[PlanetCCRMA] Planet on Fedora 8 -- basic questions
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
nando at ccrma.Stanford.EDU
Mon Dec 3 23:19:01 2007
On Tue, 2007-12-04 at 01:11 +0000, Chuck Cooper wrote:
> Thanks, Nicholas, for all your great answers. I'm a little concerned
> if Fedora 8 is LESS stable than Fedora 7 with Planet CCRMA, but as
> long as the initial setup goes OK I'll be happy. I suppose 8 is where
> future improvements and goodness will be...
Hopefully yes... :-)
> Now I realize I'll have to download and burn my own DVDs anyhow for
> Planet even if I get Fedora 8 on a DVD, and that's fine. My Internet
> connections are fast enuff. I'm just lazy.
>
> I wonder if others have advice about soundcards (including outboard
> USB)? I'm glad to hear that the Delta 44 will still be good. I got
> mine in 2000 and I'm surprised it's still sold. Is something
> Firewire-based a good choice if I want to also run on a laptop
> (probably Wintel, maybe a Mac)?
Firewire is working fine for some users but you have to make sure that
the card you buy is indeed well supported under linux. In that respect
f8 is not as good as f7, I still have to sink time into that (apparently
the stock fedora kernel does better in that respect).
> Or would that compromise the latency?
So far nothing beats the latency numbers you can get with good and
supported pci soundcards. I briefly tested an edirol 101 and it worked
fine for output latencies but the roundtrip latency (input + output) was
not that good.
USB I would not buy (unless there have been changes I'm not aware of),
the restriction of packet transmissions hardwired at 1mSec makes working
with 44.1KHz sampling rate not so good with Jack and friends.
> I'm getting Partition Magic and will then let the Fedora install do
> GRUB as you said.
You could also try gparted, there is a cd image you can download that
boots into a partitioner similar to Partition Magic. I have used it on a
couple of occassions with success. Obviously you _really_ want to have
backups of the data on the disk... (whatever you use).
> Is there any Planet preference or requirement about which type of
> Linux file system to use?
I normally use the default which is ext3 on Fedora. There have been many
threads on the linux audio lists and some users favor things like xfs
for the disk where they store soundfiles (it is faster at erasing big
files). My guess is that ext3 has seen a _lot_ of use with the
consequence of stability - which is number one in what you want from a
filesystem.
-- Fernando
> Thanks for all your help.
>
> Chuck Cooper
>
> -------------- Original message --------------
> From: "Nicholas Manojlovic" <nicholasmanojlovic@gmail.com>
> Hi Chuck, your questions seem reasonable. I'll have a stab.
>
> 1. Fedora 8 is fine for someone new. In my experience using it
> with the CCRMA packages it hasn't been as stable as Fedora 7,
> but I have been making some noise with it and it is going
> okay. CCRMA is indeed available for Fedora 8.
>
> 2. The DVD you have bought will be fine for installing Fedora,
> however you will still need access to the Internet - updates
> come thick and fast and CCRMA is only available to download at
> this point. IMO the best approach is to download and burn your
> own copy - but each to their own.
>
> 3. Short answer, Yes. What will happen to install Fedora with
> CCRMA is this:
> Install Fedora 8 -> install the Planet ccrma repository ->
> download/install the ccrma packages -> reboo t into a low
> latency kernel. You can of course reboot into any other
> kernel installed on your machine, however for best use you'll
> need the low latency kernel (which comes from ccrma).
>
> 4. I also have a Delta 44 - it sounds quite good and it works
> flawlessly. I have set my machine to play mp3s, movies etc
> with my in built Intel card, and use my Delta for recording
> work. Easy to achieve. My most productive results are all
> under 5ms latency, although this can be pushed. IMO, anything
> under 5ms feels 'real'.
>
> 5. I can't remember how to partition when you already have XP
> installed (you may be able to resize an NTFS partition with
> the Fedora installer?), however for practical reasons - it is
> best to have XP installed first so Fedora can set up GRUB for
> you.
>
> Not sure how helpful this has been, happy to elaborate on
> anything I haven't made clear.
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> On Dec 4, 2007 11:01 AM, Chuck Cooper <plangent2@comcast.net>
> wrote:
> I got freshly turned on to Planet CCRMA talking with
> Julius Smith at a conference, and now I'm starting to
> set it up on two different machines, one of them
> brand-new with only XP installed. My questions are
> pretty basic but perhaps timely since I gather Fedora
> 8 is pretty new. I haven't used Linux in several
> years and was never fluent...
>
> 1) Is Fedora 8 the best/easiest way to go for a
> newbie? Both machines currently have Windows XP and
> I'll re-partition the drive(s). The Planet web pages
> mention older versions of Fedora but then say Fedora
> 8.
>
> 2) I would prefer to just buy Fedora 8 in a nice
> package with a DVD instead of downloading, making an
> ISO image, updating, etc., but I gather you can't...
> But I ordered a "re-spin" DVD (I think) of Fedora 8
> from DiscountLinuxDVD.com for a tiny price. Is this
> a good approach? Was this re-spin really only
> released a coupla weeks ago?
>
> 3) Is it OK to skip loading the low-latency kernel
> for my initial activities, then try it later? Even a
> 15 ms latency would be fine for now and I won't have
> anything else (intentionally) running on the machine.
> I'm a little afraid of screwing things up.
>
> 4) What's a good sound card to buy these days? I
> still have an M-Audio Delta 4x4 recommended by CCRMA
> many years ago, and it worked fine with Linux then in
> the earliest days of Alsa. Is this still a good thing
> to buy for a 2nd machine? I don't mind spending a few
> hundred bucks, but don't need lots of IO channels or
> super-low noise. I do need low latency. Also, is an
> external USB audio interface like the M-Audio
> Mobile-Pre reasonably low-latency with Planet/Alsa? I
> already have two of those.
>
> 5) Finally, and sorry for all these basic questions:
> I gather Linux mavens would use GRUB to do the
> multiple-boot setup (I want to have both XP and
> Fedora), but I was thinking that for an old-guy Linux
> newbie like me that Partition Magic (now from
> Symantec) might be easier/safer. Advice? Or would I
> use Partition Magic first in XP (to set up a partition
> for Linux) and then GRUB jumps in as part of the
> Fedora install?
>
> Thanks for your help. I'm excited about landing on
> Planet CCRMA.
>
> Chuck Cooper
>