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MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2018 10:07 pm
by catopett
Hi i am looking for a distro for making music, both with MIDI and DAW

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 8:40 am
by CrocoDuck
You can have a look at this list, which I will maybe soon update: https://thecrocoduckspond.wordpress.com ... ributions/

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 7:59 pm
by bmarkham
I'm a huge fan of KXStudio because a lot of the more complicated aspects of Linux audio just plain work out of the box without have to get a degree in alsa-jack-usb-oh my! lol

For a Daw, I like Ardour, which you can get in pre-compiled form at ardour.org for a $4/month contribution. If you are used to Reaper and already have it for Windows, that license will work for the linux version.

There is a forum here dedicated to KXStudio so there's a lot of help available.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2018 5:02 pm
by Nuri
AVLinux is in my opinion a bit better than KXStudio:
- RT kernel is default
- it comes with XFCE
- it is much more up-to-date

But I agree that KXStudio is a lot easier to start with.

AVLinux is more in a pure Debian style: root user, no sudo. Custom login manager (SLiM). Root terminal / user terminal.

KXStudio is a bit outdated but really usable if you only make audio with it.
For a "no-stress-solution", go for KXStudio.

With AVLinux it IS VERY IMPORTANT to read the manual before you do anyting!

And don't try to dual- or multi-boot AVLinux with another Linux distro: it will mess up your existing GRUB and you will never be able to log in your other Linux distro. Like me last week :oops: . If your not a Linux power user, don't try it!
Dual-boot with Windows is no problem. Works!

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 9:46 am
by RastaManKing
Nuri wrote:AVLinux is in my opinion a bit better than KXStudio:
- RT kernel is default
- it comes with XFCE
- it is much more up-to-date

But I agree that KXStudio is a lot easier to start with.

AVLinux is more in a pure Debian style: root user, no sudo. Custom login manager (SLiM). Root terminal / user terminal.

KXStudio is a bit outdated but really usable if you only make audio with it.
For a "no-stress-solution", go for KXStudio.

With AVLinux it IS VERY IMPORTANT to read the manual before you do anyting!

And don't try to dual- or multi-boot AVLinux with another Linux distro: it will mess up your existing GRUB and you will never be able to log in your other Linux distro. Like me last week :oops: . If your not a Linux power user, don't try it!
Dual-boot with Windows is no problem. Works!
i currently have AV Linux installed dual booting with arch linux and windows... no problems at all, i just skipped AVLinux's grub installed and reconfigured my arch grub to pick up AVLinux all thins in a UEFI/GPT system, working just fine :)

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 11:21 am
by merlyn
As of November 2018 the Linux audio landscape looks like this to me :

Beginner : Ubuntu Studio

Intermediate : AV Linux

Advanced : Put your own system together with whatever and however you want.

KX studio is great but at the moment appears to be in a transition phase. In 2019 KX studio will likely be back on the above list.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:18 pm
by nikgnomicradio
Suggest checking out recent release of Ubuntu Studio 18.10
It has custom package Ubuntu Studio Controls that appears to handle a lot of JACK and other system configuration

I wouldn't normally consider an Ubuntu short term (9 month release) worth installing
but Ubuntu Studio is good starting point for Linux audio to try out lots of pre-installed packages
and in 9 months, user will have better idea of what they need for Linux audio

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 10:53 pm
by Luc
Nuri wrote:And don't try to dual- or multi-boot AVLinux with another Linux distro: it will mess up your existing GRUB and you will never be able to log in your other Linux distro. Like me last week :oops: . If your not a Linux power user, don't try it!
Dual-boot with Windows is no problem. Works!
Whoa. Thanks for letting me know. I had been thinking that maybe I would benefit from moving to AV, but a distro that clashes with other distros (and not with Windows!!!!!!!! :shock: ) on dual boot is absolute garbage to me. I would expect that kind of assholery from Apple or Microsoft, never from a Linux distro.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:42 am
by CrocoDuck
Nuri wrote:And don't try to dual- or multi-boot AVLinux with another Linux distro: it will mess up your existing GRUB and you will never be able to log in your other Linux distro. Like me last week :oops: . If your not a Linux power user, don't try it!
Dual-boot with Windows is no problem. Works!
Luc wrote:Whoa. Thanks for letting me know. I had been thinking that maybe I would benefit from moving to AV, but a distro that clashes with other distros (and not with Windows!!!!!!!! :shock: ) on dual boot is absolute garbage to me. I would expect that kind of assholery from Apple or Microsoft, never from a Linux distro.
Guys please don't jump to conclusions and throw accusations towards developers that mean no harm to other distributions. Luc, let me say that your post should be reported. Here instead I will spend ounces of my spare time to rectify what I think is mistake on both your accounts.

@Nuri, it can easily happen that one installer of a distro will reinstall GRUB and fail to detect other operating systems. It is a normal malfunction and, @Luc, it can always happen, on any distribution. It did happen to me a bunch of times running Ubuntu and Arch. Beside, the most common cause of this is user failure in properly controlling the distro installer options during GRUB installation phase. If that happens jumping to the conspiracy theory that this would be a plot from distro maintainers to wipe out any other distro from the system is absolutely ridiculous. Especially given that you can repair GRUB just by booting a live distro and reinstalling it, or even just by reinstalling GRUB from a bootable Linux OS on your system. There might be a couple of caveats, but normally it is a simple process. Usually, there is no need to reinstall the systems. See this as an example tutorial on the matter.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2018 1:20 am
by Luc
CrocoDuck wrote:it can always happen
Yes, that happened to me once with Suse and I never used that piece of garbage again. Unacceptable. If a distro can't make an installer that won't harm Grub like most distros, I can't trust it to do much else correctly. It's not rocket science. My right, my choice.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2018 11:13 am
by CrocoDuck
Luc wrote:Yes, that happened to me once with Suse and I never used that piece of garbage again. Unacceptable. If a distro can't make an installer that won't harm Grub like most distros, I can't trust it to do much else correctly. It's not rocket science. My right, my choice.
Of course! However, then you shouldn't use any distribution to be consistent with that logic. It can always happen, sorry, with every distribution. The reason being that most normally the task of detecting other operating systems is implemented through os-prober and/or grub-mkconfig, hence what fails is in upstream software more than in the distro installer itself. There is a good explanation over here about the problem happening with Ubuntu and Mint, why and how to fix it. Wiki pages of various distributions, such as Arch (also relevant) and Gentoo offer more insight.

So, yeah, you are sort of wrong in throwing accusations, or insults, towards certain distributions, perhaps due to not being very familiar with how this works (or not) sometimes. I mean, look at that: Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, Gentoo, OpenSuse... It literally can happen anywhere because they all use the same "os detecting" software which does not have a 100% success ratio (in the case of Arch and Gentoo not really, one goes manual on that, so it is user error, but other operating systems can fail to detect them). Thankfully, one can go manual and fix the problem.

So, I am afraid your point is kinda invalid.

Beside, your attitude would be wasting everybody time anyway. Linux is as good as we make it to be. Did you find a bug in a distro installer? Or just think that the GUI of the installer did not make clear what the installer was about to do? File a bug report or feature request please, the distro developers will be happy to fix the issue, or escalate it to GRUB, os-prober or the most relevant upstream project.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 6:26 am
by Lyberta
Why do you guys use such garbage as GRUB when there are much better loaders such as rEFInd. rEFInd scans EFI system partition during boot and lists all OSes.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 9:09 am
by tripomatic
Lyberta wrote:Why do you guys use such garbage as GRUB when there are much better loaders such as rEFInd. rEFInd scans EFI system partition during boot and lists all OSes.
I didn't know rEFInd :). And Grub is already installed here since 10years maybe. From Lilo to grub.
it just works so never felt like searching something else.

As i see, it look handy, but if it doesn't find your kernel(s) you still have to configure it.

Does it work flawless?

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 4:48 pm
by Lyberta
tripomatic wrote:As i see, it look handy, but if it doesn't find your kernel(s) you still have to configure it.

Does it work flawless?
In my experience it found everything except encrypted systems in which case I wrote a simple script that copies the kernel to ESP.

Re: MUSIC DISTROS

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:54 pm
by Nuri
To clarify what I wanted to say:
AV Linux is not garbage! But if you're not a Linux power user capable of playing with grub and recovering systems, don't try to dual boot AV Linux with another Linux distro.
That's all!
I'm a big fan of AV Linux but some things are really specific and it's better you're aware of them before you try anything with your PC.
The AV Linux manual is a must have and it's really good that the distro is provided with it.