[linux-audio-user] Midi and VST server for vsti?

[Ketil Thorgersen]

Hi

This is my first post to this list. I have been working with both windows and 
mac for years as a hobby studio technician with some education in then field. 
My day-work is teaching music in secondary school and at the teacher trainers 
college here in Stavanger Norway. However I have converted to Mandrake Linux 
for my office computer on which I'm at present finishing the first half  of 
my phd on, but I have been reluctant to try it for music. 

After having read about the agnula project and found Thac's RPM's 
(http://rpm.nyvalls.se/sound9.1.html) for mandrake plus having heard on the 
PCDAW at yahoogroups.com mailing list that a few people actually do work 
solemnly on linux for studio work I'm tempted to follow. I'll probably lurk 
here for some time first, but a few questions:

I have installed rosegarden from thac's RPMs and it seems to be working. Looks 
a lot like Cubase which I know well. The problem is that my trident card 
(we're now talking about my office box, I have a staudio C-port system on my 
music box) apparantly is not supported for interal midi in alsa. I don't know 
if that's the reason, but when I start rosegarden I get the message 
"sequenzer exited" and then rosegarden starts, but of course with no sound 
from midi. This is what is in the sequenszer configuration section: " 
"-malsa_seq". Brahms starts fine, but of course no sound. 

How would I go about getting softsynths to work? I know Jack is the way. Arts 
is installed by KDE. Do I have to disable that? Are there any step by step 
instructions or automated setup programs to fix this for me? And is it 
possible to use VSTi's under Jack via the vst-server? If it is - how? And 
what is the simplest jack patchbay program to use?

I plan to try rosegarden for composing and Ardour for multitracking 
eventually.
That was quite a few questions. PLease be gentle as I'm not a very 
linux-literate user. Point and click is sort of my thing, but I love to learn 
and is quite stubborn..

Hope for some input
Best regards
Ketil Thorgersen