Have format the old pc used here, and like to do a fresh install of A3 on a Debian SID system drived by a P4 with 1GRAM and 2 HD. Sound by a M-audio 2496.
The workflow plan is to use A3 to build MIDI drums and synths -using Linuxsampler for sounds- and record bass, guits and vox thru the 2496 at 48kHz. Some edit to choose between different takes, mix with IRconvolver on a bus -plus one IR on the bass- and LV2plugin on almost every track. Then use Jamin.
The question is : what WM do you think the best and lightest (don’t need or like eye-candy) to make A3… just work !
I know this question have been discussed many times on the forum and list, but like to ask again to have an answer (or even more than 1!!) based on the ATM situation and feel
Ask 6 different people this question and you are sure to get 6 different answers… I don’t think anything is really any different here than it has ever been, in order of lightest to heaviest:
Fluxbox
Most likely a tie between LXDE and E17
QT4 Razor (pretty new and not widely adopted yet)
XFCE4
MATE (same goes for Gnome2 although it’s deprecated now)
Gnome3 and Gnome shell variants
KDE4 set up sensibly and Unity are probably pretty close to tied
My suggestion is LXDE, everything thing you need and markedly less RAM consumption than both XFCE4 and MATE/Gnome2
For a low spec PC… go LXDE all the way, GMaq has vast experience with it and make a great Remastersys with LXDE and all the toys needed for music production plugins included, check out AVLinux, its probably all you need with that setup http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html
I suggest Openbox, which is the window manager behind LXDE. If you are just running Ardour, you don’t need a panel or anything else that LXDE provides. You can use obmenu to put an Ardour menu entry into the openbox menu (appears when you right click).
Takes a little bit of time to configure how you like… BUT once you are done it doesn’t get in the way at all… especially if you use Ladish/ladi-tray so everything you open regularly can be setup in a studio…
I have an old retired P4 (1 gig RAM) with a 24/96 card and last time I used it for music was 2008. The only way I could get xrun free sessions was when using Fluxbox or a pre E17 WM. The Musix distro also worked with it’s standard WM. But it is my impression that the distros and programs are way more hungry today, so your project might be difficult.
Oh, just one more precision if one search the forums, if you add the “menu” “obmenu” “obconf” packages (in Debian), then you can reconfigure
reconfigure the desktop right-clic menu and have a “pipe-menu” with all apps installed. Just it works, no eye-candy, all
ressources for sound
Oh I am here, but from the OP’s post he doesn’t want Eye Candy, even if there is exceedingly minimal performance hit, so Enlightenment may not be the best choice(But is a great choice for those wanting great performance AND good looks:)
I agree wholeheartedly with the choice made. I’d have suggested Openbox myself if GMaq and related stampede didn’t beat me to it, I was an Openbox enthusiast for many years and left it simply because my needs outgrew it. I tried all the boxen back in the day - from Fluxbox to PekWM - and Openbox is the one, although it’s a tie with PekWM.
I’d disagree that “don’t want eye candy” is the reason not to use E, though. Enlightenment has bling to be sure but it’s not the only thing it has, it’s easy to disable all of it and install the Clearlooks theme and even then you’ll have a WM a thousand times more powerful than Openbox and just as fast. The key here is the simplicity, if all you’re ever going to do on that computer is compose music then you’ll never need Enlightenment’s power functions, and configuring Openbox is a 60-minute job while Enlightenment can easily take a whole day unless you happen to like the defaults.
Openbox pro-tip: Set the screen margins to 1px each, that way you can just slam the mouse to any edge and click to get the menus. Very handy.
