Old Lady Composer's First Adventures in Linux! Hi!

[Guernica]

Hello all, my name's Liz, I'm an amateur classical composer from the scary Deep South. I finally got brave and decided to come back and give Linux another go - my last epic fail of an attempt was circa SUSE 2.0 or 2.1 or something. I'm from the MS-DOS days, so a command line don't scare me none, heehee, but trying to get stuff configured back then was wayyyyyyyy too much for my senile brain!

I was really hoping to find a distro that would "just work" on my homemade AMD quadcore box and it took me a while but Ubuntu Studio 12.04 worked just fine. I am particularly blown away by MuseScore, which even accepts MIDI input from my legitimately cr*p MIDI keyboard (E-Keys Evolution 37 if you MUST know - ah shadaaaap, it does what I need it to do, fits in my briefcase, and I'm quite fond of the li'l critter! ). Finale used to vomit MIDI data back at me periodically in a not-so-pretty way from this keyboard and needless to say, JACK is doing the same thing on occasion, but if I dealt with it in Windoze I reckon I can learn to deal with it in Linux... We shall see. Your prayers may yet be appreciated.

I've been surfing the forums all night and I have to be honest - a huge amount of what y'all are talking about is Greek to me, since I don't really "do" electronic music or have any big pro audio ambitions. I'm not averse to learning some of it by any means and am paying close attention to the discussions of KXStudio. I'm trying to figure out if there would be any benefit to me in installing that, since ALL I really need is a decent notation program that accepts MIDI input occasionally (believe it or not I'm SO oldskool that point-and-click for note input still makes sense to me - MacSE and Mark of the Unicorn anyone? ). From what y'all are saying KXStudio looks like it MIGHT make using JACK a little more stable? Anyway, just wanted to say hello!

[steevc]

Welcome Liz!

So are you mainly using the PC to write scores? It's not something I've played with, but my kids are studying music and may well have a use for it. How does MuseScore compare with the closed source options?

[zwenny]

Intro: They say the old laughing lady been here before

Hallo Liz,

nice to give Linux another chance. Started with S.u.S.E. (or openSUSE, how it's called now), too, but it has been openSUSE 11.0 already Now i'm with Debian, because i wanted to get deeper into Linux and it's challenges and when i'm having troubles to get some things working, i'm often thinking of the ease i had with openSUSE back then Sometimes people and software grow appart and sometimes they need to get back together. Check out openSUSE, since it has undergone a great development. Just give it another try Regarding to composer software you may try Rosegarden.

Outro: He loves his old laughing lady 'cause her taste is so sweet.

[Guernica]

Welcome Liz!

So are you mainly using the PC to write scores? It's not something I've played with, but my kids are studying music and may well have a use for it. How does MuseScore compare with the closed source options?

Yep, just scores. I've been a loyal Finale user for decades now and I have to say MuseScore compares to it VERY favorably. The UI seems very similar. I haven't had a chance to really get into the innards of it yet but I certainly was able to fire it up, get the keyboard working, and easily/effortlessly input what I needed to and, more importantly, *correct* what I needed to (which was a BIG problem w/ Finale for a while). Finale of course has way more VSTs available if you're into that but me, I'm fine w/ a basic piano sound. So I'm liking it a lot!

Thanks for the welcomes! Oh and @zwenny - I tried Rosegarden maybe 2-3 years ago. Has it changed a lot since then?

[zwenny]

Oh and @zwenny - I tried Rosegarden maybe 2-3 years ago. Has it changed a lot since then?

There has been some work since then. Have a look at it's wikipedia page.
You may also study the tutorials on rosegardenmusic.com.