Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Computer Audio › PC-BSD or Linux Mint or back again with Mac OS X?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

PC-BSD or Linux Mint or back again with Mac OS X?

post #1 of 5
3/20/11 at 4:57pm
Thread Starter 

Hello...

 

I'm a long time Mac user and now, mainly because my eMac is too noisy, I need something new. It will be used as a general purpose computer: audio, video (with remote), word processing and web surfing (no gaming or wifi-ing something).

Because of the seemingly plausible arguments that one could build a better computer cheaply and because I like and sympathise with the open source idea (and dislike Windows) I've begun considering Linux Mint.

But then I've read that, even if I could overcome the hardware compatibility issues and manage to get as quiet a computer as a new Mac, it's impossible or almost impossible for the likes of me to get bit perfect audio output in Linux. I don't think I have golden ears and I've read that the bit perfectness might not be all that important, but again I see that it doesn't hurt either (I like reassurance). Besides, XBMC seems to have some issues in Linux as well.

Looked for an alternative and found PC-BSD which seemed (as being not a distro, but both kernel and OS) more stable and equally easy, as well as having bit perfect output and easy XBMC installation.

Yet in an "open sound" forum I've read that both BSD and Linux suffer from low quality algorithms or something.

Now Would you advice me to go back to Mac OS X again and be done with it without headache? Or would you point out PC-BSD or Linux as a safe route?

Thanks in advance, at least for reading.

Reply
post #2 of 5
3/20/11 at 9:37pm

I have LinuxMint on one of my computers, and love it :)

Reply
post #3 of 5
3/21/11 at 2:39am
Thread Starter 

Thank you, gardner. I'm leaning towards PC-BSD, but I can dual-boot them I guess, if I pull the triger at the end.

Reply
post #4 of 5
3/21/11 at 6:23am

I'd lean away from Mint, in your case.  Not because there's anything wrong with it per se, but Ubuntu and its derivatives now have Pulseaudio quite heavily integrated.  Pulse is great, but probably not for those seeking bit-perfect audio.   If you want an off-the-shelf distro, Ubuntu Studio edition might do (never used it myself, but it's set up for good audio and video performance).  

My personal preference, with an afternoon or so to set it up, would be to start with a minimal system and then build up what I wanted in it, thereby ensuring there was nothing in there I didn't actively want.   You could start with an Ubuntu minimal install, or go with Arch (which has great documentation on its wiki).

Since you'd be building your system yourself, as long as you research your components, hardware compatibility shouldn't be a problem with either Linux or BSD, but BSD would probably restrict your choices more.

Reply
post #5 of 5
3/21/11 at 10:35am
Thread Starter 

Thank you, Henry. I'm nearly an idiot in these things, hence my preference for PC-BSD. But I'll look into that Arch wiki, as well as Ubuntu Studio. I thought it was just for AV professionals and not for general users.


Edited by burak - 3/21/11 at 10:37am
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Computer Audio
Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Computer Audio › PC-BSD or Linux Mint or back again with Mac OS X?