One for the Linux users.

Myranda · May 2015

Is my copy of ubuntu broken then? I was able to change user to root in the terminal without running the terminal with additional parameters from the cli

Emp_Fab · May 2015

I'm running Mint 17.1 XFCE on this laptop, and after a small uncomfortable period of getting used to Linux, I'm pretty impressed. Mind you, I have no experience of any other types of Linux, so asking me is a bit pointless ! The thing that bugs me most about Linux though is the preposterous number of variants. It's like being faced with a supermarket aisle with sixty different varieties of baked beans - I'm left scratching my head as to what is best and also know I don't have the time or patience to try each one.

I just want something that looks and feels similar to Windows so I can navigate without endlessly having to Google things.

I still find this 'sudo apt-get' terminal window stuff rather antiquated though.... You would have thought they'd have consigned the cryptic incantations to the bin by now. I want a Linux system that makes me use the command window as infrequently as I have to with Windows.

Myranda · May 2015

Emp_Fab said:

I'm running Mint 17.1 XFCE on this laptop, and after a small uncomfortable period of getting used to Linux, I'm pretty impressed. Mind you, I have no experience of any other types of Linux, so asking me is a bit pointless ! The thing that bugs me most about Linux though is the preposterous number of variants. It's like being faced with a supermarket aisle with sixty different varieties of baked beans - I'm left scratching my head as to what is best and also know I don't have the time or patience to try each one.

I just want something that looks and feels similar to Windows so I can navigate without endlessly having to Google things.

I still find this 'sudo apt-get' terminal window stuff rather antiquated though.... You would have thought they'd have consigned the cryptic incantations to the bin by now. I want a Linux system that makes me use the command window as infrequently as I have to with Windows.

Thing is Command Line Interface stuff not instead of windows clicky stuff. You can download all sorts through the various Software Centre type interfaces... you can DO most things with the graphical interface - like-like-windows. and Just-like-windows some programs/commands can be run, or can be run with additional parameters

For instance with the | symbol you can run one program and automatically send the output to another program. very difficult to click on two icons simultaneously

monquixote · May 2015

Emp_Fab said:

I still find this 'sudo apt-get' terminal window stuff rather antiquated though.... You would have thought they'd have consigned the cryptic incantations to the bin by now. I want a Linux system that makes me use the command window as infrequently as I have to with Windows.

In which case you want a Mac.

Once you get the hang of the terminal it is more productive than administering Windows.

Emp_Fab · May 2015

I refuse. One of the main points of a GUI is to facilitate commands in a non-CLI environment. Why do I need to go backwards by using a CLI where there is zero intuitiveness and I have to memorise the commands I need ? I'm fine on a Windows CLI - I use it all the time in work, but for me, trying to learn a new OS, I really have no desire to learn another library of alien textual commands - I just want to use the machine with the shallowest learning curve possible.

darcym · May 2015

so realistically - do not try to use Linux as a daw, that's the truth.

The software is not mature enough, you depend on wine or cross-over as an abstraction layer for plugins, your hardware is either unsupported or reverse engineered which has an impact more than you normally see when you try to use low latency kernels, and even if by some magic you manage to overcome this, next week an update to libc will screw you.

for a DAW you need a.) supported hardware b.) supported OS c.) stability working within a and b.

I'm a Linux user %100 (although I am typing this from a clients laptop on windows at the moment) I don't use windows, but for my daw, I use a mac as its as close to a stable and supported Linux desktop experience that I can get to do my daw work.

I use Linux for a job and personally at home, I've got commits into grown up packages and I just don't consider it a viable platform for a DAW at this point in time.

imalone · May 2015

Emp_Fab said:

I refuse. One of the main points of a GUI is to facilitate commands in a non-CLI environment. Why do I need to go backwards by using a CLI where there is zero intuitiveness and I have to memorise the commands I need ? I'm fine on a Windows CLI - I use it all the time in work, but for me, trying to learn a new OS, I really have no desire to learn another library of alien textual commands - I just want to use the machine with the shallowest learning curve possible.

You don't have to, or you shouldn't have to. Even for Windows you'll get the odd instruction for doing things from the command line. The thing is that the command line is essentially a programming interface. If you just want to copy a file or start a program, gui is fine, if you want to find all the files ending in .jpg and make 50% size copies of them in another directory then GUI is a pain, at best there might be some particular tool for this job that you will have to learn to use.
This is maybe best demonstrated by the fact I use Linux at work and at home. At work I sometimes have 20+ terminals open, at home I might occasionally open one, usually because it's a faster way for me to move something.

Myranda · May 2015

You CAN use Linux without ever using the CLI if you want

But there is literally no fast convenient way to do somethings with an icon.

Network scanning in nMap is a great example. A GUI version might be open program, wait for it to load, type in the IP ranges, open the menu and open the options submenu, select the various parameters you need. It's slower and clunkier than typing "nmap 169.0.0.1 -sT -v"

digitalscream · May 2015

Emp_Fab said:

I refuse. One of the main points of a GUI is to facilitate commands in a non-CLI environment. Why do I need to go backwards by using a CLI where there is zero intuitiveness and I have to memorise the commands I need ? I'm fine on a Windows CLI - I use it all the time in work, but for me, trying to learn a new OS, I really have no desire to learn another library of alien textual commands - I just want to use the machine with the shallowest learning curve possible.

You don't need to. For your use case, there are just some times where it's actually much more convenient for you to copy-paste a single command from a forum/howto guide into the command line than it is to open a package manager and spend 10 minutes searching for software packages and installing them one at a time.

@darcym - I don't think it's a case of software maturity, it's purely uptake. The realtime kernel is mainly unnecessary for audio work now, because most of the required optimisations are already in the main kernel branch now. The problem, from my perspective, is simply a matter of drivers; audio folk like ourselves are just not a priority because we're a niche within a niche.

Myranda said:

You CAN use Linux without ever using the CLI if you want

But there is literally no fast convenient way to do somethings with an icon.

Network scanning in nMap is a great example. A GUI version might be open program, wait for it to load, type in the IP ranges, open the menu and open the options submenu, select the various parameters you need. It's slower and clunkier than typing "nmap 169.0.0.1 -sT -v"

Plus you get to look really cool and clever when people see you with transparent terminal windows all over the place.

darcym · May 2015

I disagree on this - while you depend on wine for plugins, or software drivers (as you rightly say) either not existing or being reverse engineered, you're just way off even starting to use Linux as a daw, let alone a dependable stable one. There are lots of good daw software options, but while the underlying platform is not fit for purpose, it's just a none starter and waste of time to %99 of the people who want a daw, and only people with an interest on the platform will pick it up

I fair point on the real time kernel, but I still think you need it when you hit certain devices eg: two devices acting as s slave from your world clock, but that's not really an every day situation.

imalone · May 2015

darcym said:

I disagree on this - while you depend on wine for plugins, or software drivers (as you rightly say) either not existing or being reverse engineered, you're just way off even starting to use Linux as a daw, let alone a dependable stable one. There are lots of good daw software options, but while the underlying platform is not fit for purpose, it's just a none starter and waste of time to %99 of the people who want a daw, and only people with an interest on the platform will pick it up
I fair point on the real time kernel, but I still think you need it when you hit certain devices eg: two devices acting as s slave from your world clock, but that's not really an every day situation.

If you've got a supported device then Ardour works fine. Not a heavy user so can't comment on how well it works compared to Windows ones. 'Supported device' is a bit annoying, most of these things are built with commodity chips, but will have obscure device IDs because there aren't many of them about, getting support for them might be easy, but reporting things to alsa developers and getting them the information they need is a hurdle for people, and the cross section of people who will have the hardware and know where to go to get help is very small. That said, ASIO in Windows is a mess for end users, I think JACK is a better solution, the underlying platform is good. Mac is the thing that seems to specialise on audio, notable the Behringer device digitalscream has supports Mac, i.e. they've bothered to make sure it works on Mac but haven't felt the need to engage with the ALSA people for Linux.

digitalscream said:

Emp_Fab said:

I refuse. One of the main points of a GUI is to facilitate commands in a non-CLI environment. Why do I need to go backwards by using a CLI where there is zero intuitiveness and I have to memorise the commands I need ? I'm fine on a Windows CLI - I use it all the time in work, but for me, trying to learn a new OS, I really have no desire to learn another library of alien textual commands - I just want to use the machine with the shallowest learning curve possible.

You don't need to. For your use case, there are just some times where it's actually much more convenient for you to copy-paste a single command from a forum/howto guide into the command line than it is to open a package manager and spend 10 minutes searching for software packages and installing them one at a time.

If I understand correctly, there are plenty of windows hotfixes which are basically packaged-up commands. Not so common in Linux because there's a belief it's better to get things fixed at source, even if it takes longer, and that encouraging people to run binaries blind is a bad thing.

Myranda · May 2015

There is a cultural bias with some Linux users to avoid pre-packaged lumps of commands... but then there's people who write bash scripts for that very purpose and just a quick copy-paste sorts it all... or you can make the linux equivilent of a batch file while executes a string of bash commands

digitalscream · May 2015

To be fair, I *did* manage to get Reaper working under WINE, JACK and WineASIO pretty easily. In fact, for editing and mixing it worked better than my purpose-built studio machine running Reaper on Win7. Easily as fast, but seemingly without the CPU overhead of looking after the GUI; everything just seemed a lot smoother. Even the additional plugins I use (mostly free ones - impulse loaders, compressors, a couple of EQs and a few bass amp VSTs) worked perfectly under WINE, as did BFD3 (despite the fact that the FXpansion guys expressed some serious doubts as to whether it'd work). No stuttering, artifacts or other such issues.

The only problem is that my interface is output-only under Linux, and you've no idea how bloody frustrating that is.

darcym · May 2015

digitalscream - did you actually use this Linux setup to record your album ?

imalone · May 2015

Myranda said:

There is a cultural bias with some Linux users to avoid pre-packaged lumps of commands... but then there's people who write bash scripts for that very purpose and just a quick copy-paste sorts it all... or you can make the linux equivilent of a batch file while executes a string of bash commands

Well, there are other reasons I didn't touch on, it's harder to write a script that will work on every machine for example. There's not really any significant difference between giving someone some commands to copy and paste and putting them into a script to run, but if you're working through a problem then you might take some wrong turns and by the time things are working it's extra work to go back and package it up, when the real aim is that things should work out of the box anyway.

digitalscream · May 2015

darcym said:

digitalscream - did you actually use this Linux setup to record your album ?

No - I only put that setup together a few weeks ago, mainly as a thought experiment to see if it could be done (because I knew that my new interface was at least partially functional under Linux).

The album was actually recorded on a knackered, literally-falling-apart Win7 machine that I chucked together out of spare parts I had lying around

Myranda · May 2015

imalone said:

Myranda said:

There is a cultural bias with some Linux users to avoid pre-packaged lumps of commands... but then there's people who write bash scripts for that very purpose and just a quick copy-paste sorts it all... or you can make the linux equivilent of a batch file while executes a string of bash commands

Well, there are other reasons I didn't touch on, it's harder to write a script that will work on every machine for example. There's not really any significant difference between giving someone some commands to copy and paste and putting them into a script to run, but if you're working through a problem then you might take some wrong turns and by the time things are working it's extra work to go back and package it up, when the real aim is that things should work out of the box anyway.

And for the foreseeable future that is why Linux can't take-over from Windows and OSX en mass.

Windows and OSX can release a program that will do the same thing on all systems (barring some crazy modding going on) running the current version.

But even though all linux distributions use the same base kernel what's over the top causes enough variation that only ubuntu and some derivatives can run it properly... or debian branched distros are fine but it breaks redhat ...

Ironically the reason Linux is cool, is the reason it can't ever be mainstream for home users... variety is the spice of life any all that.

Phil_aka_Pip · May 2015

Emp_Fab said:

I'm running Mint 17.1 XFCE on this laptop, and after a small uncomfortable period of getting used to Linux, I'm pretty impressed. Mind you, I have no experience of any other types of Linux, so asking me is a bit pointless ! The thing that bugs me most about Linux though is the preposterous number of variants. It's like being faced with a supermarket aisle with sixty different varieties of baked beans - I'm left scratching my head as to what is best and also know I don't have the time or patience to try each one.

I just want something that looks and feels similar to Windows so I can navigate without endlessly having to Google things.

I still find this 'sudo apt-get' terminal window stuff rather antiquated though.... You would have thought they'd have consigned the cryptic incantations to the bin by now. I want a Linux system that makes me use the command window as infrequently as I have to with Windows.

Wrong way to think, mate. Clicky GUIs have their uses, but when you've got a GUI that doesn't offer you an option that you know should be in there somewhere, you realise the GUI designer is treating you like an idiot. Plus, if there's several operations you wish to do one after the other you want to put them in a shell script, not click this click that click the next thing. tbh the only thing a GUI is good for is a screen edit.

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