Step by Step KXStudio upgrade Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

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i2productions
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Step by Step KXStudio upgrade Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

Post by i2productions »

Updated 6/30/17
(Should this tutorial ever become unusable again due to changes, refer to the kxstudio site for current details. http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Repositories)

(The short version of the guide:Install Ubuntu/Debian. Update. Copy and paste the commands in the post to terminal. reboot. enjoy!)

So you want all the KXStudio tools on a desktop other than KDE? This guide aims to show you how to install KXStudio on top of almost any recent version of Ubuntu or Debian. The guide is focused on Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 and it's derivative such as Mint, Peppermint, Bohdi, etc. Mileage WILL vary from computer to computer, but if you don't get a working setup with this, you likely have a hardware compatibility issue! I have not tested this on Debian but I understand it works exactly the same. Before we go any further, let me thank falkTX for coming up with the easiest way I've seen yet for most people in the linux world to get working audio setups easily!

1.)Download almost any flavor of Ubuntu or Debian.
NOTE:
I've tested Cinnamon Mint, XFCE Mint, MATE Mint, LXDE Peppermint OS, Enlightenment Bodhi, and Untiy Ubuntu. KDE can be a bit more resource intensive and if KDE is your destination I suggest using the 14.04 KXStudio ISO download from falkTX. Bohdi and Peppermint are superlightweight desktop choices that load into less than 150 Megs of RAM.
2.)Burn to DVD or write to a flashdrive(recommended, will cut base install time in half) via Unetbootin(http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ windows or linux) or Linux Live USB Creator(http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ Windows only). Make sure you FAT format your flashdrive beforehand. Once you have your installation media ready, reboot your computer.
3.)On bootup you may have to access your bios to read from your dvd/usb. The method for entering the bios setup is different for every computer(ESC, F1, F10, F12, DEL are common ones.) Once in the bios find an option for boot order and make sure the first boot device points to the DVD drive or inserted USB. If you're using a profession audio card either USB/Firewire/PCI/etc and you're only going to be using this interface for sound across all OS, while you're at it poke around in your bios settings and see if you can disable the onboard soundcard. Most bioses have this option somewhere. It will save you A LOT of trouble in the long run. Save the changes and reboot.
4.)After reboot you should be presented with some options or just wait and it will automatically start the live dvd/usb. If you've never installed linux or an OS before, you may want to search the net for a step by step Linux install guide. It's pretty self explanatory, except for maybe the partitioning part. If you're a new linux user, or aren't comfortable with partitioning, take care to not completely overwrite a windows partition you may want to keep. I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST DATA!(The link I posted above with step by step tell you to erase drive for best results. They are correct, but if you have windows on the same drive it will be no more. Seriously tread carefully into partitioning if you've never done it before...Don't let me scare you, it's easy, just pay attention to what you're doing, and seek out/ask for help otherwise.)
5.)After reboot you will (hopefully) be presented with the GRUB bootloader. If you have multiple OS's on the computer, you will have your choice to load them now, or Linux Mint will default to run in about 8 seconds.
6.)Before installing all the fun studio related stuff, lets bring the computer up to date. Launch the update manager from Menu>System Tools>Update Manager. Click 'Install Updates.' It will likely ask you about replacing a couple of files on the first update, go ahead and click 'Replace'.
This will likely take a while.
6c.) OPTIONAL If you have a graphics card that requires drivers, you may be presented with a notification of 'Additional Drivers'(depending on desktop.) On some of the desktops you can click on in in the notification bar, and in some go to Menu>Settings>Additional Drivers. If you want to use the proprietary video card driver(if applicable Nvidia/AMD) install it now. Reboot and configure graphics settings to your taste.
7.)Now for the fun stuff. Loads of terminal commands! Open a terminal(CTRL+ALT+T on many desktops). Input each
command, and wait for it to get back to the prompt before inputing the next command.
Depending on your internet connection and computer specs these steps can take from
30 minutes up to many hours(depending on connection speed obviously.)

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sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https software-properties-common wget
wget https://launchpad.net/~kxstudio-debian/+archive/kxstudio/+files/kxstudio-repos_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i kxstudio-repos_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo apt-get update
If you're using an Ubuntu version higher that 15.10(which most of you probably are now) also do the following commands

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sudo apt-get install libglibmm-2.4-1v5
wget https://launchpad.net/~kxstudio-debian/+archive/kxstudio/+files/kxstudio-repos-gcc5_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i kxstudio-repos-gcc5_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo apt-get update
Everyone do this one.

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sudo apt-get install kxstudio-default-settings
You are actually done installing kxstudio specific stuff. All the tweaks and basic tools are now in place, it's just a matter of what programs/packages you want. You could install just the programs that you want to use singly, or use the following command to add hundreds of pieces of studio software to your computer. (Note if you're going to install single programs from here on out, skip down to the last command. Adding user to audio group is a MUST!)

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sudo apt-get install kxstudio-meta-all
The above assumes the easiest way to get EVERYTHING studio related in one shot. If you want to pick and choose your packages, go for it! But for beginers it's nice to get it all and sort out what you like in your setup.

One more command before a restart. You're going to add your user to the audio group, which will be very important to make things run the way you want them to. From the terminal enter:

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sudo addgroup `whoami` audio
8.)After the reboot you're done!


9.Tidying up)You may need to go to Menu>Sound&Video>Cadence and change some setting in there. Perhaps you have 2 sounds cards(an internal and a USB for example) and your system is auto-detecting the built in, instead of the USB audio device you use? From Cadence go to Configure>Driver>Device/Interface. In the drop down there select the appropriate audio device. (Make sure you are in the ALSA tab{or firewire if that's what type of device you are running}, as it sometimes defaults to the dummy setting in the left hand side of the window.) In this same window if you want to change the sample rate or buffer size(a short tutorial, the smaller the number the less latency you get, but also the lower the number the more chance of annoying clicks and pops in your sound called Xruns.) After you have selected the correct audio device go back to Cadence's main windows and 'Force Restart.' This will restart JACK and you should now have a completely working audio system. ENJOY!
Last edited by i2productions on Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:07 pm, edited 33 times in total.
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Irwin J. Cespedes
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint!

Post by Irwin J. Cespedes »

Woa! Those are some good cue notes for the starters in KXStudio. I have never installed it completely, just some pieces and chucks of software, but till I get a newer desktop machine I'll install it from scratch.

Thanks for the tutorial! Image
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint!

Post by Snap »

Thanks so much!
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint!

Post by skogen »

Thank you so much! These instructions made setting up KXstudio on top of peppermint 3 very easy, and worked on both by computers. Now looking forward to learn some of the tons of interesting software that comes with kxstudio :D
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint!

Post by hebjuzeb »

Hey i2,

Great tutorial, I was installing the iso but just skipped toward the end and your instructions cleared up some important steps. Just wanted to add, anyone who does want to use 64-bit with non-free software such as Reaper will have to use the command: wine64 regsvr32 wineasio.dll
(I'm no expert, just something Falk clued me into on another thread.)

Thanks for taking the time to write that,
cheers,
h.

[EDIT] Yeesh, maybe I should get things working properly before posting stuff. :oops:

The installed version of Reaper is 32-bit anyway, trying to run it with 64-bit WINE is not a good idea.
Acer Aspire 5742, Intel Core i3 370M @ 2.40GHz, 4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 532MHz, Intel(R) HD Graphics, Alesis iO4 audio device.
skogen
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint!

Post by skogen »

Just a small update:
Some strange things where happening/crashing on peppermint (openbox me thinks). So I decided to try something new, and it was bodhi linux (also ubuntu-based). By following these instructions once again, it seems like its working fine this time too, installed the base of kxstudio on bodhi, installed renoise, and some audio plugins, so far: all good!
i2productions
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint!

Post by i2productions »

Bodhi is a great low resourse choice! E17 takes some getting used to, but is a strong desktop choice!. Haven't updates this in a while. Time to polish some things up!
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint!(and other ubuntus

Post by mags.trendkill »

just created an account to say this. i have mint 13 (same error with 14).
something to do with "carla" and i don't know where i should report this. so here's the nice manual, here's the nice error:

sudo apt-get install kxstudio-meta-audio
[sudo] password for mags:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
kxstudio-meta-audio : Depends: carla but it is not installable
Recommends: alsa-tools-gui but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: ffado-mixer-qt4 but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: mudita24 but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: audacity but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: midisnoop but it is not installable
Recommends: mixxx but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: vmpk-jack but it is not installable or
jack-keyboard but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: lmms but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: muse but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: rosegarden but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: seq24 but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: non-daw but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: non-mixer but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: non-sequencer but it is not installable
Recommends: non-session-manager but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: giada but it is not installable
Recommends: laborejo but it is not installable
Recommends: lisaloqt but it is not installable
Recommends: petri-foo but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: sooperlooper but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: sunvox but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

p.s.
i can install everything i want one-by-one, so thanks for the manual.
i2productions
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

Post by i2productions »

Sorry I've been away from the community for so long that one of the most popular guides in the How-To Section has been broken for months since things started moving to the debian repos. I have tested this guide in Mint, though I have yet to test Debian, or some of the new exotics brought in by the move. I have streamlined this guide, and will continue to, to give people the easiest copy and paste path to a fully working kxstudio system outside of the official ISO releases! If I have missed anything, let me know.
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

Post by bazsound »

just followed this for adding kx to a lubuntu install on a laptop

worked perfectly for me.

Just ran an upgrade and saw that pulse audio was pulled in an as update.


Dont like pulseaudio, but since cadence is working fine is pulse audio in use?

Id like to get rid of pulse audio and stick with also but im unsure which is actually in use. Alsa has always worked perfect fo rme so i dunno
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio with Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

Post by i2productions »

A question better posed in the KXStudio forum here. But if you're using this setup I believe what happens behind the scenes at startup is PulseAudio is killed and everything that's not a JACK app just thinks it's using ALSA and then dumps into JACK from their.
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio upgrade Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/e

Post by i2productions »

Updated the guide. Tested Mint 17RC Cinnamon. Seems to work with the repos like every other flavor of Mint/Ubuntu I've tried. Not sure if I'll make the switch on my primary partition yet or not? They broke by favority desktop choice of Cairo-dock/GNOME session. They moved away from GNOME code starting in Mint 14. But my own personal choice aside, 17 seems to be a solid LTS release so far.

What changed in the guide?
-Added reference to Mint 17RC
-Removed step 10a. The non-free repo is no longer, so it's gone. Though I now need to write a new(probably seperate guide) on windows vsts on linux, along with WineASIO software.(Coming Soon)
-Removed reference to wineasio in Step 12.
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio upgrade Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

Post by i2productions »

MAJOR REVISION
-Brought it into the 14.04 Era
-Combined Steps down to 9 from 13
-Rewrote the guide to be more about generic Ubuntu bases than about Mint(Almost 2 years and 6800+ views of this thread and growing. I am betting only a small fraction are viewing for Mint.)
-Fixed spelling mistakes
-Added quick install guide at the begining
-Added a thank you to falkTX
-Added disabling onboard soundcard to step 3
-Generally condensed the guide and made it less wordy and more practical.

NEED TO DO FOR FUTURE REVISION:
-Add low-latency kernel installation guide as an OPTIONal step 7b.
-Reintroduce some windows VST support to guide. With the non-free repos now gone from KXStudio things like wineasio, REAPER, and many other windows and Demo pieces of software are gone. Wineasio can be very easy to install if you know how, but can be a headache and a nightmare for some as well. So before I add my own guide I want make sure it's as simple an explanation as possible to no one can mess up. On the same note, festige and other windows VST bridges are up in the air. There's a lot of exciting VST development going on right now, and I'm going to respect falkTX's attitude for the moment of "do not become reliant on Windows VST's and software." He makes an excellent point and I'm going to wait and see what happens in a few of the projects over the next few months before I readd anything about VST's, though for those that need a quick fix to load most vst's:

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sudo apt-get install festige
I use it with Amplitube 2,3(though guitarix is my fav now), and some old versions of autotune.
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio upgrade Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

Post by Snap »

If you're using a profession audio card either USB/Firewire/PCI/etc, while you're at it poke around in your bios settings and see if you can disable the onboard soundcard. Most bioses have this option somewhere. It will save you A LOT of trouble in the long run.
Just a tip. You don't need to disable the internal soundcard in the BIOS (whether possible or not in a particular machine). Just blacklist the unneeded internal soundcards. Go to /etc/modprobe.d and make a new file there called sound.blacklist.conf. Mine is like this:

## disable the internal sound card
blacklist snd_hda_intel

## disable the HDSP9652
blacklist snd_hdsp

Just comment out the card you want to use at a given time. Reboot, select it in Cadence and you're done. For external cards there's no need to black list them. Just switch them off. As you can see in my file both are blacklisted now because I'm running the Fireface800 as my default general purpose card.
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Re: Step by Step KXStudio upgrade Mint/Ubuntu/Debian/etc.

Post by i2productions »

In an all inclusive easy for new users guide, it's better the leave terminal commands or manual file editing to a minimal. Secondly, if you're not using it, why not totally disable it? If you have multiple distros(or uprade with a new install every 2 years or so) it's one less step in the long run for machines that are going to be pro-audio oriented all the time. This is just personal opinion, and I'm happy that you posted another way of disabling on-board sound, but every tutorial on the subject I've ever read has referred people to disabling in BIOS(which is available in most BIOS systems.) I can totally see cases like this, where you might be on a laptop and you want the built in sound for windows, but have a pro-audio USB/Firewire interface for linux, so thanks for posting, and I edited the guide in the BIOS step to more clearly state why or why not to disable it.
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