On the heels of AV Linux 3.0, version 3.0R1 (R1=Revision 1) has been released. I, better than anyone perhaps realize the inconvenience of a new version so quickly, it is my hope that this is the best move in the long run to provide a stable base that has a broader possible range of installation and can be better maintained with updated packages over the course of a longer “shelf life”. This fixes many of the installation issues created by 3.0 as well as streamlining and drastically reducing the ISO size down to just over a Gigabyte. My sincere thanks to the AV Linux users who were guinea pigs and helped to test and provide feedback on 3.0R1 before it’s release. Due to the large volume of updates and improvements a 3.0R1 final ISO has been created to replace the 3.0R1 “testing” ISO. Thanks as always to the Debian pkg-multimedia team for their continuing stellar work. Here are the changes, sometimes we have to take a step back to move ahead!
AV Linux 3.0R1 Changes:
Removed all locales except CA, US and GB to conserve ISO space, AV Linux and Remastersys are English only anyway. Users can still change the keyboard layout for different countries in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Removed many peripheral apps any of which are a Synaptic click away to install, AV Linux now focuses on a multimedia-centred mature core of applications.
Fixed and improved nVidia and Synaptics Touchpad detection issues by rolling back to Xorg 7.3, this also simplifies changing keyboard layouts. Updating to Xorg 7.4 can be done after installing by unpinning the Xorg and related packages in Synaptic and updating if you feel the need to run Xorg 7.4 (not really necessary in most cases).
Fixed UUID issues with fstab by rolling back hal and consolekit, Hey Debian…does hal REALLY need to be updated 7 times a day?! I think not.
Fixed slow booting by rolling back to udev 141, AV Boots like lightning now! Again, Debian…can’t things that work in Linux just be left alone for a while?!
Fixed issues with Unetbootin, AV Linux runs from USB keys again. Persistent storage is not an easy option with Debian, it doesn’t use casper-rw like Ubuntu.
Fixed Openbox and obconf issues, obconf now runs and saves it’s config properly.
Updated to LXDE 0.5.0, lxpanel now handles GTK themes much better and there are many more right-click options throughout LXDE
Added Rui Nuno Capela’s rtirq script at boot time (works with -rt Kernel only)
Updated FFADO to the 2.0 Stable release
Updated Ardour to Debian GIT 2.8.4-3 source with LV2 support
Updated Rosegarden to 10.02 Beta - report bugs to the Rosegarden developers mailing list
Updated Bristol to 0.40.7
Updated Fluidsynth to 1.1.1 it now works with Qsynth 0.3.4
PLEASE NOTE:
There are changes to the AV Linux Website as well, a new “Packages” page clarifies where to get AV Linux Debs and Kernels, access it by clicking the “Packages” button from the home page. PLEASE READ THE WEBSITE INFO CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING!
I plan to support AV Linux 3.0R1 with Rosegarden’s stable Thorn release, Ardour 3 as soon as source becomes available in Debian GIT and keep pace with the major developments in Linux Multimedia. Please remember AV Linux has and always will come pre-loaded with the necessary development libraries to build most of the included apps from source so if you are handy with a compiler you can enjoy new apps as soon as they are available.
HELP NEEDED!
Help is needed from experienced Linux users on the AV Linux forum, My Linux knowledge is specific to Multimedia Distro and Kernel creation but is very general in other areas, Help is needed for other important areas like networking and other core Linux problems like hard drive issues etc etc. Other than donations technical support assistance is the most needed attribute at the present time. If you are a new user please join the AV Linux forum here: http://geekconnection.org/remastersys/forums/index.php#7
DONATIONS NEEDED!
The AV Linux 3.0 ISO was accessed in excess of 18000 times which resulted in 3 donations, I have no choice but to interpret this as meaning that AV Linux is really not being taken seriously as a Multimedia OS. I’ve said before, I don’t nag or give ultimatums…however AV Linux simply WILL NOT and CAN NOT continue without donations. I am spending at least 20+ hours a week on it’s maintenance and development on top of a family, a full time job, and a part-time job. I don’t have Canonical or some other benefactor underwriting expenses or a development team assisting me, at the current funding level there cannot be another release after 3.0R1, this is not a threat it is simply an economic fact.
@Gmaq: Great stuff - I’ll download it and take it for a test drive… And I completely agree about donations - EVERYBODY - PLEASE DONATE TO PROJECTS LIKE THIS - This is really important, as you say 20+ hours a week is a lot of time to spend (At the moment just developing my software means I spend around 12 hours a day working full-time on it in one way or another and for about a year prior to any of it being released I was working 8 hours a day in my ‘day job’ and then doing around 4 hours every evening (weekends too) testing and developing ideas - the amount of work required for these projects is substantial and it needs to be rewarded in some sense. I often think if everyone who downloaded these things gave a pound (or a dollar) these things could be entirely self supporting yet the cost to the user would be minimal (come on - surely if you can afford a PC you can afford 1 dollar!)
Keep up the good work.
I had been using AVLinux for a little while, but, when Mixbus came out… well, honestly, I got tired of waiting for a Linux version of Mixbus, and bought a couple of used Power Mac G4’s, so I could run Mixbus (on a legitimate Mac…rather than a ‘hac’). And Mixbus stresses the G4’s pretty good; a dual 1.42 works ok, though.
Once Mixbus is available on Linux, I may go back to AVLinux, at least for some things, and at that point I would donate, similar to the subscription I’m doing with Ardour now, even though I’m using Mixbus rather than vanilla Ardour.
Even if I don’t go back to AVLinux, once I get a little income from this CD project I plan to donate a portion of the proceeds, because I did do a little bit of the tracking on vanilla Ardour on AVLinux. The largest portion of the tracking was done on vanilla Ardour on my (then F11) box, but when I updated the video drivers, the IRQ’s from the video card and the Delta 1010LT conflicted, and I wasn’t successful at getting them non-interfering (the result was audible glitches in the audio due to ALSA (not JACK) xruns; being that this is a laptop with a docking station that has a PCI card slot, trying a different slot isn’t an option…), so the AVLinux box with the Tascam US-428 pulled a few of the tracks…
Hi GMaq,
I’ll definitely try this new revised version. I’ve always thought AVlinux is the best multimedia distro out there, but - if you remember - I encountered lots of problems with 3.0 which hopefully have been fixed now. I’ll be more than pleased to give donations both to this project and to Ardour but as I’ve always had some problem of stability or another I was never fully satisfied and actually couldn’t fulfill my recording tasks… Unfortunately I think that’s what gets people disappointed. Linux looks so promising in the home recording field but often falls short of expectations (I think I read some frustrated posts of yours on this board too). Maybe that’s not a justification not to contribute, you guys put a lot of work and energy anyway… well I want to believe this release will be the last I install on my computer!
@Saint Jules: Have you tried Ubuntu Karmic with the linux-rt kernel? It is incredibly stable, and you have the support of millions of users (via the forum), and it’s being developed by a well-funded corporation. Also, it’s based on debian (just like AV Linux). I currently use the ubuntu-server with the rt kernel, fluxbox as a window manager (though gnome works just fine, and you could use LXDE like AVLinux does), and some multimedia packages (including the ArdourPro package I’ve posted elsewhwere on this forum). While I haven’t used AVLInux, I am currently developing my own distro, and it’s easy to see how hard it is to support a project of this nature. Especially when one man is supporting 18,000 users (most of whom will not submit bug reports, I assume). If you’ve used Ubuntu for a while (or any other MAJOR distro for that matter), maybe the time to switch to a multimedia-focused distro like AVLinux would be after you have some experience with Linux audio in general.
@GMaq: Power users are sorely in need of a stable multimedia-specific distro like yours. Keep up the great work! I’m about to download and test in a VM.
Yes, I’ve been an Ubuntu user for quite some time now and recently I added some “Ubuntu Studio” customization to it. I agree with you, it looks stable so far. The only thing is I wanted a separate distro for my multimedia experiments and I was pretty impressed by the amount of features which AVlinux offers out of the box, that’s all. Anyway I don’t think getting support is an issue here: if you need distro-related help you just look for it in Debian forums, if you need help with Ardour you do the same here, etc.
linuxDSP has captured it perfectly, we are all in this together…no Distros without applications, no applications without a Distro framework. nothing to be achieved without end-users. Unless “Free” comes to mean “free to choose what you pay” FLOSS is doomed. I don’t hold myself up as Mother Theresa in all this either, I financially support about 5 projects included in AV Linux (including Ardour), The ones I don’t support hopefully will benefit from the exposure to a new or wider audience. I understand the concerns about paying money to something in development that may not work or disappear, that is why I don’t expect anyone to pay a penny until they have AV Linux on their desktop and have verified that it does what they want. After that however I have great difficulty in understanding why all these phenomenal applications handed to someone and wrapped up in a bow isn’t worth a few dollars, either to the developer of your favourite apps or the distributor who brought them to you? The law of reciprocity doesn’t cease to exist just because of some inane concept of FLOSS. Unless there is some sort of balance achieved between providers and end users I can’t comprehend how the so called “FLOSS” movement can continue indefintely in it’s current state.
Where I come from anyone who would wait on folks hand and foot for 20+ hours a week out of pocket could be one of two things…a retiree volunteer or a sucker…I’m neither!
RE: Ubuntu, I am truly glad to see thay have found their legs again, I don’t look at any of the other Multimedia Distro’s in a competitive way at all, they are all inspiring and bring something of value to the table, The distro to use is the one that helps you best achieve your creative goals. AV Linux was born out of a Multimedia Distro drought, at the time Ubuntu Studio was disabled by the -rt Kernel Issues stemming from Kernel 2.6.26 - 2.6.28, JAD was fading away from developer fatigue (a common symptom of all-work-no-pay). 64 Studio’s then Etch base was too old for newer hardware and MusiX was getting dated as well. It’s all ebb and flow and there will always be someone on top of their game and somebody screwing up.
Oh, Oh, I feel a rant coming on…
What I find most annoying about Linux in general is the constant fiddling (I’m tempted to use another f-word here) with the core libraries, udev, hal, libc6, xorg should be updated bi-annually at most. Grub 2 and ext 4 are the new irritants, Is ext 3 so bad? it’s so superior to ntfs already! The biggest hurdle is that in the anti-Microsoft ethos a prime rule of competition has been soundly ignored: Take your competitions best attribute and do it better. “Windows XP times 1000” is what “organized” Linux should be striving for, instead of a “Windows-7-of-the week”. Seriously I was poking around in my “System32” Windows XP folder the other day and there are dlls in there from 2002! Yes, Yes Microsoft has volumes to criticize and economics to despise, but the most productive model to make Linux succeed is to emulate the sheer shelf life and stability of the competitions best offering to date and for some curious reason the prevailing trend is to do the polar opposite?!??
I only spew this bile because I love Linux…but sometimes it can really break your heart (figuratively) I really do have a life!
Im testing the live version... so far so good, I already see significant improvements, good job GMaq! I hope it won-t break once installed : ) I wanted to check the VST Ambience plugin but I dont seem to be able to connect it rightly… Maybe I`m using the wrong routing…Any suggestion?
It takes a several seconds to load the first time because FST calls Wine which has to set up it’s config and write it’s folder etc into RAM before the plugin will launch. I included it mostly as an example so user’s can go from there and add their VST dlls to the existing /usr/local/lib/vst folder and by simply modifying the existing Ambience launcher in /usr/share/applications have launchers for all their VST’s neatly contained in their own menu.
@ linuxDSP
hehe good joke…like the best jokes all the more funny because it’s so true!
I’m ten minutes into playing around and already this is looking like one great distribution.
Previously, I had a standard Ubuntu with rt kernel. I’ve never been convinced about the other audio distributions.
I’ll get back about how this goes but it looks to me like GMag deserves a lot more donations. He will most likely be getting one from me.
If this distribution is as good as it looks to me (so far) then the lack of donations is pathetic but lets give this time. I understand people need to test everything and also have faith that this distribution will continue. It certainly won’t if nobody donates.
Amen to that!
I did give my however little donation, but I’m going to give more. AV Linux rocks! It still has some minor glitches here and there (I’ll report them on the AV forum) but absolutely nothing that gets in the way of recording and mixing your music almost flawlessly.
I just donated a small amount as well until I work though some issues but I’m sure I can solve it all. Then I’ll donate more. If only a small percentage of people just donated a little to start with then I’m sure there would enough donations to at least keep this going.
I had an Echo Layla 3G card attached to my Linux system but I’ve never been that satisfied with it’s latency performance. I don’t think the Linux drivers are particularly good. This is becoming clearer now because even with absolutely no xruns, the Layla gives problems. Now I’ve attached an Echo Audiofire. There have been a few problem with the Firewire and there still are but the Audiofire is working and appears to be performing very well. This is the first time I’ve tried running a Firewire interface on Linux.
There are other problems but I won’t go on forums until I’m further ahead with exactly what the issues are. There are also a few very minor glitches here and there that need investigating.
Overall though, this is the only dedicated audio distribution that I am keen on using. It looks to me like this is going in the right direction. Lets hope this keeps up.
Firstly a heartfelt thanks for your support of AV Linux, it truly does make a difference and I really appreciate it.
Please don’t be shy about joining up at the AV Linux forum and letting be know about glitches or anything else, at the Debian Unstable/Testing level there will always be a few “flies in the ointment” but I can’t fix what I don’t know about.
OK AV linux is working great. Honestly, this is much faster than an other OS I have tried on my ageing Dell Inspireon 8200 (and I have tried Windows 200, XP, kubuntu 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, and 9.10, as well as fedora, mandrava and other assorted distros). Also, this is the first linux OS I have used on this ancient lappie that can reliably get firewire audio working with such little hassle (it now has a better latency when running an FP10 than my friend can achieve with his macbook pro)! And, did I mention this os is STABLE (especially for being debian testing)?!? Overall this has been great, but I am having a problem getting broadcom STA working and loading at startup… If anyone could help, it would be greatly appreciated. All in all, AVlinux gave my secondary, really OLD lappie a new lease on life (as I was thinking of getting rid of it for a while, since it was never fast enough to be useful). Thanks for all the great work gmaq!
I tried to register at the Remastersys forum but some problem occurred. I didn’t get a mail and I can’t resend a mail. When I do this it say’s an error occurred.
I don’t want to post stuff here that is not totally Ardour related but I have one question, if anyone knows an answer. My computer assigns the same IRQ to Firewire, my Firewire audio interface, My hard drive and LAN. This can’t be very good, surely? I can prioritize certain IRQs but is it possible to prioritize individual devices and surely I need to get my hard drive on a different IRQ. Not sure how to achieve that. I can’t do it from bios.
Just to add here. I have one hard drive with a partition for audio. I will have another separate hard drive eventually but I’m just testing. What kind of performance do you get if you use a USB or Firewire drive for audio?
Thats a weird issue with the forum, it’s run by fragadelic the Remastersys dev and he kindly has given me a forum there. You would be best to contact him at the email shown on the “about” tab of the Remastersys Control Panel in AV Linux. Tell him I asked you to contact him and he should be able to help you from there.
As far as the external USB or firewire thing goes I’ve never tried it but I’d guess firewire is a better bet than USB. There is a firewire howto at the AV Linux forum that may help you with the IRQ question: http://geekconnection.org/remastersys/forums/index.php?topic=516.0
