Choosing a distro: what does Harrison recommend??

[rockandroller]

Have had some grief ( and many wasted hours) trying to run MB5 on Ubuntu studio. Tried all the recommended 'remove lsdspca' [sic] - etc. - but to no avail. Gave up and ran Ardour 5 instead - which works fine there. I do have a paid MB5 licence that I really want to use, though!

so.... I'd like to know the most reliable, solid, stable Linux for running MB5... What does Harrison use in-house?

Want to run WINE, (for some windows-native stuff like EZdrummer) but other than that I have no hard requirements as to any particular linux flavor.

[madmaxmiller]

so.... I'd like to know the most reliable, solid, stable Linux for running MB5... What does Harrison use in-house?

I don't know what Harrison are running, I personally ran all kinds of distros... AVLinux comes with a pre-installed Mixbus version - that's how I discovered Mixbus in 2013
I ran AVLinux in the studio for a while, with a bunch of different hardware configurations.
At the moment I run Linux Mint 19.1 with added kx repositories and preempt rt kernel in the studio and the "naked" Debian 9.5 (also with kx) on the laptop.
In fact, I didn't have a version where Mixbus didn't run - so far. Which version of Ubuntu Studio did you try? What's your hardware like? Btw, the hours are not wasted if spent learning ;-)

My recommendation for beginners is always AVLinux. Just don't apt-get dist-upgrade
MMM
http://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

[jonetsu]

Have had some grief ( and many wasted hours) trying to run MB5 on Ubuntu studio. [...] Want to run WINE, (for some windows-native stuff like EZdrummer) but other than that I have no hard requirements as to any particular linux flavor.

Isn't Ubuntu studio itself a bit plagued with problems ? Being cut from regular Canonical updates would be one of them, but it seems (I mean seems) that a few things were modified compared to an Ubuntu distro. From the comments I read about it some time ago. Haven't tried it since in any case I prefer to stick to well-maintained distros that have a team behind them, and preferably the Long Term Support versions of those distros.

I use Xubuntu 18.04 LTS. I run Bitwig and Mixbus32C natively, plus about 150 Windows plugins. It's easy to come up with that number since all Melda plugins by themselves are making a total of 117 plugins, including the 3 current beta plugins.

Before Xubuntu I ran Linux Mint KDE for many years. That LM dropped KDE support was a blessing since it allowed for the discovery of Xfce and Xubuntu which makes for a much snappier environment. The LM Xfce flavour has/had a major Xfce bug.

Since many years now I do not consider that I need a "studio" or "audio" distro. For me there's no use for such since everything is already in the official Ubuntu repos, including low-latency kernel, jackd, jack sink (to use firefox, mpv, etc with jackd), qjackctl, and other utilities.

[superb]

MX Linux here. Before that, Xubuntu and Linux Mint. I dont know much about Ubuntu Studio, but I will say that when I was getting started with Linux, I broke my system a few times incorrectly applying system tweaks, and a fresh install and another attempt at tweaks got things working properly.

Used lots of Windows plugins on all linux versions I’ve tried, mostly Waves stuff.

[madmaxmiller]

The LM Xfce flavour has/had a major Xfce bug.

Hi Jonetsu, I'm running LM/XFCE. Except the nVidia OpenGL problem (which is across distros anyway) I couldn't find any. Do you know more?

The thing which annoys me in XFCE/LXDE is that there's no easy drag'n drop menu editor. Main Menu doesn't cut it, really, you are as quick (and more flexible) editing the menu XML file directly...

Cheers,
MMM

[rockandroller]

so.... I'd like to know the most reliable, solid, stable Linux for running MB5... What does Harrison use in-house?

... version of Ubuntu Studio did you try? What's your hardware like? Btw, the hours are not wasted if spent learning ;-)

My recommendation for beginners is always AVLinux. Just don't apt-get dist-upgrade
MMM
http://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

It's an older AMD (A8, I think?) with (iirc) 16GB RAM. I put it together for a client 2 hours down the highway, we fly his crude (pre-production) tracks back and forth to my studio here via my FTP server in Kansas City.

It was originally installed with Ubuntu Studio 16 ( I think) and did run MB4.
Then I gave it the Ubuntu studio 18 upgrade, and that killed the MB4 DEAD (would no longer start). Tried MB5 shortly thereafter, but no joy.

Had to put Ardour 5 on it, which it is running now...

Harrison must have some 'distro of choice' that they have found runs really well with current MixBus - I hope that someone from their team will chime in soon

[Lexridge]

I have used Fedora Linux forever. It is bleeding edge (as opposed to "cutting edge")I have had great luck with it. It is solid, it is stable. I don't see myself ever changing from that. Now on version 29. My method is to always stay one major version behind the release schedule (Fedora 30 is the latest).

[madmaxmiller]

It was originally installed with Ubuntu Studio 16 ( I think) and did run MB4.
Then I gave it the Ubuntu studio 18 upgrade, and that killed the MB4 DEAD (would no longer start). Tried MB5 shortly thereafter, but no joy.

You might have run into a graphics driver problem. Or some other lib oddity. Did you try a fresh install? Version upgrades are always problematic and I would under no circumstances jump a version if I did so.

You have heard now from 4 different people and their distros which are running Mixbus perfectly, maybe you just try one of these? Most distros are available as live image, easy to put on a USB, startup, install Mixbus (you have enough RAM to do so) and see.
The one you like most gets installed and Bob's your uncle

MMM

[jonetsu]

Hi Jonetsu, I'm running LM/XFCE. Except the nVidia OpenGL problem (which is across distros anyway) I couldn't find any. Do you know more? The thing which annoys me in XFCE/LXDE is that there's no easy drag'n drop menu editor. Main Menu doesn't cut it, really, you are as quick (and more flexible) editing the menu XML file directly...

Hello Max. The problem I saw in January this year with Linux Mint 19.1 Xfce was that windows would become 'frozen' not movable, following a simple desktop switching sequence, like this, switching to desktop 3, starting firefox, switching back to desktop # 1 ...

Ctrl-F3, launch firefox, move it around
Ctrl-F1
Ctril-F3, try to move the firefox window (stuck)
Ctril-F1
Ctril-F3, try to move the firefox window (moves freely)

Defining your own shortcuts to switch desktop, like Alt-1, Alt-2, Alt-3 and Alt-4 gets rid of the problem but then, they had to be redefined as they become lost even though they are still listed in the Window Manager configuration each time a terminal is opened and at reboot.

I also asked in the LM forum. I found out that Xfce maintenance in LM was a bit behind at that time, compared to Xubuntu, and so I tried Xubuntu.

About the menu editor, I wouldn't know. Even though I thought about how nice it would be to have a desktop locking option as part of the desktop contextual right-click menu, it's still very much low importance as it can be found as part of the main menu. That's how far I thought about modifying menus. I'd say I'm totally satisfied with the menu structure in Xubuntu.

I actually very rarely go through the desktop menus, if at all. I've put icons for all apps (terminal, Bitwig, Mixbus32C, firefox, email client, qjackctl, kvm manager) in the desktop menu bar, with a clock, and that's all I use. Everything else I do is at the terminal (C++, etc...). and is started from a terminal (emacs, virtual machines, Visual Paradigm UML, pdf viewer, mpv, etc...).

Cheers.

[madmaxmiller]

Hello Max. The problem I saw in January this year with Linux Mint 19.1 Xfce was that windows would become 'frozen' not movable, following a simple desktop switching sequence, like this,
...

Thanks.
That must have been fixed, because I certainly would have noticed it.

I actually very rarely go through the desktop menus, if at all. I've put icons for all apps (terminal, Bitwig, Mixbus32C, firefox, email client, qjackctl, kvm manager) in the desktop menu bar, with a clock, and that's all I use.

That's how my quickstart bar looks like. But I love to separate the actual music stuff from the "Multimedia" menu, so I have a top folder "Music Production" with subfolders DAWs, Synths, Utilities... etc - I just need to remember to backup the menu file after every change... not a major problem, just a little moan

Happy producing!

MMM