[linux-audio-user] FC2->Fc3->Fc4->Fc5->FC6->FC*: it's crazy!

Nigel Henry cave.dnb at tiscali.fr
Thu Nov 16 15:13:12 EST 2006


On Thursday 16 November 2006 18:47, Brad Fuller wrote:
> Nigel Henry wrote:
> > On Thursday 16 November 2006 16:28, Brad Fuller wrote:
> >> anyone use Ubuntu?
> >
> > Yes.  At least Kubuntu.  On my 2 machines, that's along with FC1,2,3,4,
> > and 5, Slackware 10.0, Debian Sarge, Debian Etch, and last but not least
> > Gentoo.
>
> Which one(s) do you prefer for audio work?

In many ways I'm not suitably qualified to answer this. I started off in 
computers, being quite old in 2003 with Win 98, then XP. Got some some music 
apps, mainly demos, as I wanted to try making music. I bought a licence for 
Making Waves (a step sequencer) which I've had a lot of fun with. The same 
year (2003) I ventured into Linux with an FC1 cover disk from Linux Format 
mag. I couldn't get any sounds out of it, until a short time later I found a 
link to planetccrma. I suppose I've become a bit biased, as there were many 
music apps available from planetccrma. As I've said I wanted to make music, 
but seem to have been distracted by wanting to try different disros, and over 
the last 3 years have spent more time trying them than making any music, 
apart from a couple of uploads of demos to the Gungirl site. 

Regarding Slackware, I don't know what the present situation is for music apps 
from a repo. Since Luke Yelavich found that he could no longer continue the 
audioslack site, and I did see that someone else was willing to continue with 
it, but havn't had Slackware booted up for a while, so don't know where this 
stands at the moment, but of course there's no problem installing the source 
files for music apps on Slackware.

I looked on the link that was posted for Gentoo's proaudio thisafternoon, and 
there appear to be many music apps available for Gentoo. Mark Knecht used to 
use Fedora, and planetccrma, but has moved on to using Gentoo, and seems to 
very happy with the music apps provided , and that you don't have to keep 
upgrading the distro to a newer version, as you have to with others. 

Debian has loads of music apps available from the repos, and I've just done 
some updates on Kubuntu, then looked on synaptic for music apps. There don't 
seem to be as many music apps available on "Multimedia (universe)" as there 
are on planetccrma, but you can always install the music apps you want from 
the source files.

Even on FC there are music apps that arn't available from planetccrma. I think 
of Mhwaveedit, https://gna.org/projects/mhwaveedit/ .  To build it you need 
to have libsamplerate-devel, and libsndfile-devel installed, and to 
playback .mp3's you need to have lame installed, which is obtainable from 
Dag's repo or others. 

As to your question as to which distro do you prefer for music apps. I just 
think that this is a bit of a personal preference. If you can produce music 
on the distro of your choice, and it sounds ok, then that is ok with me.

I suppose the only complaint that I, personally have, is that we only have 
only one real synth (ZynAddSubFx) provided by Paul Nasca. There are modular 
synths, but perhaps not so easy to work with. 

Looking back at Windows, there are loads of synths available. and yes, I know 
you have to pay for them. I only have the demos on my XP install, but there 
are so many synths with different sounds. It would be so nice if someone 
could write us another synth, different to ZynAddSubFx, but not in 
competition with it. Just another synth, with different sounds.

Just my 2¢ worth. Take it as you will.

Nigel.



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