[TwinQY]

Quote:

I want to run Linux REAL bad, but my boot drive is full (64GB SSD) and I game everyonce in a while... Also, I use stuff like Audition and stuff... Maybe I'll run Gentoo or something on my 64GB SSD when/if I get a 256GB for a boot drive...

TBH my / partition separate from /home usually takes up at the very most 5GB. So if you have a separate mechanical drive with enough space for media (keep in mind that Linux reads NTFS easily so you can keep the same media files and documents on your Windows install and just make the Linux install mount it during boot, then keep a small-ish /home partition for essentials like config files, etc) you could dual boot rather easily.
 
And starting off with Gentoo without knowing much about what you're about to get into is maybe not the best idea, since people get a bad impression when they associate Linux in general with Gentoo. Arch is relatively easier to get into, less complexity, even OpenSUSE or Mint would be a better start.

 

[gopanthersgo1]

TBH my / partition separate from /home usually takes up at the very most 5GB. So if you have a separate mechanical drive with enough space for media (keep in mind that Linux reads NTFS easily so you can keep the same media files and documents on your Windows install and just make the Linux install mount it during boot, then keep a small-ish /home partition for essentials like config files, etc) you could dual boot rather easily.

And starting off with Gentoo without knowing much about what you're about to get into is maybe not the best idea, since people get a bad impression when they associate Linux in general with Gentoo. Arch is relatively easier to get into, less complexity, even OpenSUSE or Mint would be a better start.

HDD is always full, but I'll try moving programs off it (I only have a couple 200MB ones though...

 

[laen]

Quote:

I want to run Linux REAL bad, but my boot drive is full (64GB SSD) and I game everyonce in a while... Also, I use stuff like Audition and stuff... Maybe I'll run Gentoo or something on my 64GB SSD when/if I get a 256GB for a boot drive...

I personally wouldn't advise Gentoo, even though it would easily fit on 8GB. It's just too much work in most cases, and I mean time spent on configuration and tweaking and tuning in terms of getting everything to work perfectly together (which is why quite some people, even here, are complaining Gentoo isn't stable - it just takes a lot of reading, learning, and understanding to get software to work exactly as you'd want to).
 
I wouldn't advise Arch either, due to (as mentioned by someone else) huge amount of bugs/problems/lack of packaging quality/etc (bugtracker overflowing, forums filled to the notch). I'm sure there are people who get it to work right, but it's - like Gentoo - not always worth the time.
 
If you're a starter, take one of the better known ones.. Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, or even OpenSUSE and so on. See http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major for the well known major distributions.
 
There are some distro's out there that actually focus on Audio production and quality: use a realtime kernel by default, have a software set to get you working and playing right away, and so on. Some of these are listed at http://linux-sound.org/distro.html and that list is quite old (03/08/2011) so there might be more interesting stuff around.

 

[proton007]

Quote:

What distro are you using with kde 4.10? And is much better than 4.9? So far I really like 4.9

 
Archlinux.
4.10 is a more polished version, and the biggest change I can notice in daily use is their notification system. Its much more organized now. Apart from that, it seems to be consuming lesser memory. All bells and whistles enabled, it takes a little under 1 GB out of the 8 GB I have.

 

[proton007]

Quote:

 
I'm really good at telling things the wrong way, so that could surely be the case .
 
 
The Arch wiki was an almost direct copy of the Gentoo wiki, before the datacenter it was in burned down and all data was lost because the idiot who hosted it didn't have offsite backups. So, yeah, that wiki content Arch users praise, is not an "Arch thing" to praise. Arch Linux has of course added to it in the past 2 years.
 
The reason you may see less similar Gentoo forum topics of which you see Arch forum topics may point to the lack of QA as I have pointed out before. That, and the lack of quality devs (I mean, everyone can build from source, but come on.. what I spot on the Arch forums is stuff that should've been sorted out and known to the dev before the package went live).
 
The size of the userbase or amount of filed bugs as TwinQY points out, is not a measure of quality, a lesser amount of silly bugs that should have never landed in a live system might be, but even that is debatable. I see Gentoo devs reporting bugs upstream (as themselves, not as "X doesn't work in Gentoo")"), to simply get it fixed at the source and not requiring Gentoo-added patches next software release. Patches, not just bugs, actually fixing stuff for software and delivering patches to projects, is a measure of quality.
 
That last thing can be seen in the Gentoo Hardened project, where software is fixed (PIC for example) with patches created for it, submitted upstream and available in the repo as long as required. There's nothing like that available in the Arch wiki, not even an info page or reference to what a user can expect from his installed software.
 
But oh well, as you mentioned, you had problems with Gentoo for years.. Gentoo does somehow require you to make choices on what software support you want, you're your own maintainer of the environment you install it on. If you're lacking experience and time and mess it up, "crap in, crap out".

 
I'm not that familiar with the history of Gentoo to be able to comment, so you may be right, but as of now it seems Arch is doing better. Gentoo's install and support is a bit of a mess IMO.

 

[proton007]

Quote:

HDD is always full, but I'll try moving programs off it (I only have a couple 200MB ones though...

 
Oh well, you can just buy another HDD if you want, they're cheap enough nowadays. I dual boot as well, for occasional gaming in Win 7, but I have the EFI, Root, Boot and Swap partitions on the SSD. My Windows and Linux Home partitions are on the HDD.
Its never a great idea to fill up the SSD, it'll degrade the performance over time.
 
And if you just want to try Linux, why not use a USB boot (from a usb drive)? It runs alright, and can be used to store data as well.

 

[pierg75]

I just saw this thread now!

Only Linux for me (and for my GF as well ) since 13 years.

 

[buttons252]

I was so turned off from windows 8, i decided to get linux another try.  I put ubuntu 12.10 on my sons pc and everything works from a fresh install.  I only had to install an ATI legacy driver for his ATI 4850.  Installed steam client and played counter strike source and killing floor.  I might try world of warcraft or diablo 3 under wine later, if that works... ill be switching the rest of the computers over too.  

 

[joshkim12]

Any hackers?

 

[pierg75]

It depends what you mean.
These days the terms hacker and cracker are used in the same way.
If you mean this http://www.jargondb.org/glossary/hacker then I would consider myself one of those. Not that I excel in programming but I love to explore the inner details of computing.
 
If you mean http://www.jargondb.org/glossary/cracker instead, not definitely this.
 

 

[proton007]

Alright, I'm sort of adding a post here to keep this thread afloat.
 
Although I like AMD's graphics performance, their release cycle is pretty slow. Xorg released v1.14, and Catalyst seems to complain, preventing me from upgrading anything (using Archlinux btw).
Fortunately Arch has another repository for Xorg that keeps in sync with the Catalyst drivers.
 
Also, any thoughts on the AMD Kaveri architecture? I think its pretty cool, but the issue is, how to get people to write apps that can make use of the GPU cores? I mean, we alrealy have multiple cores and apps don't even seem to use them.

 

[anoobis]

Glad to see the penguin army massing
 
For me, the draw is the power and flexibility of shell and command line utilities that work so well together.
 
Anyone here have experience of writing gstreamer plug-ins? Specifically I want to write a plug-in for Rhythmbox. I've got as far as finding what's on my system and the source/sink options. What I've yet to find is any example that shows how I access audio data as separate (L-R) channels.
 
I'm starting to think that the python version may not support this and I'll have to use C. Normally I would prefer C but it seems that python may be simpler in this case and won't require other source files or any compilation, plus the examples tend to be python.
 
Any ideas?
 
Thanks.

 

[proton007]

Quote:

Glad to see the penguin army massing
 
For me, the draw is the power and flexibility of shell and command line utilities that work so well together.
 
Anyone here have experience of writing gstreamer plug-ins? Specifically I want to write a plug-in for Rhythmbox. I've got as far as finding what's on my system and the source/sink options. What I've yet to find is any example that shows how I access audio data as separate (L-R) channels.
 
I'm starting to think that the python version may not support this and I'll have to use C. Normally I would prefer C but it seems that python may be simpler in this case and won't require other source files or any compilation, plus the examples tend to be python.
 
Any ideas?
 
Thanks.

 
If you just want to know what to do, python is a good choice.
Accessing audio data as R/L channels may not be possible, it depends on your soundcard I think, but mostly, the R/L channel is handled by the audio codec chip nowadays, i.e there may not be a software R/L channel.

 

[TwinQY]

Right, Linux...that thing.
 
- Anyone mess around with KDrive. Really quite cool. 
- Have also been trying to set up st.arch but the package mirrors seem to not be working - project dead? 

- Nothing spectacular has borked yet - still keeping my fingers crossed though. 
- Retroarch is simply amazing and has pretty much kept me gaming more than I ever would have (which isn't saying much).
- A couple new beater machines to add to the queue - all under $50! Can finally allocate them for other tasks as I've got a killer efficient rtorrent setup on the main rig anyways, something I've been meaning to do but haven't gotten to until transmission-qt began to bork on me like no tomorrow.
- New Debian - yay.
- Replaced yet another antiX rig this time with an Exherbo rig - really loving this. Taken up 5 machines at home, with the other 3 being Arch, Gentoo, and FreeBSD on the main desktop.
- Music server and NAS have been temporary MIA for various reasons - I'm doing quite well without though and might migrate to a Squeezebox Touch anyways.

 

[gopanthersgo1]

Yet you can't get Skype working on any of them...