[LAU] Help with configuring a laptop for Linux Audio work

[david]

I don't like Unity, either.

You can install XFCE on Ubuntu without installing Xubuntu. On my wife's 
netbook, Xubuntu starts up a lot slower than stock Ubuntu.

I'm at Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on the Ubuntu partition of my laptop. I haven't 
done any audio work with it yet, but it now successfully plays videos on 
this i7 Haswell/Intel HD4600. That wasn't necessarily true with the 
Ubuntu 13 that came on it.

On 05/12/2014 12:14 PM, Louigi Verona wrote:
> "Curious as to why you picked xubuntu over ubuntustudio."
>
> I never used Ubuntustudio and in general I prefer the usual distro +
> putting audio stuff on top myself. I don't like audio distros for some
> reason, I guess they are too "designed" for me.
>
> As for why I chose Xubuntu - I did not like Unity at all, even after
> several times of trying.
>
> On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:08 AM, Len Ovens wrote:
>
>     On Mon, 12 May 2014, Louigi Verona wrote:
>
>         Nope, I had to install 3.8 as opposed to 3.2 which comes with
>         Ubuntu. Looks
>         like when you are buying a new laptop what you should do is put
>         on the
>         latest system available and I typically try to stick with LTS.
>
>
>     LTS is 14.04 with a 3.11 kernel, 12.04 should be good for another
>     year anyway. There are two 3.8 kernels though, there is the generic
>     as well as the lowlatency. The low latency kernel seems to get less
>     xruns in anything I have thrown at it. There were a few 3.8 kernels
>     that had USB audio problems, but I am pretty sure the fix got put in
>     so you should have it. (dmesg would show if there is a problem)
>
>
>         Interestingly enough, I very rarely go lower 512 frames, which
>         is around
>         46ms. And for some reason, midi is always precise even on 1024.
>         I did test
>         this and I remember I did work on a system where it made a
>         difference, but
>         not now.
>
>
>     I should have been clear, I have been quoting qjackctl's version of
>     latency, so at 48k 512 would be 21ms... probably that is a
>     calculated one way trip through jackd and of course doesn't include
>     card delay. Certainly it should be high enough that CPU governing
>     doesn't matter too much.
>
>     I try to test before I buy if I can. Boot what you want to run from
>     a memory stick. Ubuntustudio's (if ubuntu is your thing) ISO
>     probably has the SW or enough of it preinstalled to make testing
>     possible running it live. Other audio distros have live ISOs as
>     well. I try to do the same thing with audio IFs. I walk in with my
>     netbook and make sure it works with linux... and how well it
>     works... can I see all the channels? can I hear them? (semi)pro
>     audio is kind of hit and miss right now.
>
>     Curious as to why you picked xubuntu over ubuntustudio. Ubuntustudio
>     is based on xubuntu, but has audio set up out of the box and with
>     14.04LTS allows selection at install time of which SW not to install
>     that is on the live ISO. Though, to be honest, I don't know what
>     happens to packages those applications depend on if you don't
>     install them. For example KDEnlive would have the kde libs on the
>     ISO. If the KDE apps are not selected, do the kde libs still get
>     installed? I'll have to ask. ubiquity does do some sort of clean up
>     at the end of the install.


-- 
David W. Jones
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com