Freesound Forums

If there are other linux users here, can i ask what you use for sound recording, editing and so on.

It's just out of curiosity :wink:

I use pulse audio and alsa, as so many others. I've fallen in love with audacity. Sometimes i'll give ardour a go, but i rarely find that i need more than audacity, when recording.

Hello Kyster,

i switched from my "long time Windows-and-Linux-co-existence" to "Linux only" a few weeks before and i do not really miss M$ Windhoze .

Before that, i synthesized a few sounds for freesound on Windows - with the free "Soundforum Synthesizer" - and recorded them in real time with a simple audio-recorder from my SB Live! Soundcard.

Now that i still can execute the Soundforum Synth with WinE, i don't miss that Synth, but i plan to record my (hopefully) own sounds of a Waldorf MicroQ Rack V.A. Synthesizer with Linux in the Future and i do not know, if and how that will work - maybe i need to test that in the near future. My Waveditor of choice is Audacity too - and an old Version of Goldwave, executed with WinE.

For "music production" (i'm far from being a professional), i use Rosegarden (MIDI) and LMMS (to use VST-Synths and stuff like that) .

For Compatibility and a faster OS, i have an older Linux on my hdd in co-existence with my current Linux, which i use for everything else.

My current Linux, from which i'm writing this, is Xubuntu 8.04 LTS , which works more fluidly on this old Computer, than the current Ubuntu 9.04 .

Soundfull Greetings,
.Ingo.

PS: Well, i used Ubuntu Studio 8.04 LTS before, but that was a bit too slow for me on this old Computer But it was nice - and if i ever will be able to buy a new PC sometime, i'll install Ubuntu Studio on that thing, i guess

Hey jivatma07

That sounds great! Well you're not the only one with an old computer, mine is not what you would call state-of-the-art either. It's been some years since i did the switch, and i must admit i'm quite satisfied.

I've also given rosegarden a go, but i don't like it that much, all though it's supposed to be quite powerful. Also i've tried vkeybd along with jack, some various synth software and patchage, and i really think it's great to play around with.

As for sound hardware, i've recently installed a second soundcard along with my sb live, cause i couldn't fit all the mini jacks in a single card because of my 5.1 speakers. It works flawlessly side by side. One for output, and one for recording, and i like to think that the backgroundnoise is reduced a little.

Ubuntu is also my choice, and has been for years. For about two weeks ago i installed 9.04, but kept my trusted 8.04 LTS on an other partition. The reason was, that i got an invitation to beta test this Ubuntu One thing, maybe you know it. But the minimum requirements was 9.04 and well, one thing led to another Other than that i've fooled around with debian, studio 64, opensuse and so on, but Ubuntu suits me best.

Great to hear i'm not alone

haha, ae doesnt matter with pc's anymore it seems like, older ones control MIDI just fine and still sound amazing! I didn't know Linux had that much stuff, is it all cross compatible with Debian OS? It would b kinda cool to bring my dinosaur lappy with me next time to do something! 300mhz of pure power! and 128gig ram... w00t~ The interface wpuld just seem less likely to crash on you. Nice thread.

Hey Kyster:

Yes, i'm happy with Linux too. And i never will imagine myself installing Vista on this Computer, that would be a kick in the A** :x . But oh well, i don't want to start a flamewar for or against Windows here, because Win XP was just fine as long as it was on my hdd.

If you do not like Rosegarden, you may (or may not) like "Anthem"? It's a Midi sequencer, that could be an exchange to Cakewalk Sonar. (As i had Win98 installed, i use Cakewalk 5, which was on some of this Magazine CD's spread around by "Pearl" .
Anthem can be found here: http://anthem.sourceforge.net/ But you need to compile it from Source Code to an Executable :? , which i did not try sucessfully in the past .

As i had installed Ubuntu Studio, i tried the installed Softsynths and Programs too, which was really great. I installed the complete Ubuntu Studio 8.04, but without the Printing Server, or what it was called, because that did not work. I did so, because i'm a Multimedia Freak - I like to draw, make music and even (very) small animations sometime. Sadly i had to uninstall Ubuntu Studio and install Xubuntu and install the Programs, that i found and still find usefull by hand, but oh well, so my system runs more fluidly ^_^ .

You have a second Soundcard in your Computer? Hmm, not bad .

No, i did not hear about Ubuntu One, sorry ops: . Yes, i did use Debian and OpenSuSE in the past too . I tried to install Debian, before i installed Xubuntu, but the CD didn't work correctly :? .

Hehe ^_^ yeh, i'm happy too, to hear and see, that i'm not alone with my little Penguin (for those of you, who do not know it, a penguin is the mascot of Linux and he is called "Tux" .

Hey CyberiaLainKittyKat:

Debian is one of the ... how do i say that correctly in english? ... "oldest" and stil alife Distributions, which means, that it was - together with SuSE (Germany) , Redhat (US?) , and others - one of the first bigger Linux Distributions, that grow up in the Linux World - that was Ages ago.

I do not know, if Debian will install with a GUI on your System, because 300 Mhz is very old. Maybe you can run one of the smaller Window-Managers on it, like IceWM. If you have Questions about that (e. g. "What is a Window Manager?" or "What is a Linux Distribution?" , you can ask me too and i'll try to answer your questions as good as i can (because english is my second language) .

I have to say, that Debian is an OS, which the more experienced Linux User uses, but maybe we find a Linux Distribution, that fits well with your 300Mhz Computer. That would be great, because i'm looking for a lightweight Linux too, because my PC has 1200 Mhz (or should have, but the BIOS only starts it with 600 Mhz :? ) .

I'll search for a lightweight Linux today and post my search result here.

Soundfull Greetings,
.Ingo.

CyberiaLainKittyKat
haha, ae doesnt matter with pc's anymore it seems like, older ones control MIDI just fine and still sound amazing! I didn't know Linux had that much stuff, is it all cross compatible with Debian OS? It would b kinda cool to bring my dinosaur lappy with me next time to do something! 300mhz of pure power! and 128gig ram... w00t~ The interface wpuld just seem less likely to crash on you. Nice thread.

Hi Cyberia

Yes a lot of stuff is compatible with Debian. In fact you wouldn't believe how much software you can find for soundproduction these days, that fits nicely to debian. I can recommend Debian Lenny, but you just might have to have a little more power, to make it run.

For very small computers , there are some good distributions too. I've tried DSL (damn small linux) but i don't know if it comes wit that much software in it's reposetories. Otherwise you can find a lot of information about the various distributions at www.distrowatch.com .

You should try having a look.

Jivatma

Did you try installing XFCE in ubuntustudio? It would make it a lot mire light weight, if it ran that in stead of Gnome.

Sorry for this short reply, but i have to be on my way right now I'll write when i get back.

@both of you:

Yes, DSL (Damn Small Linux) is nice, but as told here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2008_August_23, it is only a LiveCD and not really able to install software besides the Software, that comes with the CD :?: . I never tried to install DSL (which sould be possible with a small script that is included on the CD, if i'm not 100% wrong) :

You shouldn't install stuff when running a Live CD because the software is on the CD-ROM (which you can't edit) and not on the hard drive (which you can). Linux distributions generally come with a piece of software called a package manager which you can use to easily install lots of free software.
DSL isn't designed to let you install software, so only has a text-based package manager called apt. You can install the graphical installer synaptic with the command apt-get install synaptic, and run that to install more software. But as I said, you can't edit the CD-ROM, so all your newly installed programs should disappear when you restart your computer!
98.217.8.46 is having a hard time because he or she is installing everything from source code. It's far easier when using a package manager, but computers running Mac OSX don't have one.
DSL is designed to be a small, leightweight Linux - I'd suggest changing to Ubuntu which is designed to be easy. Key bits of software - including GNOME (or KDE), OpenOffice.org and synaptic - come ready-installed. --h2g2bob (talk) 21:59, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Other Options for a lightweight LInux are:

Debian (Woody) ; Slackware ; DeLi Linux ; LFS ; and so on...

DeLi Linux --> http://delilinux.berlios.de/ EDIT: this should be the correct URL: http://www.delilinux.de/

What is DeLi Linux ?
DeLi Linux stands for "Desktop Light" Linux. It is a Linux Distrinution for old computers, from 486 to Pentium MMX 166 or so. It's focussed on desktop usage. It includes email clients, graphical webbrowser, an office package with word processor and spreadsheet, an dso on. A full install, including XFree and development tools, needs not more than 300 MB of harddisk space.

The trick is, that DeLi Linux uses (almost) only "lightweight" alternative software. If you are looking for the newest KDE, GNOME or Mozilla, DeLi Linux will not make you happy. The test computer is a 486 laptop with 16 MB RAM, and all apps which comes with DeLi Linux are running smoothly.

"Why the heck make a Linux for such old crap ?" you may ask. There are still many computers around with the configuration mentioned above, it would be a shame to waste them. Many people simply cannot buy a 2 Ghz machine for 1000 $ or more, but they can buy a Pentium I 133 for 50 $ from ebay. Many people are still happy with the computer they did buy 5 years ago. Especially in the so-called third world, new hardware is not payable. Well, there's still Windows95 or Windows 3.1, which will run on this machines, too. But this versions are not supported by MS anymore, they no longer in production, and finally, you will not get any software for this old Windows versions.

Okay, what software does DeLi Linux provide?
Short: Kernel 2.2.19, XFree 3.3.6, Siag Office, dillo, links2, mutt, spruce, gcc 2.95 and lot of other software.

Long: Kernel 2.2.19 is a rock solid kernel of the 2.2 branche and it should recognize all hardware which is avilable for old computers. 2.4.x is newer, but it's also larger.
Same for XFree 3.3.6: Xfree 4.x has dropped support for many old graphic chips and cards, so I chose 3.3.6.
Siag Office with the Pathetic Writer word processor and the Siag spreadsheet is the Office package of DeLi Linux.
Dillo and links2 are the available web browsers. dilo is gtk based, links2 is usable on console and as graphic version under XFree.
With mutt and sylpheed there are 2 email clients, one for console, one graphical for XFree. Slrn is the standard news reader for console.
For small (local) server tasks, there are masqmail (a very small sendmail replacement but easy to configure), sn (a small news server) and mokey (a very small http demon with PHP support).
Lots of development tools are provided: gcc 2.95, perl, python, ruby and PHP for web development. The standard widget set on DeLi Linux is gtk 1.2.x
For printing, there is ghostscript, including stp, the gimp print addon, which supports many modern printers.
Many window managers: icewm and XFCE. The "classics" for spartanic people: aewm, cwwm, larswm. And, as first distribution, introducing XD640, a desktop environment espacially written for old computers with a word processor, notepad, ppp-dialer and many other apps.

DeLi Linux is based on Slackware 7.1, it uses the same tgz package format. So, if you need other software, you should try first the slackware archive for Slackware 7.1 on ftp.slackware.com. (wickey)

Hope it helps you, CyberiaLainKittyKat

@Kyster: Okay, i'll wait for your Answer/Reply . (btw. yes, i installed IceWM and Enlightenment on Ubuntu Studio and it was fun, but it was the realtime Kernel that does not fit my System so well, i guess...)

PS: i forgot to mention the Program called Milkytracker (http://www.milkytracker.net) which is a Piece of Software, that lets you make Music the Oldschool way. The Tracker Family was born on the good old C64 Homecomputer and did grow very fast on the Amiga 500 and later on the PC with Fasttracker II .

*raises hand* I'm on arch linux

I only use audacity and play with lmms sometimes

Hey qubodup,

only heard about arch Linux' name, but did not try to install the distribution ops: - is it a lightweight one? hock:

Soundfull Greetings,
.Ingo.

jivatma07
is it a lightweight one?

Comparing 'philosophies' might be the right way to compare distros. In this case http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way

Hey qubodup,

sounds really like a great Philosophy, that Arch Linux is based around .

btw. i tried DeLi Linux and it looks nice, but my Mouse isn't working and if i start the X-Server (X-Windows) with a Window-Manager as an option, it's ending the X-Window-System without starting the Window Manager. If i start X without that argument, i get a simple and naked X-Window-System and have to type the name of a Window-Manager into the X-shell .

back to Arch Linux:

In the past, i was more a "power user" as today, because the Distributions like Open SuSE and Ubuntu are trying to make it as easy as possible for a Linux Newbie to use the System without to have a closer look at the Shell. Well, i install software with apt with the help of a Terminal, but besides from that, i do not very much with the Terminal or Shell .

Maybe i try to install Arch Linux where DeLi Linux is now on my hdd; but that means at the same time, that i have to learn the many different Shell-commands and so on again.

e. g. is it possible to go online with Arch Linux' Shell (Bash?) and install software? i ask that, because i had to install pppoe and pppoeconfig on Ubuntu to go online with my Broadband Provider.

Soundfull Greetings,
.Ingo.

PS: is that a self drawn (pixeled) space ship, that is your Avatar?

jivatma07
In the past, i was more a "power user" as today, because the Distributions like Open SuSE and Ubuntu are trying to make it as easy as possible for a Linux Newbie to use the System without to have a closer look at the Shell. Well, i install software with apt with the help of a Terminal, but besides from that, i do not very much with the Terminal or Shell .

jivatma07
PS: is that a self drawn (pixeled) space ship, that is your Avatar?

Hello qubodup,

- Don't worry; i found out, that you can use pppoe and stuff like that in arch linux too (on terminal or shell).

- Oooh, i didn't know about that webcomic ops: - sorry.

Soundfull Greetings,
.Ingo.