On Thu Jun 04, 2009 at 12:21:52PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: are you joking? its a hodge podge of perl scripts and baroque practices if you want a 'canonical', 'trusted' binary of fairly recent vintage of a somewhat popular app, im sure you can't go wrong but for stuff like audio where 98% of the stuff you want to instal resides in Git/Hg, ive had much greater availability and ease with two solutions: proaudio overlay (for gentoo) and Paludis (for handling of hg/git/vcs depchain updating) and the AUR / archaudio.org project for Arch..

wow Patrick! - Thanks for the mention :) Ronald Stewart www.indamixx.com On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Scott <lau(a)troutpocket.org> wrote:

Jostein Chr. Andersen wrote: There is someone working on an default Debian RT kernel, but isn't very easy to get that into Debian, but they are open for it. I think most of what I've read is just another call (as far as Debian derivatives are concerned), to join the Debian Multimedia Team and help maintaining some packages. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia It's the best thing you can do if we want to enjoy up to date packages. But unfortunately most of people here are so proud that they can build packages their own, that they never thought about the idea that building for others too in an official way would not only help themselves, but also others and Linux audio in general... When more people join, the quality will be improved, and in the end less time will be wasted for tweaking the system instead of making music. \r

2009/6/4 Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> Sorry, am catching up rather late, but one thing about this discussion has left me wondering: does a realtime kernel have to be distribution-specific ? I mean: a) Could there be an attempt to patch and compile a distribution-agnostic realtime kernel ? (Is there one already ?) b) Or is it that every distribution expects its kernel to include some home-made kernel modifications, and hence requires patching their own specific brand from source ? Cheers.

Anyone is free to create yet another distribution. Nobody should have the authority to prevent any such initiative, even if it's an inconvenience (adds more to choose from; adds more confusion?). What everyone should do, however, is find a balance between convenience and accessibility, by which I refer to the current norm of having a specialised platform (operating system + packages) in order to make Linux audio "accessible". The problem with the current approach is that maintaining a specialised distribution means basically just that - maintaining a distribution. This involves the same manpower required to run a proper desktop platform, if your intention is to "reach out to the masses". One other problem is that each of these "mainstream" parent distributions have a particular release cycle, which the respective initiative must follow. Often times, since Linux audio is an effort primarily still in development stages, users see the need to get their software from upstream project managers. In essence, a Linux audio distro initiative is a bleeding-edge initiative. Even a stable platform like 64Studio may not be considered functional by the masses. The solution to this is to: (1) have a rolling-release cycle (2) provide only add-on packages; not a distribution (3) have a framework to easily build software from upstream and add to the package manager For the vast majority, from what I have seen and heard (not experienced though), Sidux meets these criteria. It is: (1) Debian-based; convenient (2) Rolling; accessible (3) There are tools to create a package from a local build For others, and from personal experience, there are Gentoo and Arch. I can speak for both, because I've spent quite a lot of time on the former, and am settled entirely with the latter for over 2 years. The main difference between these two is that one is solely a source-based platform, which I've come to find is more on the inconvenient side. With a bleeding-edge initiative, one may have to compile software, but not the entire platform. This is what Arch solves. To both sides of the spectrum of Linux users (new and advanced), Arch has its demerits. However, for a specialised platform, the merits are overwhelming: (1) Rolling. (2) No split packages; package foobar means software foobar; you get what and how upstream intends you to get. (3) Easy and code-simple package management for both binary and source, thanks to: (a) simple buildscripts; it takes one mere minutes to add a local build as a binary to the package database. (b) (2) directly means there are no further headaches while scripting a new package. (4) Due to the meta nature of the distribution, there's absolutely 0 need for another distribution if the intention is to make it accessible for specialised use. However, both of these are not for the "masses" or mainstream Linux users. Conclusion: See the project highlighted in the previous mail? That's the saviour. An agnostic repository (within the parent distribution domain) serving a whole load of users - precisely what CCRMA (or the other similar initiatives) is. It's really simple - you don't need another distribution or installer disc. You just install your desired Debian-based distribution and add packages from that repository. Make that something like Sidux and you're rockin'. So I'd urge anyone thinking of creating an audio distro to put his/her efforts into packaging for the Debian Multimedia Team (or help out in others like CCRMA, Gentoo ProAudio, ArchAudio etc).

Patrick Shirkey wrote: pro-audio is an overlay. It is still Gentoo, it just adds another set of ebuilds. Flo -- Machines can do the work, so people have time to think. public key DA43FEF4 x-hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net

Hi Patrick A listing like that is available at http://linux-sound.org/distro.html but it may not be up-to-date. So here is yours categorised: == Distributions == 64 Studio - http://64studio.com Musix - http://www.musix.org.ar == Bundles == Planet CCRMA (for Red Hat systems) - http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/ Debian Multimedia (for Debian GNU/Linux systems) - http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/ Pro-Audio Gentoo Overlay (for Gentoo GNU/Linux systems) - http://proaudio.tuxfamily.org ArchAudio (for Arch Linux systems) - http://archaudio.org == Not Accounted For == Sidux (just a distro; not an audio distro) Transmission (customized 64 Studio; source location unknown)

2009/6/4 Dave Phillips <dlphillips(a)woh.rr.com> We must inform the WebMaster that Bardix link is broken. -r

2009/6/4 Dave Phillips <dlphillips(a)woh.rr.com>om>: d'ho!! -r

On 06/05/2009 07:40 AM, Roger wrote: Hi, I have access to it but I don't know the exact details of the public access. You can purchase the usb key and/or an indamixx to get it preinstalled and ready to go. It's very reasonably priced IIUC and as one person was considering paying 100k/year to get a stable distro I would like to recommned they purchase a usb key or indamixx instead. It will support Linux Aduio Development adn several Linux Audio Developers are directly involved. Of course there is also the alternative distributions and overlays, etc... which are listed on the distros page at linux sound. I will get some more info and update re public access to Transmission. Cheers.

Mark Knecht wrote: Something good came out of it, however; I'm now running arch (instead of ubuntu) and loving it. -- Atte http://atte.dk http://modlys.dk http://virb.com/atte

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht(a)gmail.com> wrote: Mark, even better would be native 64bit across the board. Alex. www.openoctave.org midi-subscribe(a)openoctave.org development-subscribe(a)openoctave.org

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Mark Knecht<markknecht(a)gmail.com> wrote: |As do i Mark. i meant i don't understand why we should pursue 32bit as a continued option if, where possible, apps can be written for 64bit by default. Just my view. Alex. -- www.openoctave.org midi-subscribe(a)openoctave.org development-subscribe(a)openoctave.org

On Wednesday 17 June 2009 14:19:00 alex stone wrote: There are some apps out there, which are quite complex to rewrite for 64bit, and it will take a couple of years, before rewrites of these apps are there that work 64bit. Most notably the language part of SuperCollider, because of the way certain things are encoded for the garbage collection parts (as far as I understood). Right now, I'm building the lang in a 32bit chroot, but it would be much nicer, if I could build it linking with 32bit libs, without the chroot. Debian is making some steps towards making this easier the the 32bit apt package, but up till now I found the documentation rather unclear as to how to actually do something useful with it, so I haven't really tried it out yet. sincerely, Marije

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:11:14 +0200, Atte Andre Jensen <atte.jensen(a)gmail.com> wrote: You mean you tried the quick install guide and still couldn't get it to boot ? I'm amazed ! It really should be straight forward. I'm sure you weren't that far :) I use this guide whenever I need a new gentoo box. I even managed to run that remotely on my hosted server (which was not intended by the provider to run gentoo 64 bit in the first place... :D) http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml -- Marc-Olivier Barre XMPP ID : marco(a)marcochapeau.org www.MarcOChapeau.org

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Atte Andre Jensen<atte.jensen(a)gmail.com> wrote: I doubt you're the least bit stupid. A Gentoo install is a bit of a stretch the first time you you do it but I Can promise you that if you want to do a basic install the way that document lays out the machine then those instructions work. If you want to set up some different partitions for things, like I always stick /var on its own partition so that log files don't fill up the root partition, then you do need to make some modifications, but those instructions work. Used them 3-4 times in the last year. Now, as for the install, it does require a network to get very far. If you can get to the network from the install CD then you can do it in the install if you figure out what they've set up. However, if you cannot get to the network but your network hardware is supported in the kernel you can do an install, duplicate the CD environment on your drive, build a new kernel (even if you have to put the tar.bz files on a CD or USB stick to get them on the new box) and anfter you have your kernel you'll have the network and can do the final update to make the machine 100% up to date. EVEN if you don't end up using Gentoo maybe you want to make a 20GB partition, do the install and dual boot for a while. Doing a Gentoo install successfully is good learning for any Linux box. Good luck and if you even want help with this sort of thing feel free to write. Cheers, Mark

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 10:58:01AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: A significant advantage of the 64-bit kernel is that the processor can make use of more registers. In addition to ease of virtualization, an advantage of 32-bit userland, is that code is smaller, so that cache is used more efficiently. -- Joel Roth

Ray Rashif wrote: Hi Ray. Thanks for your reply. Ok. Ok, I'll remember to ask here before I (maybe) throw my into gentoo again in the future. I'm not sure what I would benefit from multilib. I've always been running 32bit and have no plans to change that for now. -- Atte http://atte.dk http://modlys.dk http://virb.com/atte

Yes that's an important point. The overlay is an asset - a huge one at that. Dunno, never heard of anybody using Sabayon (which is stage 4 gentoo + custom overlays + binary pkg manager + a lot of useless things and ideas like the pkg manager guessing your needs and when you should watch porn) for audio. Even I myself used it on a laptop and had Gentoo on a desktop for DAW. That was some 2-3 years ago. But well, if just one person builds and hosts binaries, it might be a solution ey?