Gentoo Studio: A Gentoo Linux Professional Audio Workstation

steveL · Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2017 7:04 am Post subject:

I like the idea, audiodef. (FWTW.)

audiodef · Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2017 2:35 pm Post subject:

Thanks, steveL. It's worth a lot.

audiodef · Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2017 3:05 pm Post subject:

I can't believe this sticky will be five years old as of July 24.

audiodef · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 1:53 am Post subject:

Looking into getting #gentoostudio set up on Freenode. Don't know what happened, but fingers crossed it can be worked out.

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

can't believe you're still working on it ; keep doing the good work

audiodef · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 1:45 pm Post subject:

Thanks, krinn. I have been spending a lot of time on it lately. I really want this all to get to a point of regular updates/releases.

I'm also thinking of providing a binhost. There are often issues to installing things, particularly with less-maintained or obscure packages. Since I'm planning to use Catalyst, why not? Also, I'm really noticing now how many packages haven't been switched over to virtual/jack, so a binhost for Gentoo Studio makes sense for this reason.

audiodef · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 8:54 pm Post subject:

Done: Gentoo Studio Basic VM.

In progress: Gentoo Studio Complete VM.

Later: Figure out how to get catalyst to produce stage4's for all three versions.

steveL · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:01 am Post subject: Re: Any DE/WM?

audiodef · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:51 pm Post subject:

steveL,

Thanks for the feedback. I've opened a bug in bugs.gentoostudio.org to remind me to investigate this at some point.
_________________
decibel Linux: https://decibellinux.org
Github: https://github.com/Gentoo-Music-and-Audio-Technology
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steveL · Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:46 am Post subject:

Cool :-)

Looking at it, I'd s/realtime/audio/g and keep the memlock on audio; then just have @realtime at 99 for when things mess up. (Most guides just have one or the other, afair.)

audiodef · Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 3:02 am Post subject:

Added a note thusly. Thanks again.

_________________
decibel Linux: https://decibellinux.org
Github: https://github.com/Gentoo-Music-and-Audio-Technology
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/decibellinux
Discord: https://discord.gg/73XV24dNPN

audiodef · Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 5:45 pm Post subject:

Successfully compiled stage4 tarball using Catalyst for Minimal.

Next: Testing Minimal installation.
_________________
decibel Linux: https://decibellinux.org
Github: https://github.com/Gentoo-Music-and-Audio-Technology
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/decibellinux
Discord: https://discord.gg/73XV24dNPN

audiodef · Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 10:21 pm Post subject: Announcement

I think I'm satisfied with my procedure for creating a stage4-minimal tarball. Now I need beta testers. Please reply to this thread if interested.

http://gentoostudio.org/src/minimal/stage4-amd64-latest.tar.bz2 (1.5G)

You will need a blank/unused hard drive with nothing on it that you care about, but otherwise the hardware specs are not important. I'm looking for feedback on the install process.

Follow these steps:

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3131

So far so good.
I rebooted into the new system and I'm rebuilding @world.
I decided to change a few things though. Cloned /usr/portage I already have instead of downloading a new copy. Dropped swap completely. Bumped make and emerge parallelism quite a lot (make -j 2 is a bit low those days). Enabled distcc (so now I keep my fingers crossed that it won't break )
Oh, and it's running in a VM. This almost certainly is a bad idea for real-time stuff, but whatever, I feel like doing everything wrong and I'm gonna enjoy it. Or more seriously: virtual machines are easier, faster, and cheaper to get than actual hardware, and it's gonna be good enough for now.

0joshuaolson1 · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2017 Posts: 28

I finally have a computer I can use to test this. Should have feedback (from a n00b) soonish.

audiodef · Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 2:33 pm Post subject:

audiodef · Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 3:02 pm Post subject:

The stage4 tarball for Gentoo Studio Basic is now ready for beta testing. The installation steps are the same as above. The download URL is: http://gentoostudio.org/src/basic/stage4-amd64-latest.tar.bz2 (1.8 GB)

PLEASE NOTE: The download URL for Minimal has changed to: http://gentoostudio.org/src/minimal/stage4-amd64-latest.tar.bz2

From the not-yet-released Gentoo Studio handbook:

Gentoo Studio Basic

Gentoo Studio Basic builds on Gentoo Studio Minimal to provide a basic array of audio programs and plug-ins. The user installs their choice of desktop environment or window manager and any extra software and plug-ins.

By default, Gentoo Studio Basic allows you to:

Record single or multi-track audio
Record and edit MIDI tracks
Generate drum tracks
Write and print music scores
Connect to streaming servers to stream audio
Playback audio and video
Gentoo Studio Basic is for people who want to choose their own desktop environment and extra audio plug-ins and soft-synths.

Packages:

Gentoo Studio Minimal packages See list above
Ardour High-end digital audio workstation (ardour.org)
Audacity Cross-platform audio editor
FluidSynth Software real-time synth based on Soundfont2 specs
Hydrogen Software stand-alone drum machine
IDJC Streaming audio client
MuseScore WYSIWYG music score typsetter
Qtractor Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer
Rosegarden Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer and notation editor
SMPlayer Linux media player with graphical front-end
VLC Audio/video player and streamer
_________________
decibel Linux: https://decibellinux.org
Github: https://github.com/Gentoo-Music-and-Audio-Technology
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/decibellinux
Discord: https://discord.gg/73XV24dNPN

0joshuaolson1 · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2017 Posts: 28

So I followed the instructions (minimal tarball), but I can't get my new Dell laptop (UEFI) to boot it. I experimented with BIOS settings (no secure boot, order, manual partition option...).

I have other feedback, some not GS-specific but coming from a n00b:

- why ext4 over others? ("mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4")
- when I followed "echo "(selected timezone)" > /etc/timezone", I'm not sure "America/Denver" was the right way to do it ("emerge --config timezone-data" didn't mind)
- I wish I knew about "nano -w" sooner!
- I saw C and POSIX locales were options (but they're the same, so why are they both listed?). What is the unselectable (free form) option?
- useradd doesn't like 0joshuaolson1 (screw command line tools that assume UIDs...)
- the final emerge warned afterwards that something should be removed from dependencies because it's already provided another way?
- Kernel 4.11 is now EOL, and 4.12 is the latest stable. I'm glad the realtime version isn't something like 4.4, though!

Thanks.

audiodef · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:43 pm Post subject: Re: Can't boot UEFI install

0joshuaolson1 · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2017 Posts: 28

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3131

audiodef · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 7:50 pm Post subject:

audiodef · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 7:54 pm Post subject:

0joshuaolson1 · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2017 Posts: 28

Oh yeah, I forgot to ask. Does partition placement affect filesystem performance on a hard drive?

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21607

Partition placement controls where the filesystem is placed on the drive. If some parts of the drive are faster to read/write than others, then that will affect the filesystems. Also, for drives that use 4K sectors, there is often a severe performance penalty for doing misaligned access. If you have such a drive, place your partitions to ensure that the filesystems are properly aligned.