I moved straight to debian (I had a 1/2 day planet ccrma detour)
from win2k about a month ago. I didn't necessarily fall off a cliff, but sometimes I feel like I'm rolling down one very quickly.
I would suggest using some short cuts. I originally installed 3.01
(woody release 1) and tried to recompile the kernel with alsa support. I read docs as literature, I figured it was no problem. 2 days later I was downloading the Demudi packages from the Agnula project. This worked great for a couple of weekends, but I figured I would do an upgrade to get v .37 from CVS. The machine upgrade killed my system (I think it fried LILO) so I spent most of this weekend re-installing stuff. 2 things I took away from this as a linux newbie.
- always have a boot floopy handy
- if you have old obscure hardware that X cares about (mouse, keyboard
monitor/ Video card) and you spend 4 or 5 days building a usable XF86 config file, you should maybe copy that little old text file to a floppy, or maybe send a mail with it as the body of the message. That way when the apt-get dist-upgrade fries say, LILO you can then just quickly re-install stuff and copy over you X window config file, instead of spending another day tracking down your 12 year old monitor's specs.
-----Original Message----- From: Jean Jacques [mailto:jj@wanadoo.fr] Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 12:30 AM Cc: pd-list@iem.at Subject: [OT] [PD] (Facts Please !) a mac or pc with Linux for PD
Thank you everyone for your contribution !
I know that i may fall of a cliff on my road to Debian, but i'm not looking for the easy way, i really want to stop using proprietary softwares that's why i'm going linux, i'm ready to invest time on it ! I plan to install PD + Gem and make music !
I read: [...]
read docs as literature, I figured it was no problem. 2 days later I was
[...traumatic experiences snipped...]
WOW, it's sad to hear stories like that over and over again, and I'm really impressed by the fact that you're still giving debian (or free sw in general a go).
A few tips for people that want to move over to antarctica though:
find someone experienced who's willing to lend you a hand in the beginning (ideally this is someone from your school, neighborhood but if no one's available check out irc and mailing lists a lot of people in the linux community tend to be extremely helpful and geeky enough to have amazing response times)
be prepared for a steep learning curve, hey this is the literate user department, and no os is transparent to the blind, you will run into trouble (just like with any other complex piece of tech) when trying unusual things, and after you fixed a couple of major fsck ups you'll be glad you did, they happen less often once you get the hang of it, and you'll find it much easier to fix minor nuisances. (I don't dare to say never, I consider myself a little experienced with free unices and sometimes really really bad things can happen to you, but that's hardly exclusive to free sw, at least I have less esoteric theories about what is going wrong than the amusing read some mac-'tech' forums expose[0])
learn to program/script a little at first and try to put it to use and see how lots of tedious tasks can be made very easy by simply changing a few lines in some readily available script/program, watch yourself becoming better at it.
figure out the package management system of your distribution (if applicable), become familiar with the GNU build system and start making your own (packages not management system that is)
start talking in tongues, use more acronyms than actual words, patch your kernel on a regular basis and feel the cool breeze.
cheers,
OTx
[0] please this is not intended to qualify mac users as less technology savy, but I recently was asked to solve a mac problem that didn't exist in the first place when I tried, and a little bit (or rather a lot) of searching the web brought me to places were people actually suggested to change flats because of an illegal instruction error being triggered by the gerbage men truck or whatever ...
On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 07:55:38PM +0100, CK wrote:
- start talking in tongues, use more acronyms than actual words, patch your kernel on a regular basis and feel the cool breeze.
Exactly. :-)
"In the Beginning was the Command Line" (Neal Stephenson): http://www.english.uga.edu/hc/command2.html
The conclusion of this essay:
"What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem, and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own."
-- Marc
Marc Lavallée wrote:
"In the Beginning was the Command Line" (Neal Stephenson):
Hear the man. Things would be *so* much more clear if everyone read this book...
I somehow missed the original post that began this thread, but I'm assuming it was from Ken Locarnini, yes ? To be fair, IIRC Ken really has given Linux audio a whirl, and I believe he's still philosophically inclined towards open-source software in general. However, IMO it remains true that some higher degree of skill with computers and/or willingness to work with them is required to make a successful switch to Linux, especially for use with audio. And I'll add this URL again for the doubters who seem to think that we're all just twiddling bits here in Linux-land :
http://linux-sound.org/music.html
So please, don't say there's no-one making music with Linux audio software. I'm really tired of hearing that one...
I was a little surprised at the harshness of some of the comments I read (from Ken?) re: Linux playing catch-up. That charge definitely won't stick when Linux the system is under consideration. However, it definitely applies to most Linux audio software, but I'm not going to apologize for that condition. The plain fact is that there are a lot of people working like mad to turn Linux into an outstanding audio platform. I don't mean to be rude by saying this, but another plain fact is that if you're not going to help then go away and come back when we're ready for you. No hard feelings, we all just want to make some music here, but some of us have strong feelings about things like ownership of our tools, the ability to fix them if they're fucked up, and free access to their code if we suddenly want to write in an improvement or two. We might also have strong feelings (particularly if you're not from the USA) about shoving any more cash into the coffers of a monstrous monopoly that seems hell-bent on destroying the free software movement any way it can.
Now I realize that Steinberg != Micro$oft, but you can't do Steinberg without paying M$, and to me that's just not acceptable any longer. So I dedicate a lot of my time and energies into working to provide a better way for others who might also believe as I do (and there are a lot of us). I suppose I'm guilty of an altruistic impulse, but I'll feel good if I can help pave the way for a better experience for the next generation of musicians using free and open-source software.
Geez, I'm starting to sound like RMS...!
Anyway, I'm rambling and this whole discussion is 'way off-topic for the Pd list. I'll end by stating the following items:
1. I run Pd with GEM from the PlanetCCRMA release, it all works fine
here. 2. Projects such as AGNULA and PlanetCCRMA are the best way for a newbie to enter the world of Linux audio software. 3. ALSA, Ardour, JACK, Rosegarden, Hydrogen, and many other nice apps are creeping towards their 1.0 releases, indicating a first wave of reasonably mature native Linux audio apps. 4. A rather large number of MusicV-related apps are already quite solid, e.g. Csound, Pd, Common Music, CLM, and others. Lots of good music gets made with those apps, even on Linux. 5. Linux is not a perfect operating system. No OS is perfect.
Sorry for the rant. Ken, I hope you took all this the right way, no offense is intended. I sincerely hope everyone is doing the work they want to do, regardless of platform. But I actually do use Linux in my day-to-day music activities (composing, arranging, teaching, studying) and find it quite workable here, so I'm a bit prickly when I think someone is diss'ing the penguin... ;-)
Best regards,
Dave Phillips
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CK -
Dave Phillips -
Marc Lavallée -
Matthew Allen