[LAU] Uniting Windows and Linux audio worlds.

Renato rennabh at gmail.com
Tue Nov 8 13:05:31 UTC 2011


On Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:18:49 -0800
Tobiah <toby at tobiah.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I think that I've mentioned this is the
> past, but I'm happy with what I'm doing, and I
> wanted to share.
> 
> Some of you may have felt at some time, a
> difficulty with sticking with only Windows, or
> only Linux for use as an audio workstation.  I've
> tried two machines with a kvm switch, and the
> dual-boot thing.  Finally I came to a quite happy
> solution using "virtualization", running Linux in a
> Vmware virtual machine on a Windows 7 host.
> 
> One thing that's nice is that I can try out all
> sorts of distributions, audio centric or
> otherwise, by just making ad hoc installations
> under VMware.  I can even light more than one up
> at a time, to move files around between the
> 'machines'.  Love Gentoo, but hate the down time?
> Install in a window somewhere in the background.
> Even if it won't boot, your main machine is
> still running.
> 
> Where it comes to audio, I really want to run
> Reaper and Finale native on the native Windows
> machine.  What's nice is that it is painless to
> get your sound hardware working under Linux, no
> matter what sort it is.   Just make it work in
> Windows whether it be PCI, USB or Firewire, and
> it will appear to your Linux box as an Ensoniq
> AudioPCI card, which has an old friendship with
> Linux.  I'm pretty sure that you only get one
> stereo card from Linux, so if that won't work for
> you then this idea is out (although you could run
> Windows 7 in a VM from a Linux host!).
> 
> I have a keyboard with a USB midi interface, and
> I can pass that through to Linux just fine.
> 
> For X applications, I just install and run Xming,
> a great light X server for windows.  My Linux
> apps run in their own windows next to my windows
> apps, and I can cut and paste between them.  I
> have a ~/vmshare file under Linux that is shared
> with a folder on my Windows desktop, so I can
> shuttle files between Windows and Linux easily.
> 
> I have a robust machine, so I can give two cores
> to the VM, two to the native OS, and 4Gig ram to
> each.  One must keep in mind that the VM does not
> run for free.  2Gig ram total in your box is
> probably a fair minimum.  Also, make sure your
> bios supports the VT extensions and that they are
> turned on (they usually default to off).
> 
> This made my computer music world a great deal
> nicer.  I recommend it.
> 
> Tobiah
>

that's an interesting setup. Also because the guest system is a single
file in the host (at least with VirtualBox it's like this, don't know
about Vmware), so you copying over the whole system to a new machine or
whatever is as simple as copying a file. 

One could even consider having a linux host for experimenting new
software and day-to-day work, and as a guest have a minimalistic and
stable distro with little/no updates for production.

renato


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