[Ardour-Users] getting started

[Raffaele]

2009/4/13 John Emmas <johne53 at tiscali.co.uk>

> Mark and Noel have already mentioned an important point but I think it
> should be mentioned again - hardware!!
>
> If you're new to Linux, the first thing you need to know is to ignore the
> myth that "Linux will run on anything".  It won't.  In fact, Linux is very
> fussy about what hardware you run it on.  Not as fussy as OS-X but a lot
> more fussy than Windows.  Before installing any version of Linux, visit the
> distro's forum and find out if any other users have got the same hardware
> as
> you.  Find out what problems they had - or whether there are any known
> problems with (say) your sound card or graphics card.  If you possibly can,
> try out a "live CD" of your chosen distro.  They let you try out a distro
> without making any changes to your hard drive.  Live CD's are often
> available free with Linux magazines, so take a stroll to a good newsagent
> and see what's available.
>
> Now for some specific tips:- If you're accessing the internet via a
> broadband modem, forget it.  Ditch it, buy yourself a router and get it
> running before you go any further.
>
> And before you install Linux, BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE and expect lots of
> silly, frustrating problems.  For example, my very first choice was Fedora
> (which many people are using very successfully).  And yet Fedora trashed my
> partition table three times before I eventually gave up with it.  You might
> also encounter problems if you've got a flat panel monitor.  Many of the
> distros that I tried defaulted to 70Hz refresh rate (which is outside the
> range of most flat panel displays).  I needed to install using a CRT
> monitor
> and then set the display properties to something that my flat panel could
> live with.
>
> And don't expect the simple hardware configuration that you might be used
> to with Windows or Mac.  At first, you'll probably spend a lot of your time
> manually editing config files.  Again, BACK EVERYTHING UP before
> and after editing these files - or you'll probably find yourself doing this
> over & over again.
>
> I tried a total of 9 Linux distros before settling on 64studio.  However
> OpenSuse is also worth an honorable mention because of its sheer
> friendliness.  It never seems to get recommended for audio use but it
> worked
> fine for me and was undoubtedly the most stable distro I've ever used.
> Whatever distro you choose, sooner or late you'll need to install a
> real-time kernel.  Therefore, finding a distro that uses one out of the box
> might save you some hassle.
>
> Finally, consider the question of dual-booting.  Will you need to dual boot
> between say, Linux and Windows?  If so, Linux offers a handy little utility
> called 'grub' which displays a boot menu at start-up.  OpenSuse's version
> is
> particularly attractive because it's graphical and animated (most of the
> others are just text based).  But (and this bit's important) grub needs to
> run on a partition whose number WILL NOT CHANGE if you add further
> partitions.  Things will work out better if you can install Linux on your
> first primary partition.  If that's not available, create an extended
> partition and install Linux on your first logical partition.  Most distros
> always allocate these two partitions with a permanent number, so you can
> add
> and delete other paritions without screwing up your grub partition.  If you
> choose any other partition and then (later) you add or delete some totally
> unrelated partition, there's an excellent chance that you'll end up with an
> unbootable system.
>
> Welcome to the world of Linux.  It can be a rocky road to begin with and
> you'll soon learn that your mistakes won't often go unpunished.  It does
> eventually get easier though.
>
> John


Well, everyone of us got some nightmare story to tell about linux but I
think a newbie can safely install and succesfully run eg. (in my experience)
k/ubuntu, 64studio, ubuntu studio and even debian lenny (stable) without
particular problems.

The worst cases are related to newer devices (which get solved very rapidly
by the kernel folks) or very (bad) older ones and they're quite well known.

Maybe you have been very unlucky with some hw mix but actually I would not
say installing lenny it's not safe or that with linux in general it's very
easy to get things unconfigured or broken.

The only thing a newbie must really know and learn to use from the beginning
is how to use man & info pages, because everything to broke and/or fix your
system is written there.

regards
r
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