I am formatting an older computer and it'll be simply be used to browse the internet, instant messaging, and creating/reading documents and the occasional PokeStars game (which, according to this, I can do). I'm not going to purchase another version of Windows 7 just to do these things. However, I've heard that each update of Ubuntu runs slower and slower. If that is the case, I'm not sure I can even run Ubuntu on this thing with its 1GB of RAM... I really know nothing about Linux so I'm not sure if I should go ahead with this... what do you guys think?
Ubuntu should work fine with 1 GB RAM. You can try it out without installing by downloading and burning the LiveCD image. You can also install Wine in the LiveCD environment to see how well the PokerStars client works on your system.
Well, I tried installing Ubuntu but it doesn't seem to want to. After having the CD install me something to boot up discs at start-up, choosing to boot Ubuntu from the disc gives me this: try (hd0,0): NTSF5: error: "prefix" is not set I have no idea what this means. Waiting on this screen for about two minutes actually does take me to the Ubuntu boot-up screen but then it stays there and eventually the loading bar stops loading. No idea what's going on. Anybody have an idea?
Can you give a better description of the computer? What cpu/video/mobo/etc? Also, Xubuntu is the best derivation of Ubuntu for people who want a fairly light-weight and responsive version of Ubuntu. It comes as a nice LiveCD, and can use the regular Ubuntu repositories. I use Xubuntu on everything from my old G3 iMac to my PS3 to my development system.
Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80GHz ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series 1 GB RAM If you need to know anymore info just ask but those are my CPU, Graphics and RAM info. They're all pretty old. I'm also getting more problems with Ubuntu... I just tried installing it like a Windows program and that seems to work... for about 80-90% of the installation process (within Ubuntu). At this point, a black screen pops up with a ton of information on it but it's more or less just a huge error screen. When I try to boot up Ubuntu again it works fine until I log in... where it just gives me the background and that's it. I also tried Kubuntu but it doesn't even go beyond the Start-Up screen. This is pretty damn frustrating... It just seems to me that this computer can't be configured to use Linux on it. It must be the mother board, which I'm sure is pretty old.
More likely the ATI card - ATI isn't very popular with linux because the drivers suck. AMD has since published datasheets on various ATI chips, so eventually they should become decent, but right now most people prefer nvidia... not that that helps you any. There is ONE SIMPLE THING you can try that has fixed problems I had with a few computers over time with linux: look up the operating voltage for the memory in the computer online, then boot into the BIOS setup and make sure the ram voltage is set to at least that voltage level. Windows ignores most BIOS settings and sets the mobo chipset with its own settings, so something like a wrong ram voltage won't affect it. Linux leves the BIOS settings just the way YOU have them set... which of course most people never set - they just use whatever the mobo defaults to. This is often WRONG for the ram voltage, ESPECIALLY if you get "performance" ram which usually requires a higher voltage than most BIOSes default to. Low voltage to the ram means the system SEEMS to boot okay... usually until you start trying to run the desktop, then it crashes in unusual ways.
Two quick tips: 1. If the live CD isn't working, try the alternative CD. It's a text based install similar to what Windows had prior to Vista. 2. Ubuntu has been getting slower over the years much to my frustration, but this patch that came out recently makes it just as zippy as I remember it being back in '08 <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Wkp4lFXsuYEJ:copypasted.info/2011/01/26/how-to-speed-up-ubuntu-linux-using-a-cgroup-patch-script/+UBUNTU+SPEED+PATCH&hl=en&client=ubuntu&gl=us&strip=1" target="_blank">Source</a>
LOL Linux. I'd be using Ubuntu with the system I'm making, but the problem I ran into previously with Ubuntu was more a problem with myself. I would never motivate myself to actually figure out enough of what was going on under the hood to fix the various small problems that arose with it. Strongly thinking of throwing Gentoo on it for this reason, and I'm reading documentation on it. Problem is there is so much info and I can't find a sorce that will give me the basic rundown of the most important things to know to build a solid foundation. I'm actually strongly considering just following along with Linux from Scratch just so I have a basic concept of everything, then instead of Gentoo I could run ubuntu... but then the machine I am making would benefit from Gentoo's compile for specific machine nature since I'm using a multicore 64 bit CPU and it's specifically intended for audio production (and yes, I have an audio interface for it as well.) What would really be useful is if I knew someone local who would talk me through this shit... ah well.
Linux aint for you bro. Audio on Linux is a fucking mess. It's fine for basic desktop use and gaming but once you start trying to get the professional mixing software and stuff going, well, I hope you're ready for some grey hairs. You'd be better off fucking with Haiku for that kind of thing.
Please elaborate if you can, keeping in mind I'm determined not to go with Windows and some software like ProTools based on personal philosophy. Add: I also should note that this project is my baby. I'm not bullshitting either. The idea of a daunting task doesn't bother me, I'm just trying to understand how it's a "mess."
Well basically there's like 6 different standards for audio routing in Linux such as ALSA, OSS, Jack, Esound, and Pulse. Pulse is what Ubuntu uses by default and it's the one sound system to rule them all, at least in theory. However in practice, when I've tried to use apps which use Jack or Esound, which many of the professional audio software seem to use, I'm not able to get the sound to work. It's just a big headache, which is why I suggest choosing an OS that only has one, properly thought out sound system. Since you don't want to use Windows for this purpose, I would say that you next best options after Linux are OSX and Haiku. Haiku is designed to replace BeOS which was designed from the ground up to be an idea media production OS. I've always found that media stuff is much more painless in BeOS than other OSes. Back when I was in High School, if I wanted to copy a DVD all I had to do was run Handbrake (which was originally a BeOS app before it went cross platform). It handled the decoding and the encoding to a nice XVID file. On Windows, I had to do several more steps than that. Plus, there's a small but fairly high quality software selection for BeOS/Haiku. BeOS Max Edition comes with an app that I can't think of the name of right now, but I was able to just hum into a mic and it turned the notes into MIDI, which I thought was just amazing. I'll just leave this over here http://haikuware.com/directory/multimedia/audio/
I'm looking into it, but so far Gentoo and pro audio overlay are where I am looking. Haiku's efficiency sounds promising but their tools seem to be really dated ports from BeOS and before, whereas Linux DAWs are rather developed and reasonable alternatives as far as I can tell.
Jack was pretty easy to get working in Ubuntu... just follow the advice in post #2 from this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=806730 Worked fine for me... no problem even with pulse audio.
Hm, well lucky you. I just think it's retarded that I couldn't even get half the built in software in Ubuntu Studio 9.10 to work.
True, they should really iron out those issues. It's like there's not a single dev part of the Ubuntu community that works on audio.