Preparing the system

Today I've done the following:

System tweaks and stuff
I've set the noatime mount option for my drives to increase performance.

With Boot-Up Manager (BUM) I disabled some services that I don't think I need running all the time.

My accents (as in é and á) didn't work - I fixed this with "setxkbmap se" (as I'm using a Swedish keymap).

Software updates
Thanks to khashayar, I now have Ardour 2.7.1 and Audacity 1.3.6 as well as recent versions of LMMS and Rosegarden - from www.getdeb.net. I haven't had much time to try them out yet, but Ardour does seem a bit faster than I'm used to.

Dual screen, big desktop
I have literally spent HOURS trying to figure out how to use both of my screens (the laptop's 1280x800 screen and my LCD with 1280x1024) for one, continuous desktop. After screwing around endlessly with aticonfig, I realized that the proprietary fglrx driver does not support such a virtual desktop - both screens would need to have the same resolution. I can, however, switch screens (this is called "clone mode") which is more than nothing, I guess. Apparently I can't install the more recent (and open source) radeon driver, as it depends on the drm module which throws a "Can't allocate memory" error when I try to modprobe it.

I checked in Ubuntu 8.10, and sure enough, the radeon driver is on and configuring the dual monitor desktop is easy as pie. No screwing around in the console (aticonfig) or with some proprietary controller software (amdcccle) - just click, drag and apply. Things do get better, it seems. Too bad the realtime kernel in Intrepid doesn't work with dual core processors. I know, I'm repeating this in each blog post, but it really is annoying. (On a side note: there seems to be a war between two drivers: radeon and radonhd. It is amusing and tragic at the same time).

Further steps
1. One comment to the bug report suggests that it's possible to install an older kernel in Intrepid and be able to use real time capabilities. I might try this. I'm pretty sure I have already but I can't remember what happened.

2. Do I really need real time capabilities? Maybe I can do without it for now?

3. Maybe I should check out the 64 bit version of Ubuntu Studio.

4. I must go to bed much earlier than 5am.

First steps - I've got sound!

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.