Adventures in Karmic

[Ricardo Lameiro]

Thanks Brian,

I think you should put your path into a How to. may to append to the
UbuntuStudio preparation, I think Everyone should apreciate it very much
Thanks for sharing



2009/11/5 Brian David <beejunk at gmail.com>

> Karmic's been out for about a week now, and I've finally gotten everything
> to work well.  Here are my experiences and thoughts, in case they are useful
> to any of you.
>
> First, my hardware:
>
> Macbook, first generation
> 2.0Ghz processor
> 2Gb memory
> Presonus Firepod audio interface
>
> I was excited to discover that Ubuntu Studio can be installed from a USB
> stick.  This was very important to me since my Macbook's CD/DVD drive is
> broken.  I had attempted to do this in the past and failed, but this time
> around the following steps worked for me:
>
> 1) I used Gparted to format a 4Gb USB stick to FAT32.
> 2) I then used Gparted to check and verify the drive.  This is crucial,
> becuase for reasons I cannot explain, the USB stick would not work if I did
> not run this check.  It took me many days to figure out this odd little
> quirk.
> 3) I then used the USB Startup creator that can be found on a standard
> Ubuntu install.
>
> I highly reccommend installing from a USB stick.  I found it to be far
> quicker and more reliable.
>
> After install, I booted up.  Setting up my wireless card via the Network
> tool went off without a hitch, which was a relief.  Everything else seemed
> to work well, with the exception of my brightness keys, which do not work at
> all.  This is a major improvement over Jaunty, though, where the brightness
> keys would do crazy and random things.  On a side note, I like the fade-in
> on the Ubuntu Studio splash page, and the artwork and GTK theme are, as
> usual, beautiful.
>
> So far, so good.  Now to set everything up for audio recording.  I
> discovered that the 'Audio' group already existed, and that my account was
> already in that group, which was something I had to set up manually on
> Jaunty.  The 'Video' group also already existed, but my account was not yet
> in that group.  I use a firewire audio interface, and so it is necessary for
> me to put my account in the 'Video' group, which I then did.
>
> Next up, I opened Ubuntu Studio Controls and adjusted my settings.  This is
> where the first important glitch occurred.  After applying my settings, I
> viewed the /etc/security/limits.conf file to make sure everything had
> worked.  I discovered that Ubuntu Studio Controls had NOT inserted my 'nice'
> settings.  I attempted to use USC a few more times, but to no avail.  I then
> just set 'nice' manually.
>
> I rebooted, opened up the JACK Control and took my Firepod for a spin.  The
> good news is that JACK connected right away using FFADO, and there were none
> of the infamous permission problems that I've had before.  The bad news is
> that the performance was amazingly poor.  Even though I was only using 3% -
> 5% of my processor power, I was still getting an x-run every ten seconds or
> so, using the exact same settings that worked perfectly under Hardy.
>
> After much Googling, the solution to my problem was to be found on this
> page: http://alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Low_latency_howto#PAM.  In
> particular, the directions under the 'Thread Priorities' section solved my
> issues.  This was definitely something that I did not have to do under
> Hardy.  I wrote a small script to set all these priorities quickly, so it's
> not too much of a hassle.  Still, I was suprised to find that I had to do
> this at all and that it was not mentioned on any other how-to I had read
> (such as the much referenced Ubuntu Studio Preparation page).
>
> In the end, I had a system that was as rock solid as Hardy, even if it took
> some time to figure everything out.  But that's usually how it goes with a
> new OS.  All in all, the basic desktop experience of Karmic is the best I
> have seen to date.  Also, the new fonts package makes me VERY happy.
> However, when it comes to pro-audio, we are still far away from a
> user-friendly, no-hassle experience.  However, once you get the system
> working, the performance is impressive.
>
> Thanks for all your hard work everyone!  I look forward to finishing some
> serious projects on Karmic.
>
> --
> -Brian David
>
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>


-- 
Fagote / Contrafagote
Bassoon / Contra-bassoon
http://myspace.com/ricardolameiro
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