Working your Distros

May 16th, 2007, 11:28 PM
Audio and video production are some of the trickiest things to configure.
To do it optimally on a budget you'll need at least two machines.
1. machine to surf the web for help files, config help, tutorials, audio sample and video downloads, etc. and optionally to run virtual clients for testing.
2. audio workstation with 3 large harddrives, $150 = 500gb.
You'll want separate read and write drives for AV data and system
All samples and snippets are on the read drive.
All mixing/writing to the write drive.
All OS installs on the system drive.
Separate partitions for OS installs, 4gb each (4-8gb depending on distro and apps installed)
Separate/shared home partition for settings retention, contains browser and desktop caches
Separate/shared home/document partition for your important docs/data

Now install each of the following distros (if you like/need any of the features) into a 4gb partition.
jacklab
ubuntustudio
media64
dynebolic
ccrma on fedora
etc.

Each distro will have certain apps/frameworks setup and working. Test all and decide which you want/need.
You will invest a great deal of time getting everything working together, but you can achieve many working sets much faster. If you need ardour2, install the best distro for ardour2, get ardour2 working, then work on getting the minimum you need to work simultaneously with your preferred system.

Audio and video are dedicated tasks.
Your email, calendar, browser, etc. are all on the surfing machine, not the audio machine.
Once your audio machine is set up.
Reboot to do dj mixing for a party
Reboot to do jack, ladspa plugin, wine vst, etc.
Need new ardour version. Copy best distro or re-install to new partition.
Reboot into new install and setup ardour2, never touching your already tuned lowlatency multi-source synced, custom kernel driver standard setup.

Hopefully very soon Xen or KVM will be able to do hardware virtualization with no performance penalty and dedicate hardware to specific virtuals. Then you can do this all in "one" install.

More specifically to the question.
6.06 should be installed to the surf machine, you don't want to mess with this one.
7.04 should be one of the OS's installed to the audio machine, you'll want whatever kernel, config, framework, application improvements as soon as they are tested. They will never be available as fast in a LTS system. That's not what LTS is for, LTS is stability and security before feature creep.
From the ardour website "Ardour's primary developer uses Fedora with Planet CCRMA", so Fedora core 6 should be installed for ardour2 testing, it "should" be the best environment since it is the developers. This is not always the case, the author states he does not compile himself so any distro could do a more complete job of configuration and correct compiling given the preferred frameworks of said distro.

That's why I like to use virtualization (vmware is easiest and free currently) for all my testing.
I can install and run many distros to see what comes out of the box without tying up a whole machine during installs/reboots. Most apps will work fine on virtuals for tutorial work with web access for help and data sources. On the real audio station you do not want a browser running. All browsers (konquerer, firefox, opera,) will tax the system heavily, too much memory, too many file writes in cache, too much cpu overhead.


Here is my general multiboot setups:
Surf/Private system - two os's, current and recovery, recovery used for upgrade installs.

Audio/Video/CNC system -
mythtv - for guest usage, watch tv, videos, listen to music, surf the web, play games playable in linux, no access to anything critical
ubuntuEMC - for cnc project use
coding - for programming, compilers, IDE's, web surfing, databases, web servers, etc.
print production - scanning, printing and desktop publishing, fonts, ICC, hugin, nips, qcad, scribus, openoffice
elearning - education linux system for client projects
audio production - jack,ladspa, vst, alsa, midi, etc.
video production - kino, cinelerra, jahshaka, etc.
Windows XP- I have to have it for some client testing and roland CNC.
Client OS's - specific installs for each client I support.
Virtual manager - runs all others as virtual clients. This is where I spend most of my time. i'm writing this from a Ubuntu 7.04 virtual client. If I am hacked, install something broken, break my configuration, hopefully only the virtual will be compremised.

When I do production CNC, audio or video work I need to reboot into a specific realtime or low-latency kernel depending on the project to have a consistent stable platform to do constructive work upon. I wouldn't think of wasting any time trying to get EMC cnc components working with jacklab (audio) or dynebolic(video). No ROI there.

As far as waiting for the 64bit versions. Don't. They won't be there soon.
CCRMA and studio64 have had 64bit versions for awhile now and still don't have all the bugs worked out. 32bit versions will be more stable and tested than 64bit versions for another year or two unless the primary developer on the project runs on a 64bit machine.

These suggestions are given with a focus on less wasted time, less effort in configuration, faster access to new upgrades.

Virtual or multiboot credo - never break a working system, get a new virtual/multiboot working with the new app, then try and install into a copy of the working system, at all times (virtual or reboot) have the original system available for productive use.