Gentoo Studio/decibel Linux: Gentoo-based pro-audio OS

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audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Tue Jul 25, 2023 8:23 pm

After some testing, I've changed the file for the installer. It's now install_dblinux.sh.

https://decibellinux.org/?page_id=2

Also, the technical details page describing how decibel Linux is built has been updated: https://decibellinux.org/?page_id=174

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Jul 29, 2023 7:27 pm

Currently running a test build that will build binary packages and use a binhost. What I'm hoping this will do is make updates faster and avoid compile failures. As few as they are for stable packages, it happens and it's annoying. However, I am setting things up so that when a user updates decibel Linux, if any package dependencies or USE flags have changed (because the user changed something to fit their needs), the package will be built from source. Otherwise those new dependencies or USE flags won't be used. But I think overall it will be an improvement to updating installed systems.

It's possible a user might update their system before I've updated the binhost, which means a package update with no package on the binhost will be compiled from source. But the goal is to eventually have binhost updates and install tarball builds automated on a regular basis. Once that's in place, it's more likely than not that packages will be updated from the binhost. (Again, barring changes made by the user that effects a binhost package.)

System packages might be included later, but for now, the binhost will cover only the world set - packages intentionally installed for decibel Linux.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Thu Aug 03, 2023 12:39 am

There's now a git repo containing the code that is used to build decibel Linux.

https://github.com/Gentoo-Music-and-Audio-Technology/stagebuilder

szatox · Post by **szatox** » Sat Aug 12, 2023 3:12 pm

Slightly OT, but here we go... I think I've been (mostly silently) watching you running this project for over a decade by now, and looking at your work and at my own projects, and I gotta say I'm actually a bit jealous of your grit.
So I wonder: how do you manage to keep going? Is there some trick I can steal from you and apply to things on my own todo lists?

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sun Aug 13, 2023 7:39 pm

Szatox,

I think Gentoo is awesome. I love music, recording and sound engineering. Frustration with Windows many years ago put me on the path to alternatives. I tried Ubuntu Studio once, but on the same computer, using Gentoo + tweaks felt more responsive and efficient. I'm really into music production, and no other OS has ever been as satisfactory for me as the one I put together myself. That's it - my whole motivation.

Turning it into something others can download and use is just a way for me to share this combined love of Gentoo and recording engineering.

Feel free to ask for advice on your own related projects. I may not have all the answers, but it's fun to talk about.

bent fender · Post by **bent fender** » Sun Sep 17, 2023 6:18 pm

audiodef wrote:
Welcome to the FGO thread for decibel Linux, a Gentoo Linux-based OS for pro-audio applications. Intended users are:

Musicians recording their own material

Mix engineers

Mastering engineers

Computer music composers

And any other users who need an OS for audio applications.

Please post in this thread if you have any questions, suggestions or need help with anything.

There are also these venues for interaction and support:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/decibellinux
Discord: https://discord.gg/73XV24dNPN
IRC: #decibellinux on Libera

I'm TOTALLY green in Gentooland but I am using a couple of 'studio' distros. What I do doesn't really require real-time and is mostly (in usual loading order)

qjackctl
qsynth
yoshimi
hydrogen
rosegarden
zyn-dssi

in other sessions
qjackctl
audacity
kdenlive

Sans-prejudice my experience with studio distros has been a letdown seeing that I have just as many issues with consistent all around operabilty as with mainline battle tanks, Suse being by far the best (too bad they use systemd).

What I think is just as good (an idea) is a studio package pattern (stage in gentooese?) that installs and updates ALL the music apps as a maintained cohesive superpackage. Now that I have found out about Gentoo-Studio or Decibel-Linux I am sure to try it. Maybe for the time being I should just contine trying to get Gentoo up and running with XFCE and/or KDE before crawling into even deeper trouble

(I DL'd it for the firs time just last night)

Your advice is of course both welcome and garanteed to be valuable.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Sep 17, 2023 6:54 pm

bent fender,

Gentoo is not a distro like you are used to. Its a toolkit you use to design and install bent fender linux.
Gentoo is the portage package manager and the ::gentoo repo. Everything else is $UPSTREAM.
audiodef used the toolkit to create decibel Linux.

My advice is to continue with your install. You will get to lean how to use the design controls that binary distro cannot provide.
They must do the design for you,

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Mon Sep 18, 2023 3:35 pm

I can't improve on what Neddy said. Feel free to come back with questions, suggestions or comments. There are other ways to get in touch in my sig.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Sep 30, 2023 9:21 pm

I recently bought a new laptop that came with Windows 11. So while I was at it, I updated the manual install instructions to include dual-booting with Windows 11.

https://decibellinux.org/?page_id=2

bent fender · Post by **bent fender** » Sat Sep 30, 2023 11:05 pm

audiodef wrote:I can't improve on what Neddy said. Feel free to come back with questions, suggestions or comments. There are other ways to get in touch in my sig.

2nd (and shorter) attempt, the previous one crashed FF after 20 minutes of composition.

The primary reason I started tinkering with several distros was that most were failing with one app or another during my music sessions. If anyone then I'm sure YOU know how all the music apps you use in a session 'have' to work, the weakest link breaks the chain! I got royally irritated by regularly having to fix the computer for an hour and being too tired by the time I would pick up my guitar. So now with 7 distros tweaked to a high degree of app-wise resemblance, if the one I'm using coughs I immediately boot another and OSes have in fact become plugins for my apps

I'm downloading Decibel-Linux right now, but noticed on the page that EFI is a requirement:

"Note that you need an EFI system for the installer..."

But I neither do nor will have EFI on my machine. I would however liberate one of many partitions for it (and continue using my goto Leap-15.5 to have grub deploy boot code to the disk root, as I do with all other distros).

Also, if I understand correctly then Decibel-Linux can/does once installed become my gentoo system for all intent and purpose (I am having issues with installing Gentoo (but that's another thread).

Thanks

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Oct 01, 2023 12:02 pm

bent fender,

You will need to complete the install by hand.
The grub-install will fail as it vill try to update the efivars and you won,t have any.
Hopefully, that's the very last step. decibel-Linux should be installed by then.

You should only have one bootloader and a single shared /boot for all your distros.
Update that to add decibel-Linux to your collection.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Mon Oct 02, 2023 1:37 pm

bent fender,

Legacy boot options are actually supported. The installer doesn't handle them, though. You can either follow the manual install instructions, or I'm guessing you could probably use the installer and then fix the boot loader as Neddy suggested. I have a legacy boot machine that I installed a recent version of decibel Linux on.

Keep in mind that the installer wipes the drive you choose. If that's not an option for you, you'll need to use the manual install instructions.

Let me know how it goes.

Dominique_71 · Post by **Dominique_71** » Sun Oct 08, 2023 2:02 pm

Hi all,

I done a cleanup of the old and historical proaudio overlay on TuxFamily and I pushed the result on github: https://github.com/domichel/proaudio-gentoo

From it, you can also find an attic with working ebuilds that I don't want to maintain anymore.

Dominique_71 · Post by **Dominique_71** » Sun Oct 08, 2023 2:12 pm

EDIT: For the jamin-presets ebuild in the new overlay and jamin, see https://bugs.gentoo.org/914927 ENDEDIT

But anyway, we have the Calf-Analyzer, Calf-Equalizer 5 Band, Calf-Exciter, Calf-Multiband Compressor, Calf-Multiband Limiter and Calf-Stereo Tools from media-plugins/calf for mastering which are even better than jamin.

Dominique_71 · Post by **Dominique_71** » Sun Oct 08, 2023 2:52 pm

As I am at it, I never understood why the other audio overlays want to block all lash related ebuild from the main tree, when a solution existed from years into the old tuxfamily overlay. I know this is a terrible hack, but until it get solved into the right place, the main tree, I see not other simple solution.

To resume, we have media-sound/lash and several other software that depend on it into the main tree. The audio overlays are providing media-sound/ladish and, at the exception of proaudio-gentoo, are blocking media-sound/lash, which block lash AND all the lash dependent ebuilds of the main tree.

To put a virtual/lash in the overlays will change nothing, that because the main tree depend on media-sound/lash and nothing else.

The solution into proaudio-overlay is to provide a fake media-sound/lash ebuild that install nothing, but only depend on media-sound/ladish. That way, the main tree is happy, all its software I try are compiling and working fine with ladish, and that from years. Also, we don't need to block media-sound/lash in the overlays and all their lash/ladish ebuilds will work fine with ladish.

Dominique_71 · Post by **Dominique_71** » Thu Oct 12, 2023 3:36 pm

Anyway, proaudio-gentoo was accepted into eselect:

Code: Select all

eselect repositoy enable proaudio-gentoo

I also revised its profile, desktop/proaudio, by updating it to the current standards and removing the intrusive system related USE flags. All it is doing now is to depend on the 17.1 (for amd64, 17.0 for x86) desktop gentoo profile, and it only add a few audio related USE flags. The only '-' flag is '-pulseaudio', so it may be necessary to add it into make.conf if You want pulse. It is no pipewire flag, so it will not conflict with your choice of the jack implementation (see virtual/jack).

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 7:58 pm

Very nice! -pulseaudio is also set for decibel Linux, along with -xscreensaver.

Dominique_71 wrote:Anyway, proaudio-gentoo was accepted into eselect:
Code: Select all
eselect repositoy enable proaudio-gentoo
I also revised its profile, desktop/proaudio, by updating it to the current standards and removing the intrusive system related USE flags. All it is doing now is to depend on the 17.1 (for amd64, 17.0 for x86) desktop gentoo profile, and it only add a few audio related USE flags. The only '-' flag is '-pulseaudio', so it may be necessary to add it into make.conf if You want pulse. It is no pipewire flag, so it will not conflict with your choice of the jack implementation (see virtual/jack).

Dominique_71 · Post by **Dominique_71** » Sat Oct 28, 2023 9:13 pm

audiodef wrote:Very nice! -pulseaudio is also set for decibel Linux, along with -xscreensaver.

Thanks. When I get some time, I also work on fvwm-crystal, and xscreensaver is one of its optional dependencies. When xscreensaver is installed and running, it is 2 ways to disable it completely: 1) From the preference menu of fvwm-crystal, 2) from xcreensaver's preference menu.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Mon Feb 19, 2024 4:32 pm

I used fvwm-crystal years ago. It's nice. I'm sure it's come a ways since I last saw it.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Wed Feb 21, 2024 5:07 pm

MSI Pulse laptop users of decibel Linux might want to take note of this post: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1167440-highlight-.html

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Wed Feb 21, 2024 5:16 pm

Looking to use gentoo-sources AND the RT patch? Follow these steps: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8817020.html#8817020

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sun Jun 23, 2024 5:07 pm

Decibel Linux now has a Patreon account. Feel free to drop by.

https://www.patreon.com/DecibelLinux

On the Patreon site, I mention some major changes I'm currently at work on.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sun Jun 23, 2024 11:50 pm

Site update: https://decibellinux.org/?p=750

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Thu Jun 27, 2024 11:30 pm

Adding a feature to auto-find the latest match between the realtime kernel project and gentoo-sources.

Read about it here.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Jul 27, 2024 12:40 am

An update on stagebuilder: Now working.

Gentoo Studio/decibel Linux: Gentoo-based pro-audio OS

Re: Gentoo Studio/decibel Linux: Gentoo-based pro-audio OS