VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[D Voice]

Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” has been released, which will be supported until 2019.

Anybody tried it yet?

Cinnamon or MATE- is there any difference (better/worse) for VO- recording and editing- purposes?

[georgethetech]

Don't everybody speak at once... Keep fightin' the good fight, my man.
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[chrisvoco]

Since everyone is piping in here, I'll bite, too: I'm not an ubuntu sort, but I'll download mint and try it out since you mention it. Since we're concerned with its performance for production, I'll even be nice and run it all alone on actual hardware.

As for difference between cinnamon or mate, I don't see why it would make much of a difference at all. Probably more of a religious debate - personally, I sass that hoopy latest gnome, even though I liked playing around with desktop compositing.

What daw do you use under linux? I've learned to enjoy ardour, though when I first began diddling with it I found it a bit... well, obtuse, since my habits didn't match up with it very well.

...and since a good religious debate is always fun, my favorite distributions are opensuse, for normal machinery and personal use, and archlinux, for automated stuff and test bed for embedded hoo-hah. My little wooden homemade control surface, though, runs raspbian (principally because it has the pi in it, and Good Enough Is).
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Finally, Ford stops starting to say things and starts.

[D Voice]

[chrisvoco]

The difference between the two will be in the desktop manager: one basically includes an offshoot from the latest Gnome, the other includes the previous incarnation. The difference between the two Gnomes is one stands in the backyard, while the other either stands in the front or goes off to find you great travel deals.

Hee hee.

No, really, the [ DANGER! HIDEOUS BUZZWORD FOLLOWS! ] paradigm kinda shifted between older Gnome desktop environment and newer Gnome desktop environment. Neither will ruin you, nor will either shoot you into the stratosphere of artistic greatness.

Coming from Windows or Mac, whichever, you mayn't be familiar with the notion of being able to choose your interface. For our purpose here, let's say the desktop manager simply determines the feel of the thing: window shapes, what happens if you move your mouse here or there, what options are available to you for accessibility needs, etc.

Here is a good thing to read:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=135464

...which is precisely this discussion. Do note that at least one fella in that thread mentions *audio* issues with Cinnamon; of course, he may have some dingleflop $5 rocketfish usb dongle from a fleamarket, who knows.

I suppose a good question: what precise audio hardware do *you* intend to use?

That aside, if you don't already have a preference, I'd say go with flipping a coin. I don't think there are any particular performance differences in practice - at least, between Gnome 2 and Gnome 3, it's primarily a difference in how you diddle the interface.


Also see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_GNOME_3

It's certainly possible I've missed something, but using both on a regular basis for other work purposes, I haven't found any showstoppers.

One thing about Mint: it's pretty closely tied to the desktop environment it installs when it installs. If you decide to fiddle around and want to try one of the other kinds of desktops, the underlying linux skeleton won't mind, but you may have more than an entry-level chore discombobulating it. That may not matter to you, though, if you don't intend to fiddle about. There has long been a religious debate between Gnome lovers and those who like the other big one, which is called KDE, and which is actually not a desktop environment so much as it is a hideous, misbegotten blob of slow-moving tortoise detritus that accidentally washed up one morning shortly after the Titanic met the iceberg and the ship's sewers broke open, but there's no reason to get all haughty.

I would *adore* Reaper on linux. Reaper is my comfortable daily happy place.

Exception: the later Gnome doesn't like to play nice if you wanna be all fancy with completely superfluous desktop compositing, which is essentially a way to have all manner of incredibly slick eye candy going on that would make Mac lovers soil themselves and go home; the excessively fancier bits were more or less shoved aside because in linux we frequently have real work to do and should avoid distractions - kinda like the 409 commercial where the janitor accidentally uses the formula 410 and shoots a hole in the door. But I digress. For reference, though, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compositing_window_manager
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Finally, Ford stops starting to say things and starts.

[D Voice]

Perhaps I should have asked then: is there other distro(s) which you might recommend, which might be better than Mint?

I know that up till now, audio has been a weak spot for Linux,

As I say, I will probably end up keeping Windows XP at least for certain functions (connecting interfaces; DAW, etc.). In that case, I would then want the Linux computer or partition for internet, etc.

[chrisvoco]

I swear I am really not trying to drive you in circles when I say:

Well, there's really no one true right answer.

There is a distro hiding beneath every rock. I think that the rocks themselves might actually be packaging their own distributions these days.

If compelled at gunpoint to give an answer, I'd probably still waffle on it.

Guess I'd say I *like* suse, but I can't really offer any actual technical reason. I also prefer Coke to Pepsi. Both have sugar and caffeine.

Do you have a separate machine to try out different ones?

Or, if your existing primary computer is fairly beefy, you can install Virtual Box (which is fairly user friendly) and create any number of virtual machines running whatever different distributions you'd like to try. If you do that, you can test drive as many as you want and just blow them away if they don't move you. The other cool thing to doing it with virtual machines is that, with a suitably powerful computer, you can actually run them *simultaneously* and switch between them just as you would switch between "normal" programs running on your computer.
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Finally, Ford stops starting to say things and starts.

[kgenus]

To answer the question of the OP, if you have hardware supported by Linux, there will be no difference for recording or editing. I, personally, use stripped down versions of Linux so as not to add things I neither need nor want. I download the OS, the development packages with related libraries so I can compile the software I need.

I've been using Linux since 1993 when the only versions were what you could find at UNC or code Linus Torvald and his buddies were making available. The whole idea of "this is better than that" really comes down to "can I do this without someone's script." It's like the more you know, the less you need, and the less you use, the more you learn about what you need. Sad, but true.

Also, neither Ardour nor Harrison Mixbus have ever crashed out while recording (on my system anyway).
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Genus