On 09/01/2014 12:00 AM, david wrote: I don't speak Spanish. David

2014-09-02 3:11 GMT+02:00 david <gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com>om>: @David Christensen: Hi David. We have a list in english: https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/musix-users/ We're are a very modest group of people with few resources, but we put a lot of effort and passion to what we do, we would be pleased to give you support in all that we can. I'll try to sum up some points regarding Musix and all you've said you are interested in: - Musix has a a RT kernel compiled by the team (i386 for the moment, 64bits hopefully along the way) - Musix has been adding more and more languages support (main ones being Spanish, Portuguese, and English), we even had users that translated to russian (IIRC) - Musix 3 comes in a 2GB iso (for USB/DVD, we could release a CD version as in past versions), I use it in a 2GB USB stick and it has some free space yet once you've boot into it - We are glad that we still receiving good response and congratulations from users even given it was released time ago - You should be able to play/record/mix/jam/*.* in RT just OOTB even from a Live USB (just make sure you tweak Jackd to your machine, that is something just the user can do), with Ardour, Qtractor, Rakarrack, Jamin, Rosegarden... and many other already installed - I've been using Musix for so many years, and right now I'm in the thick of a project where I'm recording/mixing/mastering/*.* from a Musix 3.0.1 running Live from that 2GB USB, no more, no less, so at least something can be done for sure (you can use your inner HD on your machine drive if you need more space, as I do when doing recording sessions) http://musixdistro.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/musix-gnulinux-3-0-1-stable-rel… Last, but not least,please remember Musix is a 100% GNU/Linux free/libre distro (the project is listed in GNU free/libre distro list [1]), so check that your HW is supported with the live usb (our kernel is deblobed -> it has no privative drivers) Hope it helps. Greetings. @David Thanks (again) for mentioning the project [1]https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html -- C. sanchiavedraZ: * NEW / NUEVO: www.sanchiavedraZ.com * Musix GNU+Linux: www.musix.es

On 09/03/2014 01:31 PM, Carlos sanchiavedraz wrote: Thank you for the information regarding Musix GNU+Linux. :-) An English mailing list would be helpful for me. Is there an English translation of what I presume is the project web site? https://musixdistro.wordpress.com/ Once the live image is running, how does the user change the language to English? David

On 09/04/2014 07:30 AM, Kazakore wrote: It would seem that large downloads are the only option for audio-specific Linux distributions (?). Carlos was polite enough to respond to my inquiry, so I'm asking some more questions to decide if I really want to go down that path. If someone knows of a distribution with a small installer and ala carte application selection/ download, please let me know. David

On 09/01/2014 02:09 AM, Alexandre DENIS wrote: I shouldn't have to do that -- the people who package and contribute to Debian need to pay more attention to space efficiency. David

On 09/01/2014 10:42 AM, hermann meyer wrote: With respect to the "principle of least surprise" and package managers, it is my expectation that package managers should only download what I tell them to; nothing else. If a package has prerequisites, the package manager should inform me and stop. Better package managers allow me to delay and/or delegate all or part of the decision making. Other people agree that small is better: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein -> Misattributed http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Large is wasteful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins Gluttony David

On Mon, 1 Sep 2014, David Christensen wrote: Ok, so why do you expect some one to do this? Most of us are not genius. I do not think anyone is saying bigger is better, but how much responsability are you taking for your own need? How much learning have you put into your needs? How much study and learning did the original author of the above quote put into his life that he was able to make this connection? How much time and energy are you asking soomeone else to put into something that fits you exactly? With OSx, you pay someone to do that, with Linux, the download is the only cost, but you may need to do some setup. PCs are not made for low latency audio out of the box. Mac computers are supposed to be, it is at least a consideration in the design. With a PC the builder needs to choose what goes in their PC and how they connect things and what sw they use and how it fits together carefully if they wish to get similar results... nothing is free, you must choose if you will pay in money or time, I guess. The more optimization, the more time required. Most of us are looking for low latency performance first... and often never get to size of install. We only have so much time. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On Mon, 01 Sep 2014 10:18:21 -0700 David Christensen <dpchrist(a)holgerdanske.com> wrote: Most people want recommended packages to be installed by default, thus it is a reasonable default. If you don't want recommended packages installed by default, well, this option was invented precisely for this purpose. Debian can be very easily tuned to fit your needs. However, it looks like you are looking for a distro that is at the same time widespread, with a large community, and fits your very precise and uncommon needs without tuning. Good luck. -a.

On 09/02/2014 02:44 AM, Chris Bannister wrote: Maybe bandwidth efficiency. But in this day when pretty much the smallest hard drives available are 500GB (even for cheap laptops) and most commonly 1TB, disk space doesn't seem like much of a worry. -- David W. Jones gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com

On 09/02/2014 02:14 PM, Russell Hanaghan wrote: Yes! Let us not forget that those of us with broadband Internet connections are privileged. I suspect that many, if not most, people on this planet have no access to this luxury. Shame on FOSS developers that either have forgotten, or are too callous to care about, the discipline taught by operating a computer connected to the outside world via a plain old telephone system (POTS) modem. Downloading 745 MB when only 4,423 kB is required is gluttony. Distributing software that downloads 745 MB by default when only 4,423 kB is required is planned mass gluttony. My mistake was assuming that the Debian developers understood. Apparently, not. It appears they are not alone. So, I've downloaded the 4,423 kB and am attempting to make that work: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=760239 David

linux-audio-user: I don't see a list owner or a terms of use policy for this list on what I presume are the appropriate pages: http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo Who is the list owner? What is the policy regarding personal attacks, etc.? TIA, David On 09/02/2014 10:14 PM, hermann meyer wrote:> Am 03.09.2014 04:41, schrieb David Christensen: On 09/02/2014 09:34 PM, Raffaele Morelli wrote:

On 09/03/2014 02:16 AM, Jeremy Jongepier wrote: Okay. Thank you for the reply. David

On 09/03/2014 05:01 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Of course -- that's part of the reason why I asked. }:-> Yes. David

On 03/09/14 at 08:08pm, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Ralf, he did not try to find an answer by searching the Web nor by reading distro specific infos, pretending debian developers to fix his things (apt downloading docs!), making absurds request on size, filing ridiculus bug reports, etc etc... well, of course it was at least an attack :-) /r PS http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Am 03.09.2014 04:41, schrieb David Christensen: If your internet connection is so bad, you could as well buy a debian CD https://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/ Shame on those who believe that there very own requirements have to be respected in first place, and who didn't accept a helping hand to get things work like they want, even if it isn't the default.

Am 03.09.2014 13:22, schrieb Adam Sampson: If you need it, here is the way to go: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.file-systems.aufs.user/4299

Am 04.09.2014 02:39, schrieb David Christensen: The rt-patch is against the vanilla kernel source from kernel.org. https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/

On Mon, 1 Sep 2014, Ralf Mardorf wrote: As of the latest LTS, the install includes a step where the user can choose not to install all the available sw from the ISO. In this case you would not install the video, graphics, photgraphy and publishing sections. Then in the audio section you can choose not to install a lot of the applications as well. Ubuntu Studio is based on xubuntu, so looking at the size of Xubuntu will give you an idea of the minimum size (their iso is now above CD size as well BTW) Please note that the size of the ISO and the install size are very different. A 2g ISO will take 6 to 8 gig of hard drive space. Also this size changes with the size of the partition. It seems there is space set aside that is a percentage of the total partition size or that there are two sizes one for samll partitions and one for large. All I know is that the disk space used from df differs from a 20g partition to a 40+g partition. This true for a net install as well as I recall (I don't remember everything right all the time so check). -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On Mon, 2014-09-01 at 11:42 +0200, Raffaele Morelli wrote: That reminds me of the importance to use distros with huge communities. The smaller a community is - there are in general less people who could help - there are less people who share similar computer needs - the more likely there could be deep-rooted dislike against people who don't fit to the world view of the small community Linux audio users are just a small group, what ever distro you use, but audio users usually also use desktop environments, Internet browsers and other user space software, so you should use a distro with a huge community. More people could help, more people share similar needs, much more people with different world views, IOW much more tolerance. Anyway, every user should learn how to use https://startpage.com/ or a similar search engine, but for a novice it's not that easy to do, IOW you should provide more information about the issues you experienced, about your needs and then people subscribed to this list could help you.

On 09/01/2014 10:23 AM, David Christensen wrote: Damn Small Linux fits into 50 MB, and it's a complete desktop system not just an installer: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ David

Am 01.09.2014 19:44, schrieb David Christensen: So what? a debian mini iso takes 23 MB. http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/wheezy/main/installer-amd64/current/i…

On Mon, 1 Sep 2014, David Christensen wrote: Cheap USB stick = 4G, it is hard to find a 1G USB stick. Even 32G sticks are not real expensive, though the difference between 16G and 32G in price is more than it should be. A 2G live ISO will run from 2G. On a 4G stick it can use the rest of the space to save data... no install required. I think that your use has not been well defined. Most peoples first thought is going to be that 160G drive is about the smallest that can be bought, so what is the problem. I am thinking that maybe you want to run off of a USB stick? I would suggest that there is not any distro around at all that is designed as a stage instrument to be run that way. I do feel that what you want is valid and I like the idea. However, I think that no matter which OS you choose (linux, OSx, win), aside from the size of it, you will also be looking at carefully choosing the HW and then tuning it to your use. I personnaly would not think of using a laptop for this use, I would choose a rackmount case so I could choose the MB, processor (as seen in recent post an i5 is not an i5, it matters which one), memory and cooling (no fans if possible... ie a laptop has fans like it or not). I do not know if I would choose to run from a USB stick if this is my stage setup, there are much faster SATA based solid state solutions. Yes they cost more, but what is your stage presence and reliability worth? What does a stage synth cost? An amp? Just a synth stand? I am cheap by nature, but I am willing to spend money for stage stuff even though it is not an income stream for me. It is just a matter of doing things right. This does not mean most expensive, The amp I bought to replace the old (full of dry caps and bad pots etc.) one was the cheaper of the two I looked at... But I am a bass player and I liked the sound of the 10inch speaker over the 15inch. I am also looking for a fretless bass to replace my squire beater that I pulled the frets out of to play with, but no one in town has fretless instruments and I will not buy without trying. So one of my trips to the lower mainland will include that. Having said all of that, I still really don't know what your particular situation is. You may have limits I don't and I can respect that. While I do help with UbuntuStudio, I would suggest it is not what you need. I think you need a custom solution and that you will need to do some learning and setup work to make it happen. I suppose it may be possible to buy a Mac and go, but you would not be running from a USB stick still. (I think I could put together a rack mount from new parts for less anyway) I also think that if you clearly define what you are trying to do with all the paramerters, you would find people much more helpful than if they are assuming that the HW you have is within a certain range. The answers I have seen so far have been answers to solid questions you have asked. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

On Mon, 2014-09-01 at 13:12 -0700, David Christensen wrote: You simply don't want to use apt correctly, so IOW you expect a package manager that does what you want it to do, even if you don't use it correctly. I prefer Arch's pacman over apt, but pacman also has to be used correctly.

On Mon, 2014-09-01 at 15:46 -0700, David Christensen wrote: "No. Recommends are specifically packages that should be installed by default. We also have Suggests for packages that should not be installed by default, but may be useful." - from the above link ;) Btw. using workarounds until bugs are fixed and editing configs, such as apt.conf isn't unusual for Linux. Once you might install synaptic, without recommended/suggested packages and then you might lament about missing features ;). In the future you should expect to experience real unpleasant things, e.g. hard dependencies that should be optional dependencies, but upstream decided to enforce their worldview, even if it could make your user space unusable or damage your hardware.

On Mon, 2014-09-01 at 20:00 -0400, David Santamauro wrote: The Linux software I know, that could damage hardware are: External green drives could get damaged by gvfs, because gvfs does cause a spin up after the spin down of the HDD. My WD drive spins down after 30 minutes. If gvfs isn't installed it stays asleep, but if gvfs is installed a spin up is forced without any reason, so the result is that every 30 minutes the HDD does spin down and up. For Thunar gvfs is an optional dependency, while for Nautilus it's a hard dependency, but there's no reason to make it a hard dependency. It's the same or the KDE thingy, what ever it's named. The next one isn't caused by a dependency of a package, but by the package for an unfinished code of a released virtual synth. Phasex could cause DC offsets for some sounds, so your speakers could burn. Fons subscribed to the list noticed and fixed it. The patches are applied to the Arch Linux git package, but it's untested, other distros likely provide the version from upstream without the patches. Such serious issues are no inventions of Linux ;), for the C64 there already were ways to damage the hardware by writing bad code.

On 09/01/2014 12:17 PM, Len Ovens wrote: I agree that 8 and 16 GB USB 2.0 drives are the current cheap commodity items in single unit quantities available "at retailers everywhere". This was what I was talking about when I said "a cheap USB drive" "with enough code to bootstrap a system that can connect to the network and download the installer": http://www.oempcworld.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Co… 10 for $25.70 +tax +shipping. Enough room for Damn Small Linux, Debian mini.iso, etc., and cheap enough that you can pass them out at an installfest, LUG meeting, presentation, course, etc.. :-) David

On 09/02/2014 06:41 PM, Len Ovens wrote: That's a tough one. I'm a union electrician in the United States and I avoid Walmart, etc., because of the games they play with their workers. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly difficult to research and identify products that don't have this problem (or worse) somewhere in their supply chain. Legalized political campaign contributions, foreign state-sponsored capitalism, and free trade agreements are a recipe for slavery, and it's working. Buying USB drives on the Internet (my previous links) vs. buying them at a retail store (your suggestion) only affects the tail end of the supply chain. My not shopping at the dollar store is too little, too late. David

On 09/01/2014 04:32 AM, Jeremy Jongepier wrote: I don't have a problem with the packages pulled in by tasksel. I'll take a look. David

On 09/01/2014 09:04 AM, David Christensen wrote: Check out Musix, too. -- David W. Jones gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com

On 09/01/2014 06:36 AM, Russell Hanaghan wrote: And I have a panorama image that's 768MB as a compressed TIFF. Also, last time I looked at cheap USB flash drives, the smallest was 1GB. Finally, what bandwidth saved by using a small install image is made up by the downloads needed to add apps to the installation, so it seems to me to just about be a wash either way. -- David W. Jones gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com

David Christensen wrote: Hi, I doubt you'll find a ready-to-go system as small as you want. You'd have to build it up yourself with the exact pieces you require. With disk storage so cheap, it seems like an idealistic and arbitrary condition. Regards, -- Joel Roth

On 09/04/2014 05:20 AM, Federico Galland wrote: I've had problems with dynebolic running on some of my older hardware for the last few years. -- David W. Jones gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com

On Thu, 2014-09-18 at 08:47 +0200, Atte wrote: I guess we all have a different kind of worldview regarding reliability. I remember that even a respected developer from this community and audio engineer once reported that he lost a few minutes of a concert. I'm aware that several people dislike me, especially if I write something like: "Linux is for hobby usage only". Privately I use Linux only for audio, for more than a decade. I never ever would use a computer (excepted of special stand alone devices) for professional work, or on stage. What ever OS you use, resp. assumed you are using Linux, what ever distro you're using, with or without updates, modern computers are not reliable and much of the Linux software is version 0.x, not version dislike with Xfce isn't audio related and Jwm is also very good. Tests with openbox I'm doing at the moment shows that openbox at least on my computer is buggy. I reported a few issues here, but in the meanwhile there were serious crashes. Xfce IMO is a very good choice. I use Qtractor instead of Rosegarden. I use rt kernels too, some versions caused issues on my machine, perhaps you should test different versions of rt kernels or test a full preempted non-rt kernel (the Ubuntu folks call it lowlatency kernel). Audacity is known to cause issues. It's important to know what you are using, when you say "etc.". Linux could be relatively good reliable, but you need to avoid usage of some software, e.g. plugins. Stay with Xfce, but test different applications. If a host (Rosegarden or Qtractor or Ardour or what ever) should run into issues, test the same host with using different plugins. By my experiences Ubuntu and Arch Linux don't cause that much issues as Debian does cause. You also should consider to multi-boot and test what distro does fit best to your needs. 2 Cents, Ralf

On Thu, 2014-09-18 at 10:56 +0200, Atte wrote: In my experiences Linux audio developer are quite alright regarding to this issue. They listen to the users and try to help them. I have much good experiences and just a few bad experiences, when reporting a problem. Even while my words against computers for music production often sound harsh, I'm using Linux for good reasons. When I experienced a bug while using Qtractor and I reported it to the dev mailing list, Rui usually fixed the issue within a few hours and sometimes much faster. _But_ that does mean you have to compile the software and build a package on your own, you won't find such a fix in the repositories of a distro very soon. I could add a list of developers who are as interested in bug reports and kind to fix issues as Rui does. I just mentioned him, because Qtractor is one of the most important apps for my workflow, anyway, several other developers are as kind and fast as he is. _Often_ developers are willing to help other developers, with projects that are not that important for them self, just remember the patches from Fons for Phasex. _But_ there are issues and you have to compile the software and build the package on your own, if you wont to get rid of it without waiting for the next release of your distro. There are distros that provide such fixes earlier than other distros. I'm an Arch Linux fan, it's a rolling release and provides AUR, a repository from trusted users, that even comes with "unsteady" package builds, that sometimes could be very helpful. _But_ every Linux user needs to test and select core components, such as the kernel and user space stuff, that works reliable for her/his workflow on her/his machine. No big deal when doing home recording, the software is for free! but for professional work it doesn't matter if you have to pay for the software/stand alone hardware, it does matter that you don't need to test what fits to your needs, you pay for something you need and that usually is reliable. I have to correct one statement I made. You're right. If a user spend some time to find out what is working for her/him and then doesn't upgrade the software, it will run without issues, as long as the hardware, mobo, soundcard, graphics, needs not to be replaced. Regards, Ralf

On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 1:47 AM, Atte <atte(a)youmail.dk> wrote: That's exactly what my mileage does. If you're working with hardware that's 2+ years old, you can install a fine, lean system with debian stable and build the bleeding edge stuff you need. I've not tried arch--at the moment, I installed ubuntu on a new laptop, since the new-ness of the hardware called for newer OS software than I could get from debian stable. After a while, I'll discontinue my ubuntu installation, inventory the important updates and proprietary software I need and rebuild the system with debian. If you're building a DAW and running, say openbox/xfce... there's about 99% of system updates you don't care about. Just get a good set of consistent packages installed and wait until you reach some specific bug or limitation that you need to fix. Of course, I don't speak for everyone--depending on what kind of development work you do, bleeding edge OS updates may be necessary. Chuck