Re: [LAU] Graduating from Ubuntu Studio

To clarify what I mentioned earlier, and respond to some of the posts
since then:

No matter how much ram you have, if you have gnome or kde running,
your CPU will be spending more time filling the cache, because of the
large size of the constituent applications, and will context switch
more often, because of the large number of services and interactive
task-bar doohickeys, etc.

This is why I suggested creating a custom real-time audio run level,
where even cron would be shut off, not to mention networkmanager etc.
I would even recommend shutting down all of your network connections
if you are not doing networked audio. If you ever have to use a
command line while doing audio, I recommend temporarily using dash
instead of bash or zsh. This may be overkill, but if you are anything
like me, you will never run out of things you could synthesize or
process if only you had a few more spare CPU cycles and a few more
megs of unused RAM. The less ram active apps are using, the more time
can be spent processing audio instead of filling the cache. So after
tuning your kernel and jack, and only using jack apps (good point
Hartmut, I had taken that part for granted), the fewer apps, running
as seldom as possible, and using as little RAM each as you can get
away with, will make a huge difference.

On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 4:19 AM, Hartmut Noack <zettberlin@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
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> Christian Delahousse schrieb:
>> Hey Guys,
>
>> So, I think I'm at the level where I can benefit from a stream lined, more
>> "user-unfriendly" system.
>
> Not in the sense, you (and many others) think it can. A different distro
> is just a differnt distro - if it is "user unfriendly" or not doeas not
> matter. Very "fat" distros like Suse can work just great for audio and
> very "lean" like Dynebolic can fail you totally and vice versa.
>
> It is 3 things that matter:
>
> 1.) a state of the art rt-kernel and fitting modules for your hardware
> 2.) state of the art audio software all based on jack
> 3.) properly setup and integration of 1.) and 2.)
>
>
> integration also means, that desktop comfort software (like pulseaudio,
> network-managing applets etc) steps back if audio needs to have its way.
>
> Abandon GNOME, KDE you name it - it will not help anyway if
> networkmanager still runs in background.
>
> Simply put: you can install whatever you like and have hundreds of
> packages in your system you do not really need and still have a good
> lean audio-session running for software that is good and well configured
> runs good in any environment and software that you do not start, does
> not have any influence on this.
> So much for the theory,
>
>> Firstly, do you guys think that a move away from Ubuntu Studio would be
>> beneficial?
>> Secondly, what would you guys suggest as a good alternative?
>
>
> in my experience it is like this:
> Ubuntustudio does work OK on my 2 boxes and the laptop but for real
> audio-work I use 64Studio. Why?
> Because 64Studio works snappier and more stable running with KDE then
> Ubuntustudio with Fluxbox. If I go to the limits like recording 4 new
> tracks with 96KHz via FireWire in a session with 8 tracks running in
> Ardour, 64Studio is the only recent distro that does such a job for 6-7
> h sessions with musicians without making me look like the idiot-geek
> sucker, that needs to restart his computer 3 times/h.
>
> Suse11 is slightly better then Ubuntustudio but has other flaws and is
> still not as rock-solid as 64Studio. JAD1.0 is silghtly better than
> 64studio in terms of performance but has no 64bit-flavour (yes, it
> matters.) and is not the same as stable.
>
> So in short: try to eliminate services in Ubuntustudio and look, if it
> works for you or try 64Studio.
>
>
>> I'll be installing it on a AMD64 equipped laptop. I want the focus to be on
>> realtime stuff but I might run a few WINE apps and maybe VSTs.
>
> If you want to run WINE-Stuff, I doubt, that you will get any kind of
> measurable advantage by switching to a "leaner" environment. WINE ist
> *definately NOT* build to be lean. So if you run a session with Ardour
> having a dozen of LADSPA-plugins running and add just one VST you can
> easily have your systemload doubled.
>
> It is slightely different with JOST however...
>
> good luck ;-)
>
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Received on Mon Jun 16 00:15:05 2008