[PlanetCCRMA] Clik the Noisy Penguin presents (errata):

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

Hi all:
In the interest of correctness here is a revised announcement. Some of
you may have been misled to think ALL of this was just a prank by the
unfortunate coincidence of the day of the original announcement being
April 1st... I have to admit the announcement was a bit premature as I
could not include a link at the time (I did get requests for it), but
well, Clik kept insisting: "post it", "post it!"...

On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 12:08, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> To answer the wishes of many potential Planet CCRMA users that are
> worried about lengthy downloads (understandable) and lengthy reading
> sessions of the never-ending, sometimes unintelligible and incomplete
> Planet CCRMA Install Guide, we are proud to present:
> 
>   "Planet CCRMA 3", The Distro!

The last part is essentially correct. No reading to do as there are no
release notes or install guides available yet for Planet CCRMA 3 :-) For
brave souls ONLY! (but that is what you are as you have already landed
on Planet CCRMA!)

> One (1) 650 Mbytes CDROM[1] that contains:

Should have read:
"One (1) 2.7Gbytes DVD that contains"
So, the lengthy download is still a problem...

> - live Planet CCRMA cd, will boot on Intel/AMD and PPC machines. 

Sorry but no, no live cd...

> - simple install on hard disk from the live boot with automatic
>   repartitioning, no questions asked[2].

Well, there is an autopartitioning option, but you can (and probably
should) do the partitioning manually. 

> - animated interactive 3d tutorial of all included audio and video apps
>   featuring Clik the Noisy Penguin (you'll love him!).

Clik exists, but no 3d tutorial yet... or even 2d...

> - full emulation layer for most Alien OS audio/video programs[3]

This was definitely an April Fools day prank (just in case).

> Upon insertion of the cdrom in a supported computer you are not faced
> with tough choices or hard to read guides, the boot prompt will say:
>   what?

Well, it is not _that_ simple (come to think of it, I _should_ have
changed the prompt to print "what?", oh well, maybe for the next
version). 

After pressing <return> and waiting for a bit so that anaconda can start
you eventually see this (unretouched screenshots):

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/screenshots/screenshot-0000.png
would you rather install or upgrade?:
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/screenshots/screenshot-0005.png
if you install you can just go for the default:
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/screenshots/screenshot-0016.png
or select more or less packages:
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/screenshots/screenshot-0018.png
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/screenshots/screenshot-0019.png
and finally go for it!:
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/screenshots/screenshot-0021.png
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/screenshots/screenshot-0022.png
one reboot, go through the firstboot screens and you are done.

Login, launch Qjackctl from the Planet CCRMA menus, tune parameters and
off you go into Jackland!

> But that's not all. 
> 
> If you fill a very simple online questionaire you can activate a
> fantastic _BONUS_ shoot'em up musical creativity game - but try this
> only if you have a very very fast video card and find an open source
> driver for it. In "Clik the Avenger" you will have to guide Clik through
> vast underground caves...

Sorry, no "Clik The Avenger" game yet... or online questionaire...

> Of course Planet CCRMA The Distro not only includes audio/video apps,
> but also office productivity and internet applications, servers and all
> the stuff you might want to run (away from?) when not making music. No
> compromises there!

At least this part is true. 

...
:-)
...

So, now you know that some April Fool Jokes are not entirely what they
appear to be :-)

Anyway. 

I'm leaving tomorrow for LAC2005 (Linux Audio Conference 2005 at ZKM,
see http://lac.zkm.de for details). The stuff is not ready but it will
never be ready, so here it is...

=== WARNING ===

this is a first experimental release (although a bit less experimental
than the reduced pre-alpha release that will be included in the LAC2005
DVD, sigh...). Handle with care. Apply only to experimental hardware you
don't care too much about. 

The download is BIG (2.7G) and you will need a dvd burner and the
software to drive it.

=== Planet CCRMA 3: 

this one DVD alpha release (for testing only) of Planet CCRMA 3 brings
you a one media, many click install of the Planet CCRMA world. Based on
a well know experimental distro I can't really name, it adds all Planet
CCRMA packages and boots after install (or not!) into the latest
bleeding edge Planet CCRMA kernel available (2.6.11-0.7.rdt at this
time). Everything should be ready to go, just start Qjackctl, tune
parameters and of you go!

=== Known issues:

- the kernel/alsa is very new (read "bleding edge") and not well tested.
It will not work in as many systems as the "QC" approved Fedora kernels.
So it may happen you can't even install Planet CCRMA 3 when a normal
Fedora Core install would succeed. 

- the 0.7.rdt kernel is too new for the selinux targeted policy and
there are errors in the startup of portmap and curl (I think those were
the only ones), you can disable selinux for those subsystems if
necessary in the "System Settings" "Security Level" "SElinux" panel. 

- the 0.7.rdt kernel will trigger some BUG reports in the logs on
startup, they seem to not have any effect on the rest of the system.

- the system will recognize "Fedora" systems as upgradeable to Planet
CCRMA 3 but I have only tested (once) an upgrade from Fedora Core 2 +
Planet CCRMA (no other packages) to Planet CCRMA 3. After the upgrade
some conflicting packages are still installed so you will need to do an
"apt-get check" followed (probably) by an "apt-get -f install" to fix
the inconsistencies. I have not yet tried to upgrade earlier versions.

- apt, yum and up2date all see the Planet CCRMA repository and can be
used. I think that up2date will _not_ see new packages, only updates to
the existing package base. In one instance I saw up2date choke on a (I
presume) bad download with the side effect that it erased jack. Not
good. I would stick to Synaptic/apt or even yum for package installs and
upgrades.

=== Unknown issues:

probably many... let me know if you test and find them...

===

The download is __BIG__ (2.7G) so you will need a fat pipe and/or a lot
of patience and disk space, and obviously a dvd burner. And no
guarantees that it will work. Let me know if you still go ahead and try
it out. 

Enjoy!
-- Fernando

PS: ah, the link!
I almost forgot:
ftp://ccrma.stanford.edu/pub/planetccrma/3/planetccrma-3-dvd-20050418.iso
md5sum=f1422f4877078bc52c8c3db7d3b1304a
(this will probably move in the future)

PS2: so now you know why I've been so busy...