casey_rice wrote:you think i haven't used linux for audio? it sucks so bad i use pro tools instead! think about that! yes i know OSX is [sort of] unix, ok?

Relax a bit. I wasn't the one saying you should use linux instead of whatever for audio.

OS X is based on FreeBSD which is more than "sort of" Unix.

I've got no bone to pick with you, yet you're the one talking nonsense about Linux being a hobby OS.

casey_rice wrote:and by the way!

it doesnt even count for excuses if you have 'BODY BY LINUX' ironed on in velour letters on your XXXL t-shirt.

whatever, now you're being a prick.

casey_rice wrote:and by the way!

it doesnt even count for excuses if you have 'BODY BY LINUX' ironed on in velour letters on your XXXL t-shirt.

I so want one of those now.

I am actually of the opinion that if protools was not the de facto standard that it is now it would be a niche system for demo studios and ultra cheap recordings. A professional grade studio running protools is most often using it in place of a tape recorder, by which I mean no one is going to shell out the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a good board and selection of effects and then mix in the computer and process with plugins. For this application a linux box with an RME interface and whatever quality converters you want to use is an excellent solution. Windows can probably be written off at this level for performance and stability issues, the mac/protools system has a different set of problems relating to vendor lock-in issues. An open source system does not lock your data in to a format from which you will not be able to recover it down the road. In the early 1970s my father did a PhD in aerospace engineering, part of his research involved a fairly complicated optimization problem which he implemented in FORTRAN. The dialect is more or less standards compliant Fortran 77, with some minor adjustments I could run that program on the machine I am typing this from and get you the same results(that is after I transcribed the punch cards). Today that work would most likely be done using a closed source system such as MATLAB or Mathematica and be useless 30 years from now.
I actually record at studios run by people who have invested in quality equipment in order to capture the sound of a band, but for freaked out electronics I think linux wins again. 99% of the purely computer generated music being made today is by the same type of person who never got past the presets on a DX7 in 1985. If you really want to sculpt sound at a low level and create something that has not been heard before linux is a much more pleasant environment to work in than the commercial alternatives. Doing something interesting with a computer means programming and linux is first and foremost a programmers OS. The most powerful and flexible software based synth/processer is a good C compiler.

busbus wrote:OS X is based on FreeBSD which is more than "sort of" Unix.

Actually, it's based on NeXTSTEP, which was a variant of UNIX native to NeXT computers.

NeXT was the company Steve Jobs founded after he was kicked out of Apple in the mid '80s. NeXT machines were extremely high-end workstations (they cost upwards of $10,000 apiece) developed for and marketed towards universities, research institutes and large tech companies.

The NeXTSTEP filesystem was based on BSD UNIX, but its kernel was different. NeXTSTEP used the Mach microkernel, a specially-designed, smaller and lighter replacement kernel for BSD UNIX. That microkernel architecture is now at the heart of OS X.

Linus Torvalds also based his Linux kernel on a microkernel design, a hobbyist's open-source OS called MINIX. So Mac OS X and Linux actually do have a lot in common.

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html

and

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html

Maybe I should have said built with Nextstep based on BSD? Yep, they are all related some how.

That was a good post on the last page, Colonel Panic. I agree with all of it except this one statement:

Colonel Panic wrote:That means that under Linux, your machine will run several times faster than it ever did with Windows.

That depends on what desktop environment you use. Xfce/Fluxbox/IceWM are definitely faster, Gnome might be a bit better with the extra crap shut off, but KDE is ridiculously slow, and will bog down most older systems. I tried installing SLED 10 awhile back on my wife's laptop and it took about 5 minutes to boot! And this is the Gnome default version!

I'm comparing to XP of course, b/c I haven't even tried (and have no intention of trying) Vista.

Colonel Panic wrote:

busbus wrote:OS X is based on FreeBSD which is more than "sort of" Unix.

Actually, it's based on NeXTSTEP, which was a variant of UNIX native to NeXT computers.

NeXT was the company Steve Jobs founded after he was kicked out of Apple in the mid '80s. NeXT machines were extremely high-end workstations (they cost upwards of $10,000 apiece) developed for and marketed towards universities, research institutes and large tech companies.

The NeXTSTEP filesystem was based on BSD UNIX, but its kernel was different. NeXTSTEP used the Mach microkernel, a specially-designed, smaller and lighter replacement kernel for BSD UNIX. That microkernel architecture is now at the heart of OS X.

Linus Torvalds also based his Linux kernel on a microkernel design, a hobbyist's open-source OS called MINIX. So Mac OS X and Linux actually do have a lot in common.

Linux is a monolithic kernel, as was(is?) minix. The GNU folks have been off and on trying to implement a microkernel replacement for linux called the HURD but that isn't going anywhere fast and is the butt of many a joke at this point.
Whether a microkernel is the best approach is still debatable, it is a more elegant solution and probably more easily extended and ported to new architectures. The downside is performance. A microkernel moves a lot of work out of kernel-space and in to user-space, stuff like device drivers and even process scheduling has several extra layers of abstraction built in. For doing hard real time work a microkernel may or may not be what you want. As computers become more powerful they could become ubiquitous, but people have saying that since at least the early 90's and it hasn't happened yet.

I'm moving to Ubuntu this week. I was reluctant, due to the lack of the kind of plug-in I like to use (a couple that 'emulate analog distortions'...), but I'm taking it as a cue to improve my situation with outboard processing and real preamps/microphones. For the most part, I plan on using the computer as a tape deck/editor.

To me, digital audio is digital audio. Last I looked, Pro Tools and Tracktion were the only suites that rendered audio in 64bit. I'm a little fuzzy on that stat, but I'll be running my system in 64 bit architecture, which is potentially exciting. Of course, I won't really know if it will matter much until I run a few tests.

Just researching the OS switch and reading up on JACK has taught me more about how computers function in general than I would ever have imagined. This, plus my political bend, has me enthused about the entire enterprise...

I've been rockin Ubuntu at home for months now after my wife tanked our XP machine. I love it. More importantly, even my kid likes it.

Ipod? Sure. Scanners? Better drivers and software than anything I ever used under Windows. Sound card? Video? Works great.


Only problem so far has been no support for the older D-link wireless card. No biggie. (There's still no Vista drivers for it either)


I tried Vista when it was in beta and it's a fvcking stinky wet dog.

Ubuntu has given me everything I need and then some. There are a few quirks here and there but it's not because Ubuntu doesn't support one thing or another - it's usually the other way around. Certain media sites won't support any browsers with Linux, certain manufacturers don't have drivers, etc.

But it's a much different ball game then a few years ago (I tried Mandrake at arounf 8.0 and 9.0 - good but not great).