Galway Computer Club

I finally reached the stage where all the software in normal everyday work involves using is cross platform open source software only . So unlike my previous attempts at Os crossover this time I'm actually confident it's going to work. Most of the time now my work is inside a browser so is totally os agnostic, meanwhile over the past three years I along with several others in the computer club have opted for FOSS whenever possible. In fact if it wasn't for my love of Ableton Live ands its dependency on windows (an old copy of XP) I'd have no use for proprietary software. And even in our multimedia work we have been experimenting with pd and expect to have a completely redesigned rig over the coming months. Although for now we stick strictly with our work office environment . This specificity helped me make a few decisions later as we shall see.

I've got four machines to install on so I can compare.

Mother:
Dell Inspiron 1720
2 Gig Ram

Darling:
Dell Lattiude Intel Pentium 1.2 Ghz
632 Meg Ram

Mildred:
Acer TravelMate 5520
1.2Gig Ram
AMD64 AthlonX2


Hal:
Homemade Server
755 CPU
Abit Motherboard
1 Gig Ram

Mother:
Mother is my main DAW or Digital Audio Workstation. I mainly use Ableton Live for writing and performing music and Cubase SX3 for mixing and mastering. So my original idea was to have a go using Ubuntu Studio and it's RT or real time kernel. I had no problems installing 9.4 but when I tried to upgrade to 9.10 I ended up with numerous harddrive mounting issues and while I learned a lot about various rescue shell procedures in the end I resorted to install the vanilla ubuntu for the time being. The reality is I don't intend to change my audio rig any time soon. However I will be augmenting my setup with 2 linux laptops, it just won't be on my main machine.

Saying that a vanilla Ubuntu dual boot means a) I can keep all networking functions off in windows and use Ubuntu for surfing and playing dialbo ii through wine as well as my normal admin duties which generally reside in a text editor or inside a browser.

So no RT for Mother but otherwise everything worked out of the box.

Darling:
This little baby's main job is as the house's media server. t has an external USB 1 Terra byte Drive attached to it and it is the last machine to be turned off each night. At present it only hosts music but I might add movies once it is attached via wire to the network rather than the current wireless connection.

At first I couldn't get the wireless to kick in and although there is now a restricted drivers procedure it wasn't working. Despite the fact that I had wireless working during a previous ubuntu attempt. Halfway through attempting the ndis wrapper method I reboot and the wireless kicked in.

So basically the wireless driver issue added about four extra hours to the installation process.

At present it is a dual boot machine because we still use AVS for video conversion and it reads some old dvdr better than anything else we have.

Mildred:
It was Mildred dieing a sudden death that initially prompted this particular ubuntu attempt. And as much as I am very positive about the success this time, I am also aware of some extra factors. a) I had four machines with which to compare results, and I altrered my plan on several occasions to account for failings.

So I will be installing Vist (shock horror) on this machine and using it to run reloume.

Hal:

Hal has been my desktop machine for the past three years. Currently running under windows XP, I want to upgrade it to ubuntu in order to replace SAM my aging server.

Although I intend to use it as a server I see no need to to install the vanilla version of ubuntu. I'll be using VNC to connect and I can install Apache etc myself.

I'll keep it as a dual boot for a few moths since there might be settings or files that I might yet need. Same goes for SAM, I'll keep him in the corner just in case.

Mildred:

Today I decided to have another go at installing the RT kernel version of Ubuntu thus most likely forgoing wireless assuming (correctly) that wireless would prove to be problematic with Ubuntu Studio.

Installation was painless using alternate Amd 64 version but although the os could see the broadcom. It just doesn't seem to kick into action. I'll investigate this further (when I have no other choice- spending hours and days getting restricted drivers to work is a real pain).

I'll play around with Jack, Pd and the various toys and tools that Ubuntu has to offer over the coming days.