Reaper. Linux, and a journey of discovery...

[norbury brook]

surely the distro wont matter regarding the real time kernel and Nvidea driver issue as the kernel is the same. I have the same problem with ATI drivers and RT kernels at the moment they just dont work well, i spent a week,yes a week trying to get decent graphics performance with a RT kernel and gave up, its fine on a generic 2.6


MC

[marce]

Thanks both for the tips! will try

Originally Posted by norbury brook

surely the distro wont matter regarding the real time kernel and Nvidea driver issue as the kernel is the same. I have the same problem with ATI drivers and RT kernels at the moment they just dont work well, i spent a week,yes a week trying to get decent graphics performance with a RT kernel and gave up, its fine on a generic 2.6


MC

That`s a bad news, the so slow graphic performance makes hard to work well in the enviroment.

[blitze]

Originally Posted by daverich

creative, and indeed Emu are awful companies.

It is to my shame that I own a 1212m

That said,- what better bed-fellows than creative and vista

Kind regards

Dave Rich

I have my Echo Gina 3G running nicely on Vista x64 with great and upto date support from Echo Audio. Wouldn't touch anything by Creative with a barge pole and this has been my feelings towards them for over a decade. They just, unfortunately, were adopted as a defacto standard.

That being said, Linux audio just isn't there for the masses. If you are keen on playing around to get things working then go for it but if you want something that just works then try another platform.

By the time they get Linux decent for audio work, Haiku will be on the scene and much nicer.

In the meantime, it's Vista for moi.

[lowkey]

Originally Posted by blitze

I have my Echo Gina 3G running nicely on Vista x64 with great and upto date support from Echo Audio. Wouldn't touch anything by Creative with a barge pole and this has been my feelings towards them for over a decade. They just, unfortunately, were adopted as a defacto standard.

That being said, Linux audio just isn't there for the masses. If you are keen on playing around to get things working then go for it but if you want something that just works then try another platform.

By the time they get Linux decent for audio work, Haiku will be on the scene and much nicer.

In the meantime, it's Vista for moi.

Cool

I'm going to assume you've tried Linux at some point and used your own brain to come to the above.

Which distro did you try and what problems did you have? The more the developers know the better for everyone.

[Alex Stone]

Finally after what seem like a pursuit of code, and packages, to the centre of the earth, i've managed to solve at least part of the riddle of getting the snd-powermac module working on a old time new world G4 laptop. (Or is it a new old time new world old mac? Erm..)
The secret was cunningly hidden away in a kernel bug for the '.20-24' kernel series.

A brief history. I installed Fedora8 on my vintage (circa 2002, positively ancient) G4 Titanium laptop. It all went swimmingly but for the sound. snd-powermac frankly told me to go away whn i attempted to get it going with some music. But after much research, no sleep, no pizza, and no idea how to go forward, i got in contact with a couple of chaps in the Fedora PPC irc, one of whom ran this very module on the same laptop. He'd had it running for some time, and after a lengthy discussion about Fedora, PPC, climbing Everest, and the art of gazing fondly at attractive ladies, he explained that a patch had been applied to the snd-powermac module, designed to get it talking with late model kernels, but after the first .25 version. I then went mad D/L up to date packages for my unsuspecting G4, and slowly but surely built a working configuration that would work. That moment came when i hit update kernel, and it all took off.

Then, that nervous, fear inducing decision time. Reboot.
Would i keel over from exhaustion? Would my Xorg give up the ghost? And most importantly of all, would the SOUND work?

And it did!

I was beside myself. I'd pulled out and crushed to death all the pulseaudio stuff, so it was just alsa and me, and no turning back short of a reinstall.
The serene pleasure of the fruits of much labour came singing sonorously through the headphones, as Beethoven majestically congratulated me on my persistence with the magnificence of the 9th symphony.

I'd like to thank Dw and Izo for their patience, and thoughtful prompts at the right time. They didn't do all this by rote, but headed me in the general direction, and like a rampant polar bear off i went.

So, with the development kernel from the Fedora9 beta repository, and a few swapped packages, me and my PPC G4 are up and running, and Beethoven can once again remind me and the rest of the planet why he's the maestro, and most of todays pop music really sucks.

I now have a 'refurbished' Laptop that runs much better than it did before, with my favourite OS humming away nicely, and giving me the chance to take tux on the road.

Now i'm off to load up some audio packages and see just how nimble the old girl is with a bit of a hammering.

Alex.

"Never give up! Never surrender!"

[Alex Stone]

After a few more tweaks (usual jack and alsa stuff) the laptop is now humming along as if it had always been that way. For an old G4 it's remarkably nimble with a shiny new OS.

Sadly, i haven't found a version of Wine for Linux/PPC yet, so no Reaper just yet.

But i've asked the Q of those that know, so we'll see what comes next.

Alex.

p.s. Rosegarden. Ardour, Fluidsynth, etc, all work ok, and are recent builds. Fedora seem to be pretty quick at getting this stuff ported and out to the users. Jack is 109.2, and alsa is the latest build, 016.



edit: A quick heads up. Fedora 9 is out in about 15 days, and seems to be already working pretty well (according to reports in their forums, and irc.) Anyone considering trying this distro might like to wait a couple of weeks, and take advantage of a new build release. The PPC version is on my radar, and after talking with the PPC port Devs, they've done a lot to streamline the audio stuff and get it working properly.

[404NotFound]

Sorry, but Wine will never work on PPC because Windows applications are build for the x86 CPU layout. Remember - Wine is not an emulator, it's more like a graphics toolkit like GTK and QT. It doesn't emulate a x86 CPU.

[Alex Stone]

Originally Posted by 404NotFound

Sorry, but Wine will never work on PPC because Windows applications are build for the x86 CPU layout. Remember - Wine is not an emulator, it's more like a graphics toolkit like GTK and QT. It doesn't emulate a x86 CPU.

404, thanks for the info. I was aware of the win connection, but i kinda hoped that some brave and clever soul had done some serious code voodoo,and defied the laws of digital physics.

Alex.

[StudioDave]

Originally Posted by Alex Stone

... i kinda hoped that some brave and clever soul had done some serious code voodoo,and defied the laws of digital physics.

You checked Google, of course ?

http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/...ne/014468.html

That one came up on a search for "wine on ppc". It looks like you'll need an emulator like QEMU.

[Alex Stone]

Originally Posted by StudioDave

You checked Google, of course ?

http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/...ne/014468.html

That one came up on a search for "wine on ppc". It looks like you'll need an emulator like QEMU.

Dave, i did think about that. And saw a couple of sites pertaining to this. But my little G4, while taking to Fedora like a duck to water, is modest in means, and i think a bit underpowered for a virtual emulator as well.

I still have Reaper on the main box, and who knows? One day we may be able to run Reaper from a usb stick in Linux as well. (4GB stick with linuxsampler, and a modest set of gigs. Hmmm.)

Alex.

More to come in this remarkable and sometimes perilous journey!

[marce]

Originally Posted by 404NotFound

++1 for 64studio. JAD is a piece of shit (pure unjustified rant because i'm waiting for the JAD guys to answer my last question in this post)

Also check the tutorial linked in my sig.

I have downloaded the ISO image 3 times, and all them gives me incorrect md4 checksums... i usually dont have that kind of problems, i have tryed diffrent mirrors, and even diffrent internet providers... but no luck.
Im using Free Download Manager, and using 4 simultaneous conections. Maybe using just one?...
Any tip?

[spmbtng]

Originally Posted by marce

I have downloaded the ISO image 3 times, and all them gives me incorrect md4 checksums... i usually dont have that kind of problems, i have tryed diffrent mirrors, and even diffrent internet providers... but no luck.
Im using Free Download Manager, and using 4 simultaneous conections. Maybe using just one?...
Any tip?

Well, it may not be their problem per se.

Something similar happened to me when I downloaded 3-4 different images of a Sidux Distro (Debian compatible). All of them have different md5sum result. I posted a question on their forum and asked if someone can verify the md5sum of some of those images. Someone did verify them and the ones in question gave them correct md5sum. There was a suggestion made to me to try rsync. I have heard of rsync before but never tried it and didn't know how effective that thing would be.

So I got rsync, read the man page. Then I copied one of those bad ISO I alread downloaded. Use rsync to update/overwrite that copy, using one of the rsync server that has a copy of the ISO. Rsync basically compare the binary blocks of data and only download the binary differences, saving lots of bandwith and download time. And rsync did it. I finally had a good ISO with the right md5sum. So I updated my question and changed the titled to "[solved]", hope that some other folks who do web search may stumble on it with the right keywords.

If they have some rsync server with that file for you to download, try it. If they only have ftp and http server then maybe you can make a suggestion for them to have one or two rsync servers. I know some Linux distros also have bit-torrent but I have never tried torrents so I don't know if it works simply like ftp/http, or more like rsync.

I could only theorize that that particular hard drive of mine was starting to go bad slowly somewhere. But I haven't used that drive much since, it was a spare one.

Good luck.

Jimmy

[marce]

Originally Posted by spmbtng

Well, it may not be their problem per se.

Something similar happened to me when I downloaded 3-4 different images of a Sidux Distro (Debian compatible). All of them have different md5sum result. I posted a question on their forum and asked if someone can verify the md5sum of some of those images. Someone did verify them and the ones in question gave them correct md5sum. There was a suggestion made to me to try rsync. I have heard of rsync before but never tried it and didn't know how effective that thing would be.

So I got rsync, read the man page. Then I copied one of those bad ISO I alread downloaded. Use rsync to update/overwrite that copy, using one of the rsync server that has a copy of the ISO. Rsync basically compare the binary blocks of data and only download the binary differences, saving lots of bandwith and download time. And rsync did it. I finally had a good ISO with the right md5sum. So I updated my question and changed the titled to "[solved]", hope that some other folks who do web search may stumble on it with the right keywords.

If they have some rsync server with that file for you to download, try it. If they only have ftp and http server then maybe you can make a suggestion for them to have one or two rsync servers. I know some Linux distros also have bit-torrent but I have never tried torrents so I don't know if it works simply like ftp/http, or more like rsync.

I could only theorize that that particular hard drive of mine was starting to go bad slowly somewhere. But I haven't used that drive much since, it was a spare one.

Good luck.

Jimmy

Thanks Jimmy your answer. Unforunely i hadnt acces to their forum, i registered days ago but never got a confirmation mail, so i cant post there to request the rsync feature.
Im currently using another download manager, i will see if that solves something.
Thanks again!

[spmbtng]

Originally Posted by marce

Thanks Jimmy your answer. Unforunely i hadnt acces to their forum, i registered days ago but never got a confirmation mail, so i cant post there to request the rsync feature.
Im currently using another download manager, i will see if that solves something.
Thanks again!

If they have an rsync server, it would have been listed as one of their mirrored servers for download. You may want to take another look.

If you can, try on a different physical drive, or at least a different partition. Just in case that drive/partition is going bad. I.e. it got all the correct data originally, but after writing on disk, reading back the data gives different results. It could be worse if md5sum gives different results on the same file every time.

On download manager(s), some of those on windows are adwares (or spyware???).

I use wget. I have seen some variations of wget commandline and GUI for win32 out there.

My wget usage is:

wget -U "test" -k -x -np -nc http://whatever
wget -U "test" -k -x -np -nc ftp://whatever

Some web sites may refuse to serve wget if you don't use the

-U "test"

<EDIT>
Because the default user-agent string from wget is rejected by the server. Not because they must serve the user-agent string "test".
</EDIT>

Of course, you can change "test" to "whatever you like". You can read the manpage for wget for the other parameters I use.

If the connection is severed somehow (especially the latenight, or weekend server reboots), I tell wget to resume using the -c (continue) instead of -nc (don't do anything if the file exists locally):

wget -U "test" -k -x -np -c http://whatever

Hope things work out for you.

Jimmy

[marce]

Thanks Jimmy your answers and time! the downloader im using is an open source one, freedownloadmanager, and i downloaded it to diffrent disks in diffrent computers.
I reviewed the mirrors and servers links looking for rsync, and no rsync one, but there are ones called "METALINKS". I googled a little, and appear that metalink " include automatic checksum verification of finished downloads, automatic repair of downloads with errors". So, it appear similar to the rsync thing. I will try that

edit: here is some info about wht is the metalink thing:
http://www.metalinker.org/

[spmbtng]

Originally Posted by marce

Thanks Jimmy your answers and time! the downloader im using is an open source one, freedownloadmanager, and i downloaded it to diffrent disks in diffrent computers.
I reviewed the mirrors and servers links looking for rsync, and no rsync one, but there are ones called "METALINKS". I googled a little, and appear that metalink " include automatic checksum verification of finished downloads, automatic repair of downloads with errors". So, it appear similar to the rsync thing. I will try that

You're most welcome.

Metalink... Hmm...

Hey another tool for the tool box here. Sounds good with the web search results for it. It sounds like the same technique(s) rsync has for automatic repair. Also saw aria2 along with others. Then I did

apt-cache search metalink

(I'm using Debian here). And there, aria2 is the only thing listed for now.

aria2 - High speed download utility

Good to know.

Jimmy

[marce]

Originally Posted by spmbtng

You're most welcome.

Metalink... Hmm...

Hey another tool for the tool box here. Sounds good with the web search results for it. It sounds like the same technique(s) rsync has for automatic repair. Also saw aria2 along with others. Then I did

apt-cache search metalink

(I'm using Debian here). And there, aria2 is the only thing listed for now.

aria2 - High speed download utility

Good to know.

Jimmy

Hi Jimmy. According with this wikipedia site, there exists some other tools for linux,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink

BTW, i solved my problem, thanks for the rsync tip, it guide me to the light i have now a valid download! Want to install it now.

[spmbtng]

Originally Posted by marce

Hi Jimmy. According with this wikipedia site, there exists some other tools for linux,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink

BTW, i solved my problem, thanks for the rsync tip, it guide me to the light i have now a valid download! Want to install it now.

Marce, good to hear. And by all means, blame it on Alex and his brain-washing us with: "Never give up! Never surrender!" ;-)

Yeah, I saw other Metalink Linux apps, too. It was just a quick check to see if Debian folks have any apps already in their repositories with Metalink support. Having used debian for a little while, I kind of like the pre-compiled apps, and let Debian worked out all the dependencies. I only compile as little as I can get away with :-). If I prefer to compile everything then Gentoo, or other source-based distros would fit the bill.

Jimmy

[Alex Stone]

After a challenging time learning much about Fedora and the PPC version specifically, and the plusses and minuses of that particular OS, i decided to take a different tack, and expand the horizons. I did a lot of work to get Fedora working on the vintage G4 laptop, and i encountered quite a few challenges along the way. (with a lot of enjoyment gained from the learning curve.) I really enjoyed using Fedora, and it has much to admire, but the range of audio related programmes for the PPC version are limited, and that was my prime criteria.

So, where next for my old G4? PPC in itself is challenging in this overwhelmingly intel environment, and the options outside of osx are limited.

Step in Opensuse 10.3 for PPC.
After D/L, burning the image, and setting the G4 install on it's way, i was poised, waiting for the inevitable stream of error messages, and challenges.

But it just......worked.

From 'install' to complete with a full install dvd, it took about 50 minutes, which is pretty good, when you consider once Win is installed, you need to go hunting for drivers, etc...
Opensuse had everything on the DVD for 10.3, and about ten minutes after install was complete, i was online with a DSL connection. It's really easy to find your way around, and as my intent was using the G4 for admin, and when i travel, i wasn't exactly going to give it a caning.

The only challenge was the version of Alsa (.14) not working with the 10.3 .22-17 kernel. I solved that with an Alsa install from source (.16), and a tweak or two in the /etc/sysconfig file. Jack went in ok too, and withan update from the Packman repository, got me to 109.2, which is a recent build.

I'm quite impressed with this. Suse works, and i don't need to don the tinfoil hat to do stuff. There's a big selection of packages,and i was pleasantly surprised last night when i got Linuxsampler/Qsampler installed. The G4 has a 867mhz cpu, with 512mb of ram, so i'm not going to be running big gig libraries, but i've got a couple of really light collections that will do the trick nicely, and enable me to write draft score on the move. I now have a score editor, sequencer, soundfont player, and sampler installed, that work, without jumping through hoops.

I miss having an RT kernel to run Jack and Alsa at low latency, but that's life, and for a drafting travel laptop, i can live with the bigger latency, for midi at least. I haven't yet found an RT kernel for PPC, but if i do, i'll be even further ahead. And sadly, i can't run Wine on the PPC HW architecture, so no Reaper on the move just yet.

Nice work to the team from Suse, at least from my personal experience. A good job well done, and a worthy alternative to other OS's for general, everyday use. It's easier (imho) to setup and use than Fedora, and for the average user, might be good alternative to revive old mac gear, into an extended life.

More to follow,

Alex.
"Never give up, never surrender!"

[Alex Stone]

Some programme News.

Musescore.

This is a favourite of mine, and i'm an unashamed admirer of Werner's work, and his relentless drive to improve Mscore. It's at the centre of "Parchment Studios' and has been for while, but Werner continues to add and develop, finetuning, and introducing new components. As i wrote in anearlier post, Mscore now has midi outs to the soundsource of your choice, and i've succesfully recorded midi out from mscore into reaper/wine, using linuxsampler as the soundsource. It works, and continues to gain strength, and stability. No notation editor is perfect, and all of them have strengths and weaknesses, but mscore holds it own, and given Werner's attitude and skill, i look forward to seeing this programme go even further.

Linuxsampler.

Christian and the team continue to refine this great sampler,and there's much to look forward to in the relatively recent future. It's also at the heart of my workflow, around which everything else revolves. Both Qsampler, and the Java alternative Fantasia work well, and i've got to the stage where i start the sampler first thing in the morning, and turn it off last thing at night. It doesn't crash, stumble, or cough, but just works, day after day. I've built a collection of templates, and with the mighty Jack have startup scripts that get me going quickly. As i have quite a substantial box for working with, my standard linuxsampler template is big, and includes almost everything i need to write all manner of music styles.

Jack.
This server continues to amaze me with it's useability and stability. It's a mighty bit of software, and essential for bringing everything together across a number of programmes and ports. The massive number of ports available, and the almost unlimited number of user options for routing gives Jack, imho, the number one spot for a musician's essential components in Linux, OSX, and just recently, Windows. As of a short time ago, the Jack team have introduced not only Jack midi, but Netjack as well, a component to route audio and midi across boxes, and provide a link between 'Jacks'. More to follow on this as i experiment further, and make all the mistakes before you chaps do.

Alsa.
Alsa is now up to build 0.16, and there have been many patches, and updates between this build and the previous one. It's quite a jump, but importantly, some older modules have had work done tidying them up, and dealing with bugs, and glitches. I installed this recently not only on my laptop, but in the parchment box as well, and the Alsa teamhave done a good job of polishing and refining. I look forward to seeing what they come up with next.

Pulseaudio
As Jack is to the discerning user, pulseaudio is to the 'average' user. (no offence intended at all.) I'll be frank here, Jack is a far better option for me, is more stable, and doesn't have the challenges that PA does. I appreciate this is a work in progress, but there's quite a way to go before they can claim the stability of a well tuned jack and alsa setup. This is strictly a personal view from my own experience, but i pulled out and uninstalled all the pulseaudio stuff, and both computers ran a lot better without it. I wish the pulseaudio team well, as the concept is sound (imho), but some focus on stability, and an improvement in user interface for setup, etc.. could prove more useful. Some basic configuration tools would be good, and some sort of 'restart server' button would go a long way to making it easier to setup and use. I would also question Distros using pulseaudio as a default install, and respectfully suggest they build to give users a range of options at install time.
I didn't have a good experience with PA on either computer, and found it too fiddly and twitchy to use. I would hope others who try this have a better experience than i did.

More to come,

Alex.

Bleeding edge? I LIVE for it......!

[spmbtng]

Originally Posted by Alex Stone

After a challenging time learning much about Fedora and the PPC version specifically, and the plusses and minuses of that particular OS,

<snip...>

I miss having an RT kernel to run Jack and Alsa at low latency, but that's life, and for a drafting travel laptop, i can live with the bigger latency, for midi at least. I haven't yet found an RT kernel for PPC, but if i do, i'll be even further ahead. And sadly, i can't run Wine on the PPC HW architecture, so no Reaper on the move just yet.

<snip...>

Hi Alex,

That's good progress for your G4. I don't have Mac, or PPC hardwares to even try. About Redhat, their bread and butter is on the server side, so they probably don't deal much with desktop, or serious audio apps, in comparison with other distros -- at least that's my impression.

Anyway, do you have Linux on the G4 exclusively on the hard drive, or you dual-boot (with OS-X???). What kind of boot manager do you use?

The last 1 or 2 releases of the kernel (2.6.25, 2.6.24), I'm pretty sure already has high-resolution timer, full preempt, and maybe one of the realtime patch-set merged in. It may not be enabled in the stock (pre-compiled) kernel for your distro or officially supporte by the distro maker. But can try to compile your own kernel with support for preempt, or high-resolution timer, or realtime patch, or combination of those. Of course, I don't know specifically if any of those will work with your PPC hardware.

That said, you can compile your own kernel, just have to enable the particular configuration options for the kernel before compiling. The same Linux install can have multiple kernels installed. you just use the boot manager to select which kernel to run at boot time. Yes, you can even have multiple kernels with the same base level (i.e, 2.6.25.001_rt_test, 2.6.25.1, 2.6.25.1_preempt, ...) At times, I change the postfix of the kernel name if I want to try the same kernel version, but with slightly different kernel-configuration options.

Just beware that for an 800-900 MHz CPU, it could take some 4-6 hours to compile a recent kernel. I didn't keep tab, but I compiled an x86 kernel (2.6.21, or 2.6.23) on a 2.2-2.4 GHz and it took some 90-100 minutes just for compiling my particular kernel configuration. It also depends on how much hardware support that was enabled in the kernel config file. Some of those hardware may not be on that particular machine, but most distro's enabled them in the config file so their distro will run on as many hardware as possible.

It is easiest to get the kernel-config file from an already working kernel -- you may already have it as /proc/config.gz . So you know all the hard parts are already done. I have tried configuring a kernel from scratch and sometimes it works, sometime it doesn't boot -- most likely because of some configuration dependencies that I may not have enabled. There is an option to include the config file with the newly compiled kernel, that will show up as /proc/config.gz when you run that kernel.

For the specific real-time support options in the kernel, there are many instructions already on the net. Though some are getting somewhat obsolete. I use the instructions from some posting at sidux.com forum for a couple of releases back. Search their English forum for "real-time kernel" for it. Let me know if you can't find it.

Jimmy

[spmbtng]

For those looking for sound patches a while back, there's also:

freepats.opensrc.org/

On other notes, I ran into linuxmusicians.com yesterday. It is free as far as I can tell, and has a few forum sections. Seems like a fairly new site, or a small crowd at the moment.

I'm not affiliated with that site. Not even a member of the site yet, don't know if that may change in the future. [--EDIT--] I mean to get an account there, just as I have here at cockos.com/ [--/EDIT--]

Jimmy

[Alex Stone]

Jimmy,
A big thank you for the heads up. I have suse10.3 64bit installed, and with an RT kernel to boot, with the latest builds of Alsa and Jack humming along nicely.

Now i'm going through all my notes and recompiling my programmes with correct CXXFLAGS, etc...

It's interesting for me at this point,that my first linux adventure took about 4 weeks to a fairly well tuned and stable box. This one is going to take me about a day or two.

I'm still mindful of the old adage though:

"The more i learn, the more i realise how little i know.."

Alex.



p.s. This most enjoyable of journeys, continues....

[spmbtng]

Originally Posted by Alex Stone

Jimmy,
A big thank you for the heads up. I have suse10.3 64bit installed, and with an RT kernel to boot, with the latest builds of Alsa and Jack humming along nicely.

[...]

It's interesting for me at this point,that my first linux adventure took about 4 weeks to a fairly well tuned and stable box. This one is going to take me about a day or two.

I'm still mindful of the old adage though:

"The more i learn, the more i realise how little i know.."

Alex.



p.s. This most enjoyable of journeys, continues....

Hi Alex,

I was talking about compiling your own RT kernel for the Mac G4 PPC, as you said you have yet to find an RT kernel for the PPC.

Also I saw some Linux 2.6.25 real-time side notes with some web links within, if anyone wants more details:

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/cgr...d-rtwatch.html

I attribute much of my Linux learning these days to reading news sites for general keywords and ideas. And mostly to web search engines for keyword indexing of articles, forum posts, and some blogs. Web browser's keyword search within a web page also help on "busy" webpages, too. The rest are more or less reading comprehension of the various terms within Linux and general computing. [EDIT] The more I learn about Linux, and the more of having done similar tasks, the less time it takes to get things done, subsequently. [/EDIT]

Jimmy

[blitze]

Originally Posted by lowkey

Cool

I'm going to assume you've tried Linux at some point and used your own brain to come to the above.

Which distro did you try and what problems did you have? The more the developers know the better for everyone.

Tried Arch Linux and Ubuntu x64.

Issues I have are:
ALSA - have to compile firmware for my Echo Gina3G to get it working.

Jack requires RT KErnel for decent response but Nvidia drivers and RT Kernels do not play.

Pulse Audio is just not there yet.

WINE still requires some work on the VSTi front as I would love to use my Windows VSTi's.

Biggest issue is all the faffing about to get things to work. Great that Reaper runs well in WINE but I find the whole audio interface aspect of Linux sorely lacking. I wish Linux Audio developers would drop the crap and focus on getting ALSA and Jack working together with a simple and well laid out user interface. Forget Pulse Audio and all the other leggacy audio servers and just focus on jack. Have a simple UI for it for day to day usage with a more indepth UI for Audio professionals.

This would really pull Linux together on the audio front but alas I don't see that happening and if and when Pulse Audio gets its' stuff together then Haiku will be in full release with an update on the way and blow Linux out of the water Audio wise.

Anyone who has had some experience on BeOS (of which Haiku is seeking binary compatability with on initial release) knows that here is an OS of the like nothing can touch media performance wise. I had BeOS doing on a AMD K6-400,/generic PC hardware, stuff that even OS-X and Vista can't do without specialised hardware (4 video streams playing with no frame drops, 10 audio streams playing and full UI responsiveness). Haiku will reproduce that experiance and coupled with todays hardware - blow the other OS's out of the water.

A truely awesome UI media experience that the 3 main OS's just can't replicate.

I want to like Linux and for generic computing I actually support it on some clients machines but it's too little, too late I feel. Reaper on Haiku would be the bees knees for moi especially if I could get my VSTi's carried across as well.
Till then, I can't be bothered and Vista now is stable enough to use (XFX 8800GT Bios/Nvidia driver problems there which are now sorted).

[Alex Stone]

Originally Posted by blitze

Tried Arch Linux and Ubuntu x64.

Issues I have are:
ALSA - have to compile firmware for my Echo Gina3G to get it working.

Jack requires RT KErnel for decent response but Nvidia drivers and RT Kernels do not play.

Pulse Audio is just not there yet.

WINE still requires some work on the VSTi front as I would love to use my Windows VSTi's.

Biggest issue is all the faffing about to get things to work. Great that Reaper runs well in WINE but I find the whole audio interface aspect of Linux sorely lacking. I wish Linux Audio developers would drop the crap and focus on getting ALSA and Jack working together with a simple and well laid out user interface. Forget Pulse Audio and all the other leggacy audio servers and just focus on jack. Have a simple UI for it for day to day usage with a more indepth UI for Audio professionals.

This would really pull Linux together on the audio front but alas I don't see that happening and if and when Pulse Audio gets its' stuff together then Haiku will be in full release with an update on the way and blow Linux out of the water Audio wise.

Anyone who has had some experience on BeOS (of which Haiku is seeking binary compatability with on initial release) knows that here is an OS of the like nothing can touch media performance wise. I had BeOS doing on a AMD K6-400,/generic PC hardware, stuff that even OS-X and Vista can't do without specialised hardware (4 video streams playing with no frame drops, 10 audio streams playing and full UI responsiveness). Haiku will reproduce that experiance and coupled with todays hardware - blow the other OS's out of the water.

A truely awesome UI media experience that the 3 main OS's just can't replicate.

I want to like Linux and for generic computing I actually support it on some clients machines but it's too little, too late I feel. Reaper on Haiku would be the bees knees for moi especially if I could get my VSTi's carried across as well.
Till then, I can't be bothered and Vista now is stable enough to use (XFX 8800GT Bios/Nvidia driver problems there which are now sorted).

Blitze,
While i understand your frustration with this, and the extra effort required to get things working together in Linux, it's not quite as difficult as it seems, and ifI can get it all running together, then there's hope for all.
I'm aware at the moment of a great deal of work going into Jack in particular, and with regular contact with the devs, understand that you just may get what you wish for.

I will say again here, that if the HW manufacturers were forthcoming with information about their particular kit, then a lot of the challenges that users have would simply disappear. Nvidia is better than most (try installing and running an ATI card), but there's still an element of 'secret squirrel' in their perception of working in linux, as if somehow they're going to lose something. A lot of the sound modules in Alsa were put together backwards by gifted craftsmen, who with little to go on in terms of schematics, or documents, built drivers with a 'better chance' of working. And it clearly identifies which Manufacturers are willing to see the Linux market as a potential money spinner. RME and MAudio can proudly stand up here, just for two examples.

And as far as Alsa goes, the commercial HW operators only have to build their own drivers for one or two OS's. Once they've taken care of their own stuff the party's over. (And even then, they don't always get it right. Creative being a recent glaring example. Again.)
The Alsa team have to build with ALL drivers in mind, and one only has to to cruise their soundcard interlink page to realise they're managing a lot at once. How long does it take HW manufacturers to sort their own drivers and firmware out? Then multiply that by at least 50, plus all the tweaks and bits. The reason Alsa can look challenging at install time, from source, is the sheer number of choices you have. The actual compile and install is relatively painless, and it's quite easy to get it all rolling.

So there are linux users too (imho) who have to do more than is necessary sometimes to get a decent working rig. The OS itself (again imho) is, in hindsight, no more difficult to use than others, and i'll be blunt here, it makes much better use of the HW, even WITH the unnecessary restriction of Manufacturer reluctance. It's true you need to do a bit of study, and research to understand how it works, and how best to tune the box, but i counter that with my own experience of being able to finetune and tweak the os way beyond the commercial offerings. I'm still learning, and further down the road, who knows how much more i'll be able to achieve? If you're a 'plug and play' fellow, then win will suit you better, and that's up to you. I can only reflect my own perspective that since taking the good ship linux and sailing out into uncharted waters, i've had a great time, with results impossible to achieve in win or mac. It has taken some modest extra effort to achieve that, but that's always the case in the pursuit of excellence. I feel i've lost nothing by taking the plunge, and have gained much in knowledge, and my understanding of how best to get more efficient use out of my HW resource. Audio and midi play a lot nicer on my rig now (with the mighty jack server) than they ever did in win.

So good luck to you, whichever direction you take, and i wish you success. We are doing this after all to write music, and there are many paths to the same goal.

Alex.
Windows free, and can already feel the IQ growing.

Edit: It's interesting that Linux useability is at the forefront of user questions, and that's valid to a certain extent. But in the last few days i've finally crushed and destroyed the win partition on my dual boot, and installed suse 10.3.64bit. (No more Win, i'm freeeeee...) It installed easily, without any effort on my part, in a mannner one could describe as a 'one click install.' It started, booted, and got going without any tweaks from me, including vid and sound. (And that includes finding, evaluating and installing the drivers for my pci ATI vid and Delta 44 soundcard.) So i didn't even have to install extra drivers once the OS install was complete.

As i understand the process from my own experience, once Win is installed, the user then has to go and find, and manually install, drivers for their particular extra HW. And there's no certainty, in these Vista times, that those drivers will work correctly. (See the reference to Creative and Vista for just one glaringly obvious example, and they're not the only ones by any means.)
I was up and running straight away. How long has it taken many HW manufacturers, AFTER they've sold the gear to the customer, to build stable, working, Vista drivers?

While we're on this, anyone who's considering a standard Linux install, with all the usual stuff like interlink, mail, sound,vid etc, might want to do some research on Opensuse. Version 11 is out in 55 days, but 10.3 goes like a train. (my experience.) You can install an RT kernel straight from the repositories, and with the usual rtprio,memlock, and nice performance tweaks, have a decent, powerful audio,midi dawbox within a short time.

Never give up, never surrender!

[StudioDave]

Originally Posted by blitze

Jack requires RT KErnel for decent response but Nvidia drivers and RT Kernels do not play.

I have two machines here at Studio Dave, one with the SuSE-based JAD 1.0 (32-bit system) and the other with the Debian-based 64 Studio (64-bit system). Both have nVidia 7600GS cards installed because I occasionally run music & sound apps that require OpenGL support.

The only problems I've ever had with those cards had to do with a closed-source app that utilized accelerated 3D. Couldn't debug it so I dropped it.

Pulse Audio is just not there yet.

PulseAudio is not a pro-audio solution. IMO (from what I know so far), it's another in the long line of sound servers for normal users' machines. If your ambitions are towards pro-audio quality, you probably needn't concern yourself with PulseAudio.

WINE still requires some work on the VSTi front as I would love to use my Windows VSTi's.

Not sure I understand this comment. Many here use VST/VSTi plugins fruitfully, via Reaper or some other mechanism.

... I find the whole audio interface aspect of Linux sorely lacking. I wish Linux Audio developers would drop the crap and focus on getting ALSA and Jack working together with a simple and well laid out user interface. Forget Pulse Audio and all the other leggacy audio servers and just focus on jack. Have a simple UI for it for day to day usage with a more indepth UI for Audio professionals.

I would like to see this happen too. I've already lobbied some devels about it, and I am glad to see direct JACK support in common media players such as MPlayer. Alas, it's still not an option in Amarok or Rhythmbox.

Anyone who has had some experience on BeOS (of which Haiku is seeking binary compatability with on initial release) knows that here is an OS of the like nothing can touch media performance wise. I had BeOS doing on a AMD K6-400,/generic PC hardware, stuff that even OS-X and Vista can't do without specialised hardware (4 video streams playing with no frame drops, 10 audio streams playing and full UI responsiveness).

Then I must ask a serious question, no flaming intended: Why did you abandon it ?

I want to like Linux and for generic computing I actually support it on some clients machines but it's too little, too late I feel. Reaper on Haiku would be the bees knees for moi especially if I could get my VSTi's carried across as well. Till then, I can't be bothered and Vista now is stable enough to use (XFX 8800GT Bios/Nvidia driver problems there which are now sorted).

I'll say what I usually say to such reports. Given your poor experience with it I'd recommend you not consider Linux as an audio workstation. I assure you, it works perfectly well for me, for Alex, for Lowkey, and few thousand others, but those numbers don't mean diddley if you can't use it. Be aware, I'm *not* flaming or dissing your experience AT ALL. I'm simply advising you to not waste your time. If Vista works for your needs, then you should continue using it. Changing an OS is not a trivial pursuit.

Btw, it appears you didn't bother with trying the media-optimized distros such as Planet CCRMA or 64 Studio. That's a common mistake. I've been using Linux as an audio platform for a long time, I've been through more code-level work and compiling than I care to remember. Haven't done anything like that for years now, thanks to the optimized distros.

[Alex Stone]

Just want to add to Dave's wise words here, and say once again, imho, this is about making music. While i continue to thoroughly enjoy my own journey in Linux, and had success with it, it has been a result of 1) A great deal of help and encouragement from fine human beings who have been generous and enthusiastic with their knowledge and encouragement, and 2) Planning, and determination on my part, studying and researching, and keeping an open mind. I set aside a chunk of time to do this, and kept the end goal in mind, always.

If you're rig is working well, then, as Dave has said, why change?
We have a choice of which direction we take, and bear the consequences for making that choice. If it doesn't work, then either find a solution, or make another change.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but i went into this prepared for the worst, and intent on getting the best, with the added advantage of gaining new knowledge, and a source of new humour as i took on the challenges.
So while i wish those who do this success, i would hope they take on the task,if they choose, understanding that there will be problems to solve, and challenges to meet and defeat. Personally the rewards have already been considerable, with a good setup, continued learning, and the participation in good discussion and shared humour, with likeminded colleagues, and friends.

Sometimes, when we're focused so intently on the problem at hand, and it seems beyond us, we forget to look up and catch our breath for a moment, gathering our thoughts and taking the chance to explore another perspective.

The lack of sleep is to be expected.



Alex.

p.s. And above all else,

Never give up, and never surrender!

[blitze]

Originally Posted by StudioDave

I have two machines here at Studio Dave, one with the SuSE-based JAD 1.0 (32-bit system) and the other with the Debian-based 64 Studio (64-bit system). Both have nVidia 7600GS cards installed because I occasionally run music & sound apps that require OpenGL support.

The only problems I've ever had with those cards had to do with a closed-source app that utilized accelerated 3D. Couldn't debug it so I dropped it.



PulseAudio is not a pro-audio solution. IMO (from what I know so far), it's another in the long line of sound servers for normal users' machines. If your ambitions are towards pro-audio quality, you probably needn't concern yourself with PulseAudio.

Why bother with it when Jack can do all Pulse can and more. Better to stick with one real good audio server and work its interface than f-about with many. Biggest problem with Linux in this regard.

Originally Posted by StudioDave

Then I must ask a serious question, no flaming intended: Why did you abandon it ?

Be Inc screwed up. They developed a great OS for Media usage (with a few rough edges but the underlying OS concepts were great), pitched it at Apple as a replacement for Mac Classic and got screwed by their greed and that Apple really wanted Steve Jobs. Then they basically died as a company but not without having Nuendo Beta written of BeOS, Roland and some other Music Hardware companies using BeOS as their underlying OS for some of their Audio Hardware and Tune Tracker (Radio Automation Software on BeOS) leaving some great impressions.

Haiku is a communities effort to ressurect BeOS by rewriting the OS to avoid legal issues (BeOS IP was bought by Palm Inc) and also tidy up some of the areas where BeOS code was not ideal. Try having a look at it as I think they have a self hosting Alpha build available now and by Alpha Build in Haiku terms, we're talking Beta quality code in most other software development terms. By the time we have a Beta in Haiku OS then you'll have a functioning OS with great feet for media work. Using shared toolkits/media kits and its modular approach, BeOS/Haiku seemes to do much more with less.

Echo Audio are quite good with how they have supported alternaitve OS driver development but my experience is that unless you are running a SB or onboard audio, distros seem to not bother including much else on the driver/firmware front for ALSA. The Gina 3G works well when you do get it running but considering I also do Print Pre Press work I can't be f-ed dual booting to another OS that requires some hand holding to get it to work.

I do admit, when Linux is setup - it runs very well and Jack is a great idea with it's abilities to connect different audio apps together and share audio streams between them and you can't replecate that on Windows or OS-X. Still, ATM, I'm holding off until things are a little easier and if Adobe decides to give Linux support either through WINE or natively with their apps, then I'm more inclined to more across.

ATM my system runs well 24/7 on Vista switching between Work/Audio/Games/Media Centre (using VLC and Foobar 2000) with a minimum of fuss.

[StudioDave]

Originally Posted by blitze

Why bother with it when Jack can do all Pulse can and more.

Perhaps because so much of the existing non-professional audio applications base is written with blocking I/O instead of a callback-based system ?

[spmbtng]

blitze,

You asked Dave why he dropped an app that he had problems with. It could be that the deveoper(s) of the app couldn't or didn't help resolving those problems. We either have to live with it, or find a way out of it. With opensource apps, we also have the option to play around with the code if we have the time and knowledge to try. We might get lucky and fix some of those problems ourselves even if the original developers don't have time or can't be bothered. It simply is another option.

It sounds like you may even jump on board with Linux too, if you could. Although you are tethered by a few things still. Same sentiment I had until I made my decision, I admit it took me a while -- more than a couple of years because of work related things. It did help me alot when I realized it. So I set up a spare PC running Linux and only create all new documents with Linux, convert what I need to an open formats. Everything else just got archived because I have no time to convert those. After a couple of years, I figure those documents I haven't needed to read or convert yet, then chances are I may never need them again, except for maybe tax audit or something along that line. Basically, I found different apps or different ways to ween myself from the addiction of sort.

Still, Linux does haev its share of problems, so don't expect too much.

I can fully appreciate the expression Alex just made this week: "But in the last few days i've finally crushed and destroyed the win partition on my dual boot, and installed suse 10.3.64bit. (No more Win, i'm freeeeee...)"

I already explained briefly (not full analysis by any means) the issues of binary (proprietary) drivers previously in this thread. If you haven't read it, you can try to go back and search for those. It might be fastest to bring up these, and do text search (for "spmbtng", or "proprietary", or "license", I think) within:

http://www.cockos.com/forum/archive/...p/t-15238.html
http://www.cockos.com/forum/archive/...15238-p-2.html
http://www.cockos.com/forum/archive/...15238-p-3.html

I am no lawyer. Even if you consult with a lawyers, all they will say is that "this is my interpretation of the law, which may or may not hold in the court of law, so I suggest that..."

Every thing (re-)distributed in the Linux kernel is GPL version 2. It means that full source code must be made available to anyone who obtained the pre-compiled binary package(s). That pretty much weed out all binary-only or partial-binary drivers. Most manufacturers and their lawyers still don't want to potentially open up the full source code for their drivers. Some of them don't actually own the whole source code either, but rather have links to yet third-party (additional companies and their lawyers) code somewhere, too. And the code could reveal more ugly hacks than so called "trade secrets". To me, the ugly hacks are exactly the "trade secrets" they want to hide. Ha, the recent CreativeLab's saga shows some of those shady areas of marketing tricks, too.

GPL version 3 software have additional implications, spawn out of the wrangling for souce code of GPL drivers or other Linux GPL version 2 codes inside TIVO devices or similar cases.

The many free windows drivers download sites out there are by definition "redistributing" those drivers. I doubt they have explicit license for any of those drivers. Just happens that drivers are still considered free so the manufacturers can't claim loss revenue the way the music publishers try to claim to shut down those sites. Plus public backlash about old drivers not available from the manufacturers' own web pages could be a PR's nightmare...

There might me some legal definition of the word "packaging", too. If some distro has only one option to includie (even a separate) CD/DVD with some GPL'ed CD/DVD in one "shipment", would that constitute the "one softwre package" being distributed. If so, there might be copyright (or redistribution) issues with original proprietary driver, or the GPL...

Similar issues are the reasons that held up the "opensource Java" by Sun for many years. In the Java software, there were contributed, or licenced codes by other companies that were not "opensource" compatible. That's also why Java had not been in most Linux distros until recently -- now that Java JDK is fully opensource. There were numerous opensource efforts to recreate bits and pieces of Java APIs, but they are often years behind.

Things are not as simple as most people think with software, as well as licenses.

Jimmy

[blitze]

I understand the debate very well. Also with regards to Proprietry vs Opensource.

Even on Windows I try to utilise apps that use open formats i.e. OpenOffice and the likes. I don't see it being good to have any form of inf tied up in proprietry formats that might cease to exist down the track. Had that with a couple of compositions I had done in other Sequencing software and I don't want to suffer that again.

Then again, I think I'll also be sticking to Reaper for quite some time as I like the community and the openness of the Devs.

Who knows what the future will bring but opening up platforms and formats is something that seems to be happening and it's for the better. Look at AMD and their new found commitment to opening up the ATI Drivers.

[Alex Stone]

Some quick news from the Tux Interlink.

The latest svn updates of alsa and Jack are going through a bit of a reorganisation, with some components being worked on that may not work quite as expected. so if you have a nice working rig, keep it, and i'll post again when the projects have settled down again, and work together seamlessly.

The Alsa team are working on the seq code, and the jack team are further integrating code across jack, and jackdmp, with ongoing development of jackmidi.

Great news, but now is the time to be a little patient.

Alex.

[Alex Stone]

As a quick update to the previous post, it's worth putting in the diary that Jack2 is in the advanced stage of development, and there are some big hitters in the linux dev world putting serious time into this programme.

One can only imagine what the wizards are conjuring up., but an increase in advanced netjack capability across boxes, and further multiprocessor capability are just two i know of.

Exciting stuff.


Alex.

The journey continues.....

[Alex Stone]

Hehe, another quick update. For those who enjoy the bleeding edge, Jack 0.111 has hit svn update, and works fine, on both my boots. (UBStudio and Suse 10.3 RT) Jackmidi is with us again!

Alex.

On the bleeding edge, having refreshed the first aid kit....

[Alex Stone]

After some research, and a careful think, i decided to upgrade my UBStudio to not only Heron, but 64bit. (Reaper now resides in a small 32bit partition of it's own.)

I have to say here, that i'm quite impressed with the work that's gone into this, and the range of 'updated' packages available. (something Ubuntu are not always renowned for.)
The install was seamless, and i chose to ignore installing any packages outside of the core system, aside from Alsa, which is at 1.0.16 in the Heron dvd. (Just about the latest version.)
So the journey begins again, in a manner of speaking, armed with a modest improvement in knowledge, and a bit more confidence in installing from source. I've got Jack2 in now, (which is, more or less, jackmp) and Dave Drobilla's terrific patchage app, a gui for all things jack, alsa, and lash. (More on lash later, as it's going to be upgraded considerably this summer, and it's ability to manage and save complete sessions, greatly enhanced, including full dbus integration. I send good luck and best wishes to Iuso and Nedko, for taking on this formidable task.)

More to come!

Alex.

The journey continues, renewed....

[Shan]

Originally Posted by Alex Stone

...and who knows? One day we may be able to run Reaper from a usb stick in Linux as well. (4GB stick with linuxsampler, and a modest set of gigs. Hmmm.)

+1 billion for that feature.

Shane

[eric71]

Has anyone had problems with recent Reaper releases on the new Hardy realtime kernel? I have had problems with Reaper locking up at startup when loading the project.

I had also had some poor jack performance issues, but that seems to have been fixed with the nohz=off parameter to turn off the tickless feature of the kernel. I had hoped this would fix the crash when starting reaper too, but it didn't.

This doesn't happen if I use the standard kernel. If I start a new empty project and save it while using the normal kernel, I can boot into the rt kernel and start Reaper fine. It seems to have problems opening my existing projects, so I'm not sure what is happening. Reaper just locks up, and everything else is almost unusable. I've tried different memlock settings and this doesn't seem to help.

Any ideas are appreciated. For now I've switched back to PCLinuxOS, where things are working but I'm never quite as comfortable as in Ubuntu.

Eric

[spmbtng]

Eric,

If you suspect the realtime clock has something to do with it, try to change the clock frequency in /etc/sysctl.conf using some values like 100, 512, 1024, 2048... to see if that makes any difference. Changing the values in /etc/sysctl.conf generally requires a reboot. Or, you can try directly changing the clock frequency before starting any audio apps, including jackd, or qjackctl

echo 100 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
echo 100 > /proc/sys/dev/hpet/max-user-freq

or

echo 512 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
echo 512 > /proc/sys/dev/hpet/max-user-freq

or

echo 2048 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
echo 2048 > /proc/sys/dev/hpet/max-user-freq

Jimmy

[Alex Stone]

I had the privilege recently of chatting with Pieter Palmers, a renowned and well respected linux dev who heads up the FFADO team, a project for further developing firewire integration and functionality in Linux. In the course of that discussion, we talked about HW manufacturers who are 'linux friendly.'

So, here's the good guys, those companies who see linux as a viable business opportunity, and who are working with the FFADO team to develop red hot firewire drivers and modules for use within linux.
(In no particular order)

ESI
Terratec
Focusrite
Echo

and a new addition, TC Electronic.

If you're considering a new firewire device, then these companies are onside. If you want your particular favourite, that you're already using, to be part of the growing band of Linux friendly HW manufacturers, then i respectfully suggest you send them a note, outlining your enthusiasm for such a move.

This is not an official endorsement of these companies, nor should it be taken as such, but these people recognise the value of developing for Linux, and co-operate with Pieter and his talented team in what is a fruitful partnership for us all.

More to come.....


Alex.