On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 22:46:40 +0000, Harry Van Haaren <harryhaaren(a)gmail.com> wrote : I see. So then punching-in/out around that location would prevent re-doing the whole track. I must say that I'm not that familiar with punching in/out yet: I should start using this technique.

On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 19:46:11 -0500, Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote : I'm not too keen about updating Fedora 8. Everything works OK. When I want to record things it works. I have seen too numerous problems when doing other updates. But I would like to get bug fixes and I'm quite interested in trying out the upcoming new Ardour with MIDI sequencing support. I used to build my own Linux systems (LFS, BLFS), some 8 years ago, for both home and work. This is how I started with Linux MIDI. I've seen some software that is difficult to build, but not that much, all in all. I have never built Ardour. Are the requierements flexible enough to make it compile-able using gcc 4.1.2 and GTK 2.0 ? I could be interested in compiling the latest sources. Yeah, one of these days I'll have to update the whole system and I'm sometimes wondering if I wouldn't go back to make my own system instead of going with one of the distros. I'd like to only have what I need and nothing else, until it's needed.

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 8:19 PM, lanas wrote: An easy way to find out is to get a recent ardour SRPM from Fedora Koji [1], and see if it builds on your system. The audio production software variety of Fedora increased vastly since Fedora 8. Cheers, Orcan [1] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=1320

Quoting lanas <lanas(a)securenet.net>et>: I have to take sides with lanas on this. If you have an old system that has been working well, you haven't experienced any show stopping bugs and you don't have any security issues you have to deal with; why go through the hassle of upgrading? Sure you'll get lots of new features and (hopefully) fewer bugs if you upgrade but if what you have works well and is all you need there's little gain. And a tip once you upgrade lanas: buy a new harddrive and do a fresh install. You can even keep the old one and set up the bootloader to dual-boot your old system if you feel like you need to experiment with the new system first.

On Tuesday 04 January 2011 15:25:08 S C Rigler wrote: While I do encounter the odd failure in updates every now and then, the number of catastrophic failures (possibly resulting in data-loss) has been zero with SuSE, Gentoo and ubuntu (*). The hours spent getting watching one system to upgrade while working with another where much better used then the hours spent setting up a new system with all the small quirks and settings to re-create my needed working environment. My advice: If there is a supported upgrade-path for your distribution, use it. Have fun, Arnold (*) My only data-loss was from gentoo to ubuntu where I tried to be smarter then some system-tools, messed around with the partition-table and fucked up big time. Thanks to backups and version-control-systems only un-important mail was lost. And some time after I deleted direct copies of the disk-space concerned I learned about testdisk which would have helped in that case too...

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Arnold Krille <arnold(a)arnoldarts.de> wrote: You didn't mention Fedora. I speak from experience, particularly from upgrading FC8, and by "catastophic" I mean a failure that forces you to scrap all efforts to complete the upgrade process and resort to a clean installation. Usually the failure happens after you've wasted a significant amount of time and is so frustrating that you will swear off ever upgrading a Fedora release again especially if it is for more than 2 major releases. FC8 has been end of life for 2 years and a lot has changed since then so expect problems. --Steve

On Tuesday 04 January 2011 17:30:33 S C Rigler wrote: Well, there is a reason I haven't yet looked at redhat/fedora :-) All kidding aside: I do know people having problems with ubuntu-upgrades. But strangely enough I didn't encounter these. And I do crazy stuff like running half the upgrade, then stop, then continue the upgrade after reboot. Or removing the graphic boot-process plymouth from a headless system with no graphics card and only serial terminal and network. It certainly helps when you know a bit about linux. And you learn the most when determining the cause of problems during upgrades. The one thing that keeps you from learning about problems is when you re- install your system for every small or big problem. There are only very few problems that can be solved by a new install: Switching distributions like from fedora->ubuntu. Have fun, Arnold

Arnold Krille wrote: Tried an upgrade once from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 9. Didn't lose anmy data, but got a hosed system. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

On 01/05/2011 10:22 AM, Ken Restivo wrote: :-D

2011/1/5 Fabio <capoeirista(a)arcor.de> +1 and it is usually called "Debian stable" :-) regards -r -- *L'unica speranza di catarsi, ammesso che ne esista una, resta affidata all'istinto di ribellione, alla rivolta non isterilita in progetti, alla protesta violenta e viscerale.*

Cant fault anyone not wanting the headaches and dangers of upgrading. However for upgrading debian (and some related systems but not ubuntu) theres smxi http://smxi.org/ that makes installation and upgrades easier.

On 01/04/2011 02:19 AM, lanas wrote: quoting myself here because i'm lazy: (from an editorial in econtact magazine, http://cecpublic.pbworks.com/w/page/13063882/OpensourceEditorial)

Le Mercredi, 05 Janvier 2011 00:23:52 +0100, Jörn Nettingsmeier <nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de> a écrit : I see. Makes me remember since you're from .de, when I lived in Germany I got the first two albums by the band Sheik Yerbouti. Just visited their web site: they are pretty much still alive and doing CDs and DVDs. sheikyerbouti.de That one I did not get. The article has nothing to do with xruns and/or upgrades.

Em Wed, 05 Jan 2011 12:34:50 +0100 Jörn Nettingsmeier <nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de> escreveu: for someone who has the money, never used linux and isn't interested in how a OS works I would never recommend linux over mac. It's like eating...If you can't afford a good(expensive) restaurant you better cook on your own. Now if I could afford a good chief to prepare my meals, why cook? On the other hand, if you like to cook and want to be able to "fine-tune" ingredients......

Le Mercredi, 05 Janvier 2011 12:34:50 +0100, Jörn Nettingsmeier <nettings(a)folkwang-hochschule.de> a écrit : Sorry, I had the fold-quoted-text option toggled on and did not see it ! Absolutely. After all, it is not everyone that has the interest and time to pursue this although Linux distros have surely made it quite easy by now to use. I recently bought Windows 7 for our children to play games and I am not seeing a terrible problem with Linksys 64-bit wireless drivers not working. And I paid for it. And I have to spend research time to fix it. So in this case it's really a loss ! :-) And in this regard, Linux is faring very well. I still am reluctant to upgrade when everything works well although now that's at least two years (Fedora 8) I haven't done so and since things changes quite fast in Open Source as bugs are fixed and features added, I am now considering it. I'd like to thank Fons for mentionning ArchLinux. I used to build my own Linux system - and would like to go back to that - although in the meanwhile ArchLinux seems to be quite close philosophically to this, as well as the side project Chakra Linux, which is ArchLinux + KDEmod. About what Ken has mentioned: well, it's up to the individual to upgrade or not after all. ArchLinux is a rolling release type of thing but that does not mean that I have to update daily. Or monthly. Or even yearly. It's up to me. And as with Ken, I tend to prefer things when they work ;-)

On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 07:19:18AM -0500, lanas wrote: True, with the advantge that you get up-to-date binary install packages for most things you'll need, and don't *have* to compile everything. And even if it is a rolling release it is perfectly possible to create a long-term stable system using ArchLinux. I manage some machines which are *not* updated regularly - they are dedicated to a particular function, and just don't require the latest and greatest. The only trouble you can have with such systems is when after a year or so you want to install something completely new. More often than not the new package will depend on recent releases of libraries etc. This can trigger a dependency explosion that usually leaves you with the single realistic option of doing a complete system upgrade which after a year will replace almost everything. That in turn may require some manual tweaking afterwards if some fundamental things have changed. So just don't do this on impulse but be prepared for it. It's also easy to 'lock' certain things, e.g. the kernel or X11 if you expect problems with the new ones. But the most important thing for a system update is to plan it: don't do it if you need the machine the next hour. I got some unpleasant surprise only once when a system update replaced 'nv' with 'nouveau' - the former is an X11 driver while the latter is a kernel module. Not being aware of that, I botched up the complete X11 configuration. But even that was repaired within an hour or two, the time to find and read the necessary documentation on the Arch Wiki. A second machine for web browsing is a good thing to have. Ciao, -- FA There are three of them, and Alleline.

On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 12:30:41PM -0200, Fabio wrote: True. It's an essential part of ArchLinux IMHO. Without it the Arch learning curve would be quite steep for most users, myself included. I learned a lot since I'm using Arch. Ciao, -- FA There are three of them, and Alleline.