of sorts on top of a desk and between two bookshelves. But I went away for a few days and the +1 thought they were doing me a favor by getting rid of them.

When I was in the Army Band we had little booths inside the building. Hardly portable, but did a fair job of shielding from outside noise and inside reflections. Not that you could really use them much since you had to open the door to keep it from being 98.6F inside. Plus it was always humid in there because of the human influence.

If you keep an eye on craigslist you might be able to score a few office partitions. Not that you'll get full isolation from a noisy location with that. Depending on what you're recording you might get away with doing some recording in your car. Or if your recording gear is portable, a few music stores and such have treated rooms you can rent. Although there's fewer and fewer of those these days.
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Chipfryer
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by Chipfryer »

I still get that dreaded freeze problem. Mint 12 will have to go shortly. It's served me so well, it's a real shame, however peeps have to change ways to get on. Thank you for sharing.
Chippy
The Aviv wrote:
The Aviv wrote:I am using Linux Mint 13 (Maya) (with KXStudio PPAs). I am also suffering from the freeze problem (see bug). It's about time I switch to a different distro. I am downloading Ubuntu Studio 12.04 - it looks like the best and most popular studio. TheSafePlaces uses it - he's an experienced user with a similar line of work to mine.
It seems like the freeze problem has been fixed.
dkasak
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by dkasak »

Sabayon with 3.10.6-rt3 kernel, and the "pro-audio" overlay ( ie most audio software built using Gentoo's portage, with ebuilds from this overlay ). Works stunningly well with no tweaking. Under 1ms latency, with no Xruns, but NOT in Gnome 3. Gnome 3's compositor goes haywire every 5 minutes or so, and everything freezes for around 5 seconds. Maybe this is the 'mouse freeze' problem that's been mentioned. I use Enlightenment ( from git ). Fully composited, AND very lean ... haven't been able to trigger an Xrun in Enlightenment yet.
dhubsith
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by dhubsith »

I'm running Zenwalk 7.2, this is similar to Slackware in layout and maintenance. My version is heavily modified, I compile another 46 packages (and leave out a few things, for example I use openbox rather than xfce). I made my own custom kernel, running 3.10 at present. I install a lot of multimedia packages that most of you would be familiar with: jack, jack-rack, ladspa, swh-plugins, caps, mplayer, xine, yadda-yadda. The same basic system runs on 3 computers: one for online/office, one multimedia, (including DVB-S satellite tv), and a small laptop that I use for a live sound for bass guitar, using jack-rack and plugins from caps and swh (I get a better sound that way than my old bass amps). Core-i3's all around, now, but in an older incarnation, I was able to get a decent live bass sound out of an Atom (you have to be picky with plugins, some of the more elaborate ones will overwhelm it). The system now is in "maintenance mode", it all basically works, I just try to keep things up-to-date.
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by briandc »

This is all great information and feedback guys! Thanks! :D

I haven't used Sabayon with any great success in the past, but it sounds like one worth trying again. Bodhi Linux uses Enlightenment too, and it's nice and lean.

For now, my setups are:

Ubuntu Studio w/KXStudio,

Bodhi Linux with a few KXStudio repos, and

AntiX with KXStudio on top! :)


brian
Have your PC your way: use linux!
My sound synthesis biome: http://www.linuxsynths.com
stratovarius
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by stratovarius »

suse 12.3, qjackctl & rosegarden work and that's about all i've needed in the past. Am considering mageia next but am too lazy (tons of homegrown scripts to rewrite)
The roses are melodies,
The petals notes,
Cast by The Magician's Selfless hands
To ring briefly
Then freely land
On the luckiest, few and ragged,
Children in the pilgrim audience.
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totalchaos
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by totalchaos »

briandc wrote:
For now, my setups are:

Ubuntu Studio w/KXStudio,

Bodhi Linux with a few KXStudio repos, and

AntiX with KXStudio on top! :)


brian
So you are basically using everything but the original distro kxstudio. How so?

If you are concerned that kde is not light enough to handle the audio applications with the best performance possible, you will be surprised in a good way. Besides you can always add an extra window manager, like openbox or fluxbox (notice that i am not meaning a second desktop environment) and everything will become light as a feather.
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briandc
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by briandc »

totalchaos wrote:
briandc wrote:
For now, my setups are:

Ubuntu Studio w/KXStudio,

Bodhi Linux with a few KXStudio repos, and

AntiX with KXStudio on top! :)


brian
So you are basically using everything but the original distro kxstudio. How so?

If you are concerned that kde is not light enough to handle the audio applications with the best performance possible, you will be surprised in a good way. Besides you can always add an extra window manager, like openbox or fluxbox (notice that i am not meaning a second desktop environment) and everything will become light as a feather.
Well, I can't complain about KDE on the Ubuntu Studio + KXStudio setup. It's faster than previous KDE-based distros (non-music-based) that I've used in the past, such as on PClinuxOS and Mageia.
I might try adding the fluxbox window manager though, now that you mention it. Just to see what it does to things. Thanks! ;)

brian
Have your PC your way: use linux!
My sound synthesis biome: http://www.linuxsynths.com
emsee144
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by emsee144 »

Check out my own Audio/media workstation...I think that you will love it!!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4GhZV ... sp=sharing

3GB of joy!

Copy *.2sf savefile from DVD to frugal install folder... do not create savefile on first shutdown, there is a problem in that it doesn't copy /initrd/pup_rw contents into created pup_save file!!

XBMC 12.2
KDE
JWM
Ardour 3.5
VirtualBox
LibreOffice 4.1.4
Unetbootin from debian
SARDU
REAPER
Wine 1.7.6
Skype
QQ2013
Games (3D stuff)

Just too much stuff to list, all up to date
emsee144
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Re: What distros are you using?

Post by emsee144 »

Thanks Chippy!

Talking about chips ... I have cooked up my own distro recently! It is called Puppy-Linux-EmSee-1st-Edition ... It has a great selection of up to date music apps, all working nicely together. The system is audio tuned and runs from ram/cd/dvd/hdd/usb ... Unlike other puppy distros and spinoffs it has not held to the minimalist credo for the reason that my laptop is a core i3 with 8GB of ram and 500gb hdd. I wanted to use all my resources and run every program I could possibly need from ram. My inspiration for this distro was ArtistX ... possibly THE most comprehensive assembly of creative programs in the history of Linux. however if you wish to run it from ram you will need at least 24gb ram maybe more. Now however there is an alternative, albeit less graphics/video oriented.....carrying newly compiled libs, python, ruby, just tons of stuff under the hood for devs, and a very comprehensive and useful selection of progs including, VirtualBox, wine 1.7.6, skype, QQ2013, Ardour 3.5, jamin, latest jack, steam, minecraft, world of goo, Libre office, reaper, ppstream. Now all of this runs in ram, but when recording multi-track audio it typically saves to disk ... this limitation has now been removed by the addition of my very own automatic ramdisk and ramdisksave backup utilities which provide maintanence and persistense to all your projects. Anyone interested in receiving a copy of this Audio Workstation distro on sandisk kreutzner extreme usb stick (190mb/s) should contact me at emsee144@gmail.com

With the new 3.13.2 pae kernel audio latency on record nd playback on my core i3 1.4ghz laptop is down to and stable
@ 0.4 miliseconds ..... 0.4ms latency !! what the hell? Check it out!

emsee
Last edited by emsee144 on Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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