Old 08-11-2020, 02:39 AM   #1
pepe44
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Default New to Linux tips !

Hi, i used linux a few years ago. Never got into it due to lack of support for audio drivers and a couple other things.
Recently i made some search and see that many people are now able to run a lot of things in linux, reaper, mixbus, jack, vsts, and many other things.

I have a MOTU ultralite mk3 hybrid which i use on the USB side of things and i would like to know if i dig into the world of linux what should be my readings and what distro is good for my to play with.
Right now i am about to test the AVlinux , that seems to come loaded with nice kernel for RT , some audio programs and a lot of possibilities.
Could you people please advice me to get into linux a bit more deeper so i dont mess up too much and just waste a lot of time .

Thanks
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Old 08-11-2020, 05:31 AM   #2
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Hi, most important thing to check is if the Soundcard is 'class compliant' (runs without installing proprietary drivers).
Other then that all linux distro's will do; some need more work others less.
Also read upon Alsa/Pulseaudio/Jack drivers to see their advantages..
Guess someone else will pitch in soon and recommend a distro without much fiddling
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Old 08-11-2020, 07:20 AM   #3
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Hi. Thanks for your reply.
I will check better what is Jack and also. Maybe it's the relative to asio in windows and coreaudio in Mac , right? What would be best to use? Jack running alsa?
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Old 08-11-2020, 07:51 AM   #4
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ALSA would be the first choice, as it's a layer closer to the hardware.

JACK and Pulse run on top of ALSA.

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Old 08-11-2020, 08:42 AM   #5
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Great, thanks a lot.
Will try it.
Any recommendation for a nice distro? Ubuntu, fedora?
I see some distro oriented to multimedia . Kxstudio and avlinux. Or should I read and learn more and make my own setup like many other things?
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:23 AM   #6
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Here is what I do:

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...02&postcount=4

As for my general choice of distro: I want a kernel that is relatively recent since I am running some newer hardware. I also do not want to run bleeding edge kernels. Plus I want a low latency kernel that I don't have to compile myself or whatever. Also I like the general convenience of a distro that is comprehensive and doesn't require me do use command line for a million things. Some people who are a lot more comfortable with the inner workings of Linux might choose something else.
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:34 AM   #7
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Thanks James, that thread looks great.
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:42 AM   #8
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about my audio interface, anyone have any experience with in in linux? I read some good things about the newer versions the AVB ones working in linux. Im afraid i wont be able to use it and that would be a waste of time trying to make it work.
Sorry for so many questions, just trying to learn more and more before i dig into the world of linux .
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:51 AM   #9
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i got this information, which appears to be positive on my quest!
http://linuxmao.org/MOTU+ULTRALITE+MK3
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Old 08-11-2020, 09:55 AM   #10
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about my audio interface, anyone have any experience with in in linux?
Does the manufacturer list Linux specific drivers on the downloads section of their website?

I don't know if this is much of an issue with Linux anymore. It used to be the case that when you were looking for hardware to connect to a Linux system, you always checked to see if the manufacturer provided Linux specific drivers.

Again, I haven't used Linux in years so this may not be a consideration any longer.

Linux is great though, rock solid.
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Old 08-11-2020, 10:51 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by pepe44 View Post
Great, thanks a lot.
Will try it.
Any recommendation for a nice distro? Ubuntu, fedora?
I see some distro oriented to multimedia . Kxstudio and avlinux. Or should I read and learn more and make my own setup like many other things?
I've used Xubuntu since day one, which for me was August 2018. It's satisfied my needs not only for REAPER, but for every day tasks as well. Others here like Mint and Manjaro, or switch distros every other week. I prefer to work on music over working on my computer.
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Old 08-11-2020, 10:53 AM   #12
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Originally Posted by toleolu View Post
Does the manufacturer list Linux specific drivers on the downloads section of their website?

I don't know if this is much of an issue with Linux anymore. It used to be the case that when you were looking for hardware to connect to a Linux system, you always checked to see if the manufacturer provided Linux specific drivers.

Again, I haven't used Linux in years so this may not be a consideration any longer.

Linux is great though, rock solid.
on MOTU site there is nothing related to linux, only Mac and Windows.
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Old 08-11-2020, 10:59 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by pepe44 View Post
on MOTU site there is nothing related to linux, only Mac and Windows.
You don't install device drivers for your audio device like you do in Windows. Instead the device needs to be USB Class Compliant, and then Linux will know what it can do and offer the inputs and outputs up in REAPER. I use a Behringer UMC1820 and only needed to plug it in and select it as the audio device in REAPER. It shows up as a 10 input 10 output device.
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Old 08-11-2020, 11:28 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post
You don't install device drivers for your audio device like you do in Windows. Instead the device needs to be USB Class Compliant, and then Linux will know what it can do and offer the inputs and outputs up in REAPER. I use a Behringer UMC1820 and only needed to plug it in and select it as the audio device in REAPER. It shows up as a 10 input 10 output device.
Well that's cool.

Is that something new, like within the last 5 years or so, or has it always been that way when it comes to audio?
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Old 08-11-2020, 11:37 AM   #15
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Well that's cool.

Is that something new, like within the last 5 years or so, or has it always been that way when it comes to audio?
It's basically Plug-n-Play and Windows can use it too, but manufacturers usually include drivers for Windows. When my machine was dual boot with Win7/Xubuntu, I had the Windows driver from Behringer setup in Windows, but in Linux I just plugged the device in and it was setup as far as the OS is concerned. Using the same machine in both Windows and Linux, I saw pretty equal performance using both the proprietary Windows driver in Windows vs. the USB Class Compliant driver in Linux.
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Old 08-11-2020, 11:48 AM   #16
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Don't want to hijack Pepe's thread, but I had a dual boot XP/Ubuntu system back in the day, did run into some issues with drivers, like for printers, stuff like that on the Ubuntu side.

HP printers and such were always a good bet for stuff like that since they had their own proprietary version of Unix, or at least they used to.

All my other Linux experience was with servers so connecting devices and stuff like that wasn't much of an issue.

Glad it's more plug and play now.
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Old 08-11-2020, 12:05 PM   #17
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Don't want to hijack Pepe's thread, but I had a dual boot XP/Ubuntu system back in the day, did run into some issues with drivers, like for printers, stuff like that on the Ubuntu side.

HP printers and such were always a good bet for stuff like that since they had their own proprietary version of Unix, or at least they used to.

All my other Linux experience was with servers so connecting devices and stuff like that wasn't much of an issue.

Glad it's more plug and play now.
Getting the audio device recognized and functioning by the OS is as easy as plugging the device in, but there is still some tweaking needed by the end user to achieve smooth low latency performance. For instance I needed to raise the priority of USB ports servicing USB audio devices from 50% to 95%, along with giving my user login permissions to run processes with elevated priority and with unlimited memory.

Both are one time tweaks that will improve the latency and accessible memory when using REAPER. If you are a power user needing low enough latency to play through REAPER with amp sims, or vocal FX, then you probably will need to do a couple tweaks after getting your audio device working.
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Old 08-11-2020, 12:34 PM   #18
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Both are one time tweaks that will improve the latency and accessible memory when using REAPER. If you are a power user needing low enough latency to play through REAPER with amp sims, or vocal FX, then you probably will need to do a couple tweaks after getting your audio device working.
Just my opinion, but I think that's always been kind of a double edged sword when it comes to Linux.

The people I worked with who really knew Linux would just blow me away with what they could do. They'd be typing away, all kinds of stuff flying across the screen, grep this, tail that, /s/r/whatever, type, type, type, then "There ya go, all fixed." I'd be like, "Damn".

But sometimes, for the typical computer user, that can be a little daunting. If you're into that stuff, that's cool, but if you're just wanting to record your music, it could be a distraction.

Proper tool for the proper job kind of thing.

But again, Linux is awesome.
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Old 08-11-2020, 01:42 PM   #19
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I have to thank you all for all responses and experiences you share.
That will help me a lot in my quest.
Long live this forum
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Old 08-11-2020, 01:54 PM   #20
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Just my opinion, but I think that's always been kind of a double edged sword when it comes to Linux.

The people I worked with who really knew Linux would just blow me away with what they could do. They'd be typing away, all kinds of stuff flying across the screen, grep this, tail that, /s/r/whatever, type, type, type, then "There ya go, all fixed." I'd be like, "Damn".

But sometimes, for the typical computer user, that can be a little daunting. If you're into that stuff, that's cool, but if you're just wanting to record your music, it could be a distraction.

Proper tool for the proper job kind of thing.

But again, Linux is awesome.
I avoid typing and the terminal as much as possible. The tweaks I mentioned were not a lot different than stuff I've done in Windows, even back to the Win98SE days when you wanted to change the swapfile behavior in system.ini or changing the machine to prioritize background services, Etc. All incarnations of Windows I've used with DAW software have always had some system tweaks.

I just checked and since switching to Xubuntu exactly two years ago I've finished 16 new projects, all done in Linux, without needing to constantly tinker with my machine to make it perform.
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Old 08-11-2020, 01:56 PM   #21
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I have to thank you all for all responses and experiences you share.
That will help me a lot in my quest.
Long live this forum
Good luck in your adventure!
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Old 08-11-2020, 03:02 PM   #22
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I avoid typing and the terminal as much as possible.
It has changed quite a bit then, you used to get laughed at if you used a GUI with Linux.
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Old 08-11-2020, 03:10 PM   #23
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A potential source of additional information:

http://tedfelix.com/linux/linux-midi.html

I used this a while back to get my feet wet with Linux...
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Old 08-12-2020, 01:19 AM   #24
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Originally Posted by MusicMan74 View Post
A potential source of additional information:

http://tedfelix.com/linux/linux-midi.html

I used this a while back to get my feet wet with Linux...
Thanks. this is great!


not related to your post in particular:

-How bad is trying all of this on a virtual machine ?
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Old 08-12-2020, 05:14 AM   #25
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So, i gave it a try installing Ubuntu in a virtual machine ,using virtual box.
I got everything working. Installed low latency kernel, setup all lines in audio.config, installed jackd2, kxstudio repositories, installed reaper, added me to audio group.
Problem comes when i try to open jack, it hangs, so i did some reading and noticed that the problem could be pulseaudio was running, i suspended it but it still comes in terminal when i use the:
pgrep -a pulseaudio

comes this everytime :
1419 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-rel="nofollow" target=journal

means that there is a background process running pulseaudio right ?
in Reaper no matter what device i try i cannot use it.
hangs every time.

This is the output of my sound cards in terminal. im only using laptop for testing this.

cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [I82801AAICH ]: ICH - Intel 82801AA-ICH
Intel 82801AA-ICH with AD1980 at irq 21

This could be a virtual machine problem ? or did i miss something to make it happen ?

Last edited by pepe44; 08-12-2020 at 05:20 AM.
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Old 08-12-2020, 05:53 AM   #26
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Originally Posted by pepe44 View Post
So, i gave it a try installing Ubuntu in a virtual machine ,using virtual box.
I got everything working. Installed low latency kernel, setup all lines in audio.config, installed jackd2, kxstudio repositories, installed reaper, added me to audio group.
Problem comes when i try to open jack, it hangs, so i did some reading and noticed that the problem could be pulseaudio was running, i suspended it but it still comes in terminal when i use the:
pgrep -a pulseaudio

comes this everytime :
1419 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-rel="nofollow" target=journal

means that there is a background process running pulseaudio right ?
in Reaper no matter what device i try i cannot use it.
hangs every time.

This is the output of my sound cards in terminal. im only using laptop for testing this.

cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [I82801AAICH ]: ICH - Intel 82801AA-ICH
Intel 82801AA-ICH with AD1980 at irq 21

This could be a virtual machine problem ? or did i miss something to make it happen ?

I would most definitely not recommend running any OS be it Linux or windows on a VM for Audio or even video production. For a start you're never going to get your audio interface running properly, it's going to be running from the linux kernel into a virtual audio driver & then into reaper. Even if you do somehow get it working the performance is going to very poor. Your never going to get anywhere near the performance you'd get from running from a proper OS install.


The other thing I would warn against is when you do go for a proper install not to expect all your win plugins to run on linux. Some but not many may have a linux version & it's possible to get them running on linux via linvst (there's lots of info about it here in the forum) but your always taking a risk of win plugins just not working some day especially after a wine (a windows compatibility layer) update. It's much better if you can to look for linux plugin alternatives.


The plugin compatibility issues is one reason I'm dual booting linux & macos, I use reaper & Renoise on linux & if I really need to use the plugins that don't run well on linux I'm using logic on macos. If you can get linux alternatives to your plugins & not have to depend on wine & linvst for plugins your all good, the linux version of Reaper is very stable in my experience, there are many fine plugins & especially some very decent synths for linux & most of uhe's plugins have a linux version.
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Old 08-12-2020, 07:10 AM   #27
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I would most definitely not recommend running any OS be it Linux or windows on a VM for Audio or even video production. For a start you're never going to get your audio interface running properly, it's going to be running from the linux kernel into a virtual audio driver & then into reaper. Even if you do somehow get it working the performance is going to very poor. Your never going to get anywhere near the performance you'd get from running from a proper OS install.


The other thing I would warn against is when you do go for a proper install not to expect all your win plugins to run on linux. Some but not many may have a linux version & it's possible to get them running on linux via linvst (there's lots of info about it here in the forum) but your always taking a risk of win plugins just not working some day especially after a wine (a windows compatibility layer) update. It's much better if you can to look for linux plugin alternatives.

The plugin compatibility issues is one reason I'm dual booting linux & macos, I use reaper & Renoise on linux & if I really need to use the plugins that don't run well on linux I'm using logic on macos. If you can get linux alternatives to your plugins & not have to depend on wine & linvst for plugins your all good, the linux version of Reaper is very stable in my experience, there are many fine plugins & especially some very decent synths for linux & most of uhe's plugins have a linux version.
thanks for your advices. im sure i will install it on a dedicated hard drive.
My experiences in the past with linux are terrible, i always ended up formating the drives and needed to re-install windows again. lack of linux knowledge from me to solve issues, i know! eheh

Thank you all for fast and very positive information to my questions.
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Old 08-12-2020, 09:36 AM   #28
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lack of linux knowledge from me to solve issues, i know! eheh
FWIW. I spent 45 years in IT. One of the few things that has remained a constant in all that time is what I call the tech versus tool approach to computers.

On the tech side, you have those who approach all of this from a technical aspect, and on the tool side, you have those who approach this stuff from the standpoint of getting work done.

Both are viable approaches based on what works best for you.

In may case, I'd rather play and record music than mess around with a computer. But that's just me.

Find what works for you and stick with that.

Maybe dual boot Windows and Ubuntu, boot to Windows to get your music done, then boot to Ubuntu to get better at Linux, then decide which OS will work best for you.
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Old 08-12-2020, 01:39 PM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by toleolu View Post
FWIW. I spent 45 years in IT. One of the few things that has remained a constant in all that time is what I call the tech versus tool approach to computers.

On the tech side, you have those who approach all of this from a technical aspect, and on the tool side, you have those who approach this stuff from the standpoint of getting work done.

Both are viable approaches based on what works best for you.

In may case, I'd rather play and record music than mess around with a computer. But that's just me.

Find what works for you and stick with that.

Maybe dual boot Windows and Ubuntu, boot to Windows to get your music done, then boot to Ubuntu to get better at Linux, then decide which OS will work best for you.

Sure!
i am curious, i like the idea of open source, and from time to time i like to test how things are going in the linux world. I believe that one day we, audio people, will adopt linux for daily work. Most here do, i dont, yet.

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