Linux + Live

amo · Post by **amo** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:11 pm

anonymouse wrote:
Machinesworking wrote:
anonymouse wrote:I can guarantee you Brian Eno managed to be successful without Linux.
I can guarantee you as well that Brian Eno wouldn't be half as famous as he is if he wasn't in fact a techie geek.

I wasn't commenting on whether or not Linux was going to make or break any of our music making etc. but on your ill conceived sentence. There are plenty of people making great music that i wouldn't say are very intelligent, and there are plenty who are. being a techie geek doesn't exclude you from making music, and your statement reads like that.

Plus, the whole tattered jeans etc. analogy, well Linux is free, and since it uses so little CPU resources to run, you can use it on a super cheap computer. So conversely the techie geek from the ghetto/country farm etc. with no money could buy a copy of Live and spend about the same amount on the computer with no concern for OS price etc...
Hey anonymouse, nobody said in that thread that we can't work with actual gear ! I too oowned a K7 4 tracks and was happy with it at this time

I could have made a better analogy ... all I was trying to say is that is it not better to take the tools that are available (particularly given the magnificent power now available compared to the clunky clockwork that Eno, Tangerine Dream, Can, Soft Machine etc etc used to record their historic masterpieces) and make music with them, than subliminally limit your creativity because you think you need something even more powerful, more accurate, more perfect.

In my ignorance, I find people wishing for a Linux Live about as irritating as those complaining that Live isn't 64 bit yet. Only 10 years ago all I had was a tascam casette 4 track. If lack of Linux or 64 bit is holding you back, maybe your music is just too advanced for humanity as we know it.

I joined that discution cause I find the idea interesting, if we look to the future.
Though, I'm a happy XP + Live user. Can't agree more on the "do with the tools you've got" ! There is more than enough to make good music with a Mac or PC and Live.
Then this a a general discussion forum, and in the spare time we like to discuus things like live and linux... well. I get your point, but I think this thread was not of the kind of those "mine is bigger" threads.
Cheers,

amo

chis · Post by **chis** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:15 pm

I'm happy to wait until ASIO and Ableton can be used under ReactOS. And believe me, sooner or later they WILL work. Until then Windows 2000 is good enough for me!

djastroboy · Post by **djastroboy** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:21 pm

anonymouse wrote: In my ignorance, I find people wishing for a Linux Live about as irritating as those complaining that Live isn't 64 bit yet. Only 10 years ago all I had was a tascam casette 4 track. If lack of Linux or 64 bit is holding you back, maybe your music is just too advanced for humanity as we know it.

No one even implied that not being able to use Linux was holding them back, we (the supporters of Live on Linux) just want a better and open platform to run audio on.

But now that you mention it, not having Live on Linux *is* holding me back: witness last nite for me. When Windows crashed, I had to flip over to a random CD after a blaring noise of the crash. Then I had to wait for windows to reboot. If I had had Linux, Live would've crashed, my backup audio program on Linux would have kept playing audio in a much better way and my crowd would not have been nearly so annoyed. If annoying crowds with unplanned silence doesn't hold you back as a live performer, I don't know what does.

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 10:45 pm

Sales Dude McBoob wrote:Well Milf, the thread isn't here to convince you to change to Linux.

The thread is here to say it would be really cool if Ableton was the first major audio software company to make their product available for PC, Mac, and Linux.

While it would definitely be cool if Live was released for linux, I don't think that Ableton could claim the title of "first".... evidently you've forgotten the fact that final scratch used to be available for linux. In fact, it was first written specifically for it, and then ported to other platforms later. I heard that they actually dropped their linux line mostly because of support issues, which doesn't surprise me in the least.

That being said, I've posted in all the other linux threads before, and I think my opinion has stayed roughly the same. I'm a longtime linux user (since the 2.0.36 kern), but I don't run linux anymore save for server applications, where I feel that it does best. My main gripe with linux is hardware compatibility; you have to make hardware purchases specifically around your OS, and do a ton of research before you buy anything new for fear of support. Granted, this is a corporate issue... most companies are not so inclined to help support linux because they already report directly to "the man".

However, it is encouraging to see that some companies like NVidia actually release good linux drivers, and I think that if the OS becomes more popular, more companies will do the same.
Until then, I think that using linux for audio is a fool's errand. Support for any high-end audio hardware is going to be sketchy at best, and the same can be said of other music hardware such as MIDI devices and whatnot.
FWIW, I'm a mac user, and I switched over shortly after 10.2 came out. OSX let me do everything that I needed linux for, and it didn't look like ass, either (don't even get me started on KDE and gnome... fluxbox for life!). The hardware support for MacOS is really second to none... there have only been one or two pieces of hardware I've ever seen not work on my Mac at all. When linux reaches that level of compatibility, I'll probably go back to it, but not on a 32 bit platform again.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:28 pm

sqook wrote:Until then, I think that using linux for audio is a fool's errand. Support for any high-end audio hardware is going to be sketchy at best, and the same can be said of other music hardware such as MIDI devices and whatnot.

you definitely have to make your purchases based on available drivers, but that's not the end of the world. I'm about to set up a Linux box, and it just so happens that the MOTU and M-Audio gear I own has drivers.....

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 11:30 pm

anonymouse wrote:In my ignorance, I find people wishing for a Linux Live about as irritating as those complaining that Live isn't 64 bit yet. Only 10 years ago all I had was a tascam casette 4 track. If lack of Linux or 64 bit is holding you back, maybe your music is just too advanced for humanity as we know it.

Like others have said I don't think that's why some of us want Live on Linux. Nobody is saying they can't make music on XP or OSX. Myself, I'm motivated as much by the total political superiority of Linux, as I am by the prospect of running a lean OS.
Also if you owned a dual Gig G4, I think complaining about dual processor support would be as natural as it gets, don't you? If you owned a 64 bit AMD, the same would be true I believe.

I get your point though, but tell me, would you feel the way you do if Live was mac only?

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:38 am

While it would definitely be cool if Live was released for linux, I don't think that Ableton could claim the title of "first".... evidently you've forgotten the fact that final scratch used to be available for linux. In fact, it was first written specifically for it, and then ported to other platforms later. I heard that they actually dropped their linux line mostly because of support issues, which doesn't surprise me in the least.

You have a point here, but I gotta say that the Final Scratch thing doesn't count. If I were to ask any given person who the major players in the DAW world are, what are the chances that person would answer "Stanton"? I would have to say that nobody would say that. The major players are Digi, Emagic, Cakewalk, Steinberg, Motu, Ableton, etc.

I know it'll be a bitch to get a Linux box humming, while my Powerbook was raring to go straight out of the box. But this is today, August whatever 2005. I can make all the music I want with the tools I have now. But, as a Live user who uses Live on Mac at home and PC at work on a daily basis, I have to say that both platforms screw up on me on occasion. Crashes. Freezes. You name it. I know we can do better.

I'm going to start doing live shows this month on my PB and I'm totally excited about it. I trust my laptop, but, I'd rather have the OS that is currently on the mainframe of battleships and Google engines and doing the most important failsafe work out there a computer can do.

I want to tweak Borg on Debian damn it!

atomic · Post by **atomic** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 8:21 am

shoot me if this is totaly insane but would it not be fantastic if you could just buy Live with some form of self included OS? You have a live disk you stick it in the DVD drive and it loads onto your HDD with nothing elts at all. Just live. It would be handy if it provided a simple form of networking but nothing elts to cause problems. The Ableton Live distro lets say. I dont think it would or will ever happen but that would be my ideal situation as the only program I run on my Live5 computer is Live5 and my VST stuff. One can dream I guess.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 11:22 am

atomic wrote:shoot me if this is totaly insane but would it not be fantastic if you could just buy Live with some form of self included OS? You have a live disk you stick it in the DVD drive and it loads onto your HDD with nothing elts at all. Just live. It would be handy if it provided a simple form of networking but nothing elts to cause problems. The Ableton Live distro lets say. I dont think it would or will ever happen but that would be my ideal situation as the only program I run on my Live5 computer is Live5 and my VST stuff. One can dream I guess.

That would be the most stable and reliable scenario possible. Imagine how fast is could run if the whole OS was just there to do that one job. You latop would become no different to a good bit of dedicated modern hardware.

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 11:47 am

Martyn wrote:
atomic wrote:shoot me if this is totaly insane but would it not be fantastic if you could just buy Live with some form of self included OS? You have a live disk you stick it in the DVD drive and it loads onto your HDD with nothing elts at all. Just live. It would be handy if it provided a simple form of networking but nothing elts to cause problems. The Ableton Live distro lets say. I dont think it would or will ever happen but that would be my ideal situation as the only program I run on my Live5 computer is Live5 and my VST stuff. One can dream I guess.
That would be the most stable and reliable scenario possible. Imagine how fast is could run if the whole OS was just there to do that one job. You latop would become no different to a good bit of dedicated modern hardware.

It would theoretically be stable and reliable, but this assumes that ableton is able to produce a stable and reliable OS which to support their product. It's a pipe dream. I can only imagine the support issues that would be raised by this... hell, microsoft has enough problems trying to support all the diverse hardware configurations that people have, and they have thousands of staff personnel!

What's next, people asking for ableton to produce hardware specifically optimized to run live?

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 11:49 am

noisetonepause wrote:
hambone1 wrote:What's next? Amiga and Atari?
WTF?

Do you even know what Linux is?

With 2 engineering degrees, I DO know what Linux is.

My point is that we have two operating systems. Enough is enough.

I agree with SDMcB. If I wanted to spend my time building a computer out of toothpicks to run whatever-OS instead of making music and videos, I'd probably write my own OS in binary and run it on organic living memory.

But I'd rather power up my G5, be greeted with a simple, elegant, instantly useable, crash-free, industry-standard OS, and make music & videos!

Sales Dude McBoob · Post by **Sales Dude McBoob** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 3:53 pm

But I'd rather power up my G5, be greeted with a simple, elegant, instantly useable, crash-free, industry-standard OS, and make music & videos!

I love my G5 + OSX as well. My experience, however, is not crash free. Try freezing a Reaktor track and opening another Reaktor track immediately afterward. Poof! Bye bye.

I'm not here complain about Live. If anything, NI is doing a botched job of porting Reaktor to Mac. But I don't want to complain about that either, because even though they are doing a hackneyed job porting to Mac, thank God that they are bothering to port to Mac at all!

I digress. Okay, here is an example of something that took place this morning. A guy walks into our department asking about Live. We start chatting. Turns out he's the guy who cues the sound for the network televison broadcasts of the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. He had heard about Live and asked a few questions, and he left pretty much convinced that he was going to start using Live. With good reason, it's the most stable software he can use to do his job. But it would have been nice to tell him that Live comes with it's own OS and he could trigger 1,000,000 turkey gobbles simutainously and it still wouldn't crash.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 6:59 pm

sqook wrote:It would theoretically be stable and reliable, but this assumes that ableton is able to produce a stable and reliable OS which to support their product. It's a pipe dream.

I already said that this was all a pipe dream a while back so I totally agree, that doesn't stop me from wishing though. There's quite a few other things about the human race that I also wish might change one day too, all that stuff's probably a pipe dream too unfortunately.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:50 am

sqook wrote:It would theoretically be stable and reliable, but this assumes that ableton is able to produce a stable and reliable OS which to support their product. It's a pipe dream. I can only imagine the support issues that would be raised by this... hell, microsoft has enough problems trying to support all the diverse hardware configurations that people have, and they have thousands of staff personnel!

What's next, people asking for ableton to produce hardware specifically optimized to run live?

Well, if they limited it to running on, say, Apple hardware, they'd probably do alright

-Paws

d-plate · Post by **d-plate** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:25 pm

Linux's audio system has always been a mess (ALSA / OSS / whatever).

If sometimes it's a pain for a new user to get the generic, onboard card working, just imagine trying to set up pro cards with multiple ins/outs.

Linux wasn't developed to be a multimedia box, let's face it. I hope this changes tho, because Live is one of the few things keeping me from getting rid of Windows for good.