One for the Linux users.

Hertz32

I currently have a dual boot of Vista 64/bit and Ubuntu 12.04 on my aged desktop. Its clogged up and slow so I need to do a reinstall of one or both of the OS's. I'm tempted to go pure Linux however, if it would help make the most of aging hardware. 

If I was to use this machine for internet, audio playback and some light recording what distro of Linux and DAW would you guys recommend? Debian and Ardour any good? 

I think this is @Digitalscream s area of speciality?

Cheers

Hertz32

Also, what would be the best way of doing this? Write linux to a bootable drive like a cd or USB and just select the whole hard drive when installing and let it overwrite everything. Or uninstall it all bit by bit? There's nothing on the machine I want to keep.

monquixote

I'd go mint or Ubuntu and try and get reaper running which I think is possible.

Debian is very conservative which doesn't always make it the best for desktop.

DarnWeight

The latest Mint 17.1 is an LTS release, so you'll get guaranteed support/updates until 2019.  Runs very well on my 5-10 year old Acer Aspire desktop, which wasn't exactly pimped to the nines when new!  I played around with Ardour under LMDE (Mint Debian Edition) and it worked very well, but I got fed up with the constant stream of OS updates, as it was tracking the latest/testing Debian repos, and not the stable ones.  Just checked and Ardour is in the software centre for Mint, but haven't got around to installing it since wiping LMDE and moving to the Ubuntu-based version.  I dare say it'll work just as well.

bingefeller

I'd get Ubuntu Studio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio

dafuzz

bingefeller said:

I'd get Ubuntu Studio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio

Beat me to it! I have it on my laptop for sketching ideas. Latency is a bit of a bitch though and I haven't yet figured out how to improve it

You can just 'upgrade' ubuntu to studio and keep all your settings, files, progs, etc - I must admit I didn't actually mean to do that but it happened anyway

Myranda

monquixote said:

I'd go mint or Ubuntu and try and get reaper running which I think is possible.

Debian is very conservative which doesn't always make it the best for desktop.

Funny, I was going to say - Go Debian... I just find it better at detecting defunct or unusual hardware (that Ubuntu 14.04 still refuses to recognise my WiFi card, which is a pain as the network port is buggered! But Two different Debian distros picked it up right away) - and the Machine is Vista old so ...

My questions would be 

What internet stuff do you do? There's still a few things that require non-Linux stuff (Though I think Linux can now do Netflix, it wasn't able to the last time I tried.

You currently use Windows - what software do you use? There normally is a Linux version of stuff, some is better, some is worse (For all Photoshop's downsides, GIMP isn't as good - for instance)

Have you backed everything up prior to your installing new stuff?

My advice would be to download a Live CD of a handful of distributions and play with them to see which you prefer the most. You can change the desktop environment in Linux so if you like something in one, but the look of another thats easy to change... but it's still nice to try them out

That was 2p worth.

I felt the need to say all that because my last assignment tasked us with writing an article on switching from Vista to Linux... small world

Hertz32

The windows programs I use are;

Line6 monkey 

Line6 POD HD500x edit

Guitar Pro 6 lite

Spotify 

Thats pretty much it... The one thing that does worry me is the ability to update firmware on things like a POD. 

Internet wise I pretty much exclusively browse here, youtube and Sevenstring.org. I wanna be able to edit and upload vieos to youtube next year too though

DarnWeight

Hertz32 said:

The windows programs I use are;

Line6 monkey 

Line6 POD HD500x edit

Guitar Pro 6 lite

Spotify 

Thats pretty much it... The one thing that does worry me is the ability to update firmware on things like a POD. 

Internet wise I pretty much exclusively browse here, youtube and Sevenstring.org. I wanna be able to edit and upload vieos to youtube next year too though

I use VirtualBox in Mint to run a virtual Windows machine (XP Pro) for the one or two things that are Win-only...I pretty much only use it for running the Neunaber Pedal Customizer software when I want to change/upload/update something on my Slate.  It works just fine.

Oh yeah, Spotify for Linux is available too, and I've run it without issues in the past (again, I need to reinstall this after wiping my Debian install).

Myranda

You *might* be able to run a virtual machine within Linux to run a windows install virtually for those - depending on their hardware requirements and what you have under the hood.

As you have a linux install maybe download virtualbox and try running a virtual version of Windows within that... or check the Line6 site to see if they have a Linux version, check Guitar Pro 6 (you might need to email them for a key for a different version, or look for a cracked one). and check Spotify works in Linux.

If running a VM is too slow, if running the software you need in a VM runs too slow, and if there are no linux versions then for now you're stuck with using windows natively - interestingly the minimum spec for Vista64 is roughly the same for all versions of windows since then so if you could run vista64 you should be able to run 7, 8.1 or 10, often better than vista... but not as well as Mint say.

Oh, and from a less hardware POV ... clean your PC fans, and replace thermal paste - could help a little with slow downiness

Phil_aka_Pip

I don't like Ubuntu, Debian seems to make much more sense to me.

monquixote

Phil_aka_Pip said:

I don't like Ubuntu, Debian seems to make much more sense to me.

What element of Ubuntu don't you like?

If it's the windowing system you can install various alternatives, underneath that it is Debian just packaged a bit more bleeding edge.

Hertz32

Think I'll give Mint and a VB a go. Cheers! 

digitalscream

Here's the thing - 99% of audio interfaces don't work on Linux (any flavour), because the manufacturers don't feel the need to support it. They're only interested in the majority of users, and there's no viable way of running a studio system on Linux; yes, there's Ardour, but when almost everyone wants to use VSTs (which are Mac- or Windows-only), your options are limited.

It's possible to get Reaper working with Linux under WINE, and it works extremely well (including all the VST and JS effects). However, you also need to get WineASIO running with your audio interface, and that's where you're going to hit problems. My Behringer UMC404HD, for example, works wonderfully for output but...while it recognises that the inputs exist, it does nothing with them. That makes it utterly useless to me.

digitalscream

Oh, and don't even think about running it in a virtual machine. The latency is measured in seconds when you do that...

Phil_aka_Pip

@monquixote: off the top of my head

• The vertical toolbar on the left always gets in the way when you're editing code, and there doesn't appear to be a way to move it
  
• You turn the firewall off ('cos its a PITA) with ufw disable, but then it turns itself back on after a reboot
• The options on what screen resolution to use seem to be random numbers
• There's no root terminal option, you have to start a user terminal and sudo -i (that's a niggle)
• Every time you load an update it bumps the kernel number so that uname -r comes out differently, meaning that if you stashed a driver under /lib/modules/kernel/$(uname -r)/driver/char for your daemon to load, it won't be able to find it. This does not happen under Debian.
• Anything that's easy under Debian just isn't under Ubuntu.
  
• Oh yes, and the appearance is just ... primary school. At least Debian looks professional.
  

monquixote

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@monquixote: off the top of my head

• The vertical toolbar on the left always gets in the way when you're editing code, and there doesn't appear to be a way to move it
  
• You turn the firewall off ('cos its a PITA) with ufw disable, but then it turns itself back on after a reboot
• The options on what screen resolution to use seem to be random numbers
• There's no root terminal option, you have to start a user terminal and sudo -i (that's a niggle)
• Every time you load an update it bumps the kernel number so that uname -r comes out differently, meaning that if you stashed a driver under /lib/modules/kernel/$(uname -r)/driver/char for your daemon to load, it won't be able to find it. This does not happen under Debian.
• Anything that's easy under Debian just isn't under Ubuntu.
  
• Oh yes, and the appearance is just ... primary school. At least Debian looks professional.
  

That mostly sounds like you don't like Unity (I'm with you on that one).

You also have the option of:

Edubuntu

Kubuntu

Lubuntu

Mythbuntu

Ubuntu GNOME

UbuntuKylin

Ubuntu MATE

UbuntuStudio

Xubuntu

Or just install an alternative windowing system on your current Ubuntu flavour.

digitalscream

@Phil_aka_Pip - for #4, just set up a shortcut for "gksudo gnome-terminal" and install gksu. Simple

robinbowes

I work professionally with Linux. There's a reason we call it "Lolbuntu"

R.

Phil_aka_Pip

Why I'm using Ubuntu: MD diktat. We had so many suppliers telling us their products worked with Ubuntu and couldn't be guaranteed to work with anything else; although I'm skilled at RTOSs, bootstraps, machine register jiggery-pokery and the like I don't have the skills to edit & rebuild Linux in order to make 3rd party products work with it. I've half a mind to defy him and go back to Debian. At least it works.

actually, the firewall thing could be a show-stopper. These boxes are going to be on a user site, and up a pole interfacing other hardware to a database machine in an office. They have no direct user interface, they will need remote access and the capability of rebooting AND being accessible afterwards.

digitalscream

Phil_aka_Pip said:

actually, the firewall thing could be a show-stopper. These boxes are going to be on a user site, and up a pole interfacing other hardware to a database machine in an office. They have no direct user interface, they will need remote access and the capability of rebooting AND being accessible afterwards.

I don't understand this - why can you not just configure iptables to allow any traffic on the required ports (including SSH)? Surely that's vastly preferable to blanket-disabling the firewall?

I appreciate that this is going somewhat off-topic, but seriously...I've been running servers using Ubuntu for years, and I've never had any of the issues you've mentioned. Certainly none that can't be trivially solved.