LinuxMusicians

Hello everyone, from Beatle land.

I'm in my 40s and I've spent the last 14 years noodling around with Linux. I never properly dived into the pro audio side of it until recently, after a Windows 7 installation went belly-up and I decided to make the switch full-time for general office/web software. I then decided to give the pro audio stuff a proper try, and see if I could get beyond pulseaudio. I refuse to use any of the current west coast tech megacorp spyware-loaded "the user doesn't own it" operating systems.

I have experience with successful bare metal installations of Ubuntu since Dapper Drake, Kubuntu, Mint Cinnamon and Mint Xfce. Mint Xfce is my preferred OS, at the moment. I also have some experience with successfully installing Puppy, MX Linux and Raspbian. Although, until I've got it all figured out, I will be keeping a recent slipstreamed installation of XPsp3 running airgapped on a racked 8-core FX8350 desktop, just for old Win32 and Win16 software and SCSI-1 hardware.

I had successfully got my Midiman Oxygen 8 working with a softsynth on Puppy, which runs without systemd/pulseaudio, but never took it any further with that OS. Recently, I've successfully set up the Oxygen 8 to work with LMMS on Mint Xfce, by modifying the steps in the guide at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Digital_M ... d_On_Linux

My plan is to eventually get my silver-fronted M-Audio Midisport 8x8 working on Linux, which should be easy, now, as it uses the same midisport-firmware as the Oxygen 8. I also have an M-Audio Fast Track Pro, a Steinberg Midex 8 and a MOTU MIDI Express 128 which I would like to eventually get set up for use with Linux, although the MOTU will be more difficult. Finally, I have an unbranded white box 1x1 MIDI i/o, which reports as "Play n Roll" in qjackctl and used a Phecda driver on XP. This last one appears to be better supported on Linux than Windows, these days!

I have more faith in the very long-term viability of Linux, than Windows or macOS, at this point. Getting the Oxygen 8 working, around pulseaudio, tipped the balance for me.

I'm more about delving into the engineering and technologist side of things, rather than recording my own tunes. Although, I do record for my ears only and can play keyboards and MIDI guitar.

All the best, and I'll be happy to try and help anyone using the same MIDI and audio interfaces as myself.

Welcome.

externalmidi wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 10:00 am I refuse to use any of the current west coast tech megacorp spyware-loaded "the user doesn't own it" operating systems.

I couldn't agree more.

Welcome! You'll soon find out that GNU/Linux is much better even than that.

Greetings Liverpool!

I'm glad you found your way to an open source OS. I hope you can stand being in control of your computing destiny, being treated with respect, having creative freedom, having recourse to privacy and being appealed to at the level of your cerebral cortex (instead of your midbrain). I hope you can stand belonging to something that isn't there to catabolize your intellect under the guise of offering hip technology. I hope you can stand not being constantly pushed to consume due to planned obsolescence.

I know it sounds awful, but I think you will in just fine

Welcom EM,

Looks like you've got a lot of equipment to play with. I had to look up Midiman Oxygen 8. Do you use it with a particular synthesizer?
I've always run either a Linux virtual machine or a dual boot. But am writing this on a native Linux box finally. So far, I'm happy Ubuntu Studio. Lots to explore.

How come there isn't a Beatles flavor of Linux somewhere?

Hi there andersen (and thanks for the encouragement from everyone else!),

I use the Oxygen 8 as an easy-to-setup notepad for use with any number of softsynths, usually as VSTs through Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio, up until now. My personal favourite VSTs are Synth1 and Cakewalk's Zeta+. As a Cakewalk Sonar replacement, I'll be testing Qtractor particularly, as it already has the ability to import Cakewalk's .ins files, for use with external hardware.

I do have a fair pile of gear. I should've mentioned actually, that I do have other USB pluggable gear, such as the white desktop Waldorf Blofeld, the Roland SH-201 and the M-Audio Venom. If anyone ever gets round to developing standalone Linux software for them, then count me in on the testing. I'd also still like to see Linux-based MIDI editor/librarians for quite a large number of 1990s hardware synths, and Ctrlr or similar available in Mint's Software Manager. Linux isn't yet perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is better than the alternatives.

A Beatles Linux? That would be Moptop OS, if anyone ever develops it!