I have now installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) on my laptop. Sadly, Hardy's ATI drivers for Xorg don't seem to support my ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400, so I have to run proprietary drivers for now.
One possibly good piece of advice for anyone looking into Linux audio (or Linux in general) is "don't buy a laptop model that's too new!" or you will need a load of patience to hack around with it - sure, Ubuntu 8.10 recognizes most of my hardware, but in this case, I need to run 8.04 to get real time capabilities.
After some googling and hacking (among other things, I followed this thread about making Jack work in real time mode) I can now get sound through the Edirol FA-66. FINALLY!
Everything's not fine, though. Jack has crashed a couple of times during the last 20 minutes, Qjackctl seems to be inclined to freeze, and there is some annoying crackling and popping going on during playback in Ardour - although neither Qjackctl nor Ardour registers xruns (Ardour does, however, detect "spikes" in master output).
On one hand, I'm glad that I've gotten this far. There's definitely a sense of accomplishment, and I'm hopeful about this whole project. On the other hand, there are obviously some issues to be dealt with before I've got a stable, working setup.
I'm actually started using Ubuntu 8.04 recently as well for music production. Coincidentally, I'm also using an Edirol FA-66. Right now, I have it working beautifully, but I had to upgrade some packages. Most importantly, I replaced freebob with ffado, and upgraded jack to the latest version (0.116.1). Also, ardour in Hardy is too old to be good enough for me. I'm running version 2.5 (couldn't compile 2.7 for some reason). If you want packages, let me know.
SvaraRaderaYou should check 64Studio out man.
SvaraRaderaReal-time, Debian based, 64 bit goodness.
www.64Studio.com
cheers.
@andres, I tried 64Studio. I'm sure it has a lot of potential, but it's just too old for my hardware. My laptop couldn't even boot it. Even if I could boot with it, it seems a hassle to update to ffado.
SvaraRaderaI'll definitely try it in the future when 3.0 is out, though.
FYI, I'm using 64-bit Ubuntu (actually, it's Ubuntu Studio).
Interesting, I'll follow this blog as I'm mostly a video-guy, but I'd like to fool around trying to make some soundtracks as well.
SvaraRaderaI've so much music in my head, I'd like to get some of it out. :p
And I've also got a friend who would like to use his MacBook Pro for Linux Music.
I'm delighted to see that my blog actually has readers! :) I hope you guys will find something of use here, eventually!
SvaraRaderakhashavar: do you have .deb packages for more recent versions of ffado, jack and ardour? I would love to have those.
andres: thanks, I'll check it out!
@Péter: Yes, I probably do, I need to check through my build folder. They're compiled for Hardy-64bit though, is that what you're running? I'll post a link here when/if I find the packages.
SvaraRaderaFunny thing; we use the same distribution, same audio device, and, according to your profile, we also live in the same city :-)
Below is a link to an archive that holds:
SvaraRadera* jack 0.116.1
* ffado 2.0RC1
* audacity 1.3.6
* hydrogen 0.9.4beta2
I hope you're familiar with installing packages. Jack and ffado are the packages I really needed in order to have things working with my edirol. Audacity and hydrogen from the repos were broken for me (at least after the jack+ffado upgrade), so you might want them as well. The archive also holds -dev packages and such that you most probably won't need. Let me know how things go!
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/175461/Ubuntustudio_8.04-x86_64-packages.tar.bz2
Oh, one last thing. ardour 2.5 can be found on getdeb.net.
SvaraRaderaActually, I use the 32 bit version for some reason. Are there any drawbacks with using the 64 bit one? I must admit I have no idea - is it a whole different repository for applications too?
SvaraRaderaThanks a lot for the packages, anyway!
Nice, I didn't realize you're from Gothenburg. Do you know Andreas Nilsson? Long shot perhaps...
The 64-bit version seems a bit snappier to me. Most people say that there shouldn't be much of a difference with most applications. But I think (and please correct me if I'm wrong, anyone) that for stuff like music and media production, there might actually be a benefit using 64-bit operating systems. That's probably why 64Studio (mentioned above by andres) only comes in a 64-bit flavor. The only drawback I've experienced is that the java applet loader in firefox does not work for some sites. This is, however, no problem for my music production machine. Those java applet sites aren't abundant exactly, anyway.
SvaraRaderaAbout Andreas Nilsson: I don't know him personally, but I read planet GNOME where his blog is aggregated. In fact, he's the one who blogged about your newly started blog, which had me sent your direction :-)
Alright, I see! I might try it then, as soon as I get the patience to reinstall Ubuntu again.
SvaraRaderaGetdeb is great, thanks for directing me to it - I found Ardour 2.7.1 and Audacity 1.3.6 for the 32 bit platform.
Alright! Nice. Do you have a website of some sort? Music made with your FA-66 that I can hear?