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Post by cynical1 on Nov 20, 2022 6:03:14 GMT -5
To begin, I have a love/hate relationship with Linux. I'm one of those people who feel a tool should make your life easier. I'm also one of those people who was perfectly happy with Windows...I supported it professionally for over 20 years. (OK...ME, 8 and Vista really sucked, too) When Windows 7 went EOL I grudgingly went to Linux Mint. (..I don't believe it's Windows "10"...I'm convinced it's a "1" with a zero exponent corrected in Windows spell check...)
My Windows 7 music software still worked from a dual boot...until about 6 months ago and it finally tanked on me. Since it's no longer a supported OS I'm just going to let it be.
I finally decided my sanity was no longer all that important and decided to start putting together a DAWish setup in Linux Mint 20.x. Ardour and Rosegarden work fine. Hydrogen even talks to Rosegarden. I'm still getting over the practical loss of all my .vst's and vsti's. Sure I could use WINE...or recompile...but that's just a putinino's nightmare.
What I'm trying to do is what EZDrummer and Sonar just did out of the box. Drag and drop multiple MIDI drum pattern files into the same track to create a drum track on the fly. Rosegarden only allows one MIDI file to be dragged into a track...same with Hydrogen. Try and drag another and it overwrites whatever was there with the new file. LMMS, Qtractor, MusE, JJazzlab...and every other one I've tried, all suffer from a lack of functionality when it comes to this task. Drag and drop for MIDI is either non-existent or minimally useful...or a known bug.
If it's me, please feel free to enlighten me. I've only been at Linux for about 3 years and admit to a lack of foundational knowledge. I'm still getting the old M-Audio LT1010 to work...close...very close...
I'm getting used to the idea that it may be spelled LINUX, but it's pronounced, "not Windows". I do miss the functionality.
HTC1
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Post by sumgai on Nov 20, 2022 9:45:34 GMT -5
All the above from the guy who taught me how to use VirtualBox. Tsk, tsk, tsk. I successfully converted my previous laptop's installation of W7 into a VHD, and run it every day on the new laptop with VB, under Zorin 16. Hell, sometimes I even run it twice a day!  While I could get most everything working directly under Zorin, there were.... "features" that made me unhappy, to be sure. The real reason I went for Linux in the first place was to act as a firewall that Windows (any version) had no chance of bypassing. (Ever look inside of inet.dll? It's just the first place, among others, that allows Windows to bypass any on-board firewall and phone home... no matter who wrote the firewall software. Scary stuff.) While that all works as intended (I even have a VHD of W11, as it came with the laptop, so I know the Linux firewall (iptables) is doing the job), it's still just not the same - there I'll agree, it's not quite up to snuff for the advanced user. So, thank Gawd for virtual machines. They might require a PhD in rocket science to get them up and running the way you want, but once that's done, life returns to the familiar ways that "just work". Any questions? HTH sumgai |
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Post by cynical1 on Nov 20, 2022 12:21:55 GMT -5
I tried the virtual route in the beginning to test this stuff before I pulled the trigger. Results were underwhelming at the time. Honestly, it's a fight to get most things to work in Linux without massaging or beating it. I did find that after I tried the installs and configurations from a machine with a physical OS, it all worked much better. Windows had the same problem with VM's...try and get a DirectX app running a video stream to actually display on a Windows VM...
To say it works is a bit misleading. The apps talk, but the functionality is far from what I'm used to in Windows. I've learned to adjust in most areas, but I'm amazed that this is such a hurdle to get over...drag and drop MIDI...Sonar did that 20 years ago...in Windows XP...
HTC1
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Post by sumgai on Nov 20, 2022 14:33:07 GMT -5
Well, about the only thing I can say is that, don't forget what the top priority is for any platform - games!! If it's not directly game related, then it must be for servers, and those aren't sexy at all. IMHO, the Linux world is doing nothing more then giving lip service to about 90% of what the above-average user wants/needs. Browsing the web - check; Downloading and/or playing music - check; Office-type work - not so much a check; needs major improvements, especially in compatibility; Design and drafting, especially in 3D - needs improvement, but AutoCAD 2019 in 2D works; Creating videos or audios (can I say that, audios?) - a fat HELL NO! One would think that since MIDI has been around since the early 80's, that it would've been a no-brainer to start there, not to shelve it until the user-base is threatening a revolt... but no, it gets the short end of the stick. Stupid coders.  Hell's Bells, even Apple Mac's have better (way better!) programs that will work wonders as a poor man's DAW. And remember, the Mac is running on essentially BSD, a near clone of Unix/Linux. (Actually, it was originally a fork of Unix. Look up the history, if you're curious.) One would also think that a port would've been at least started by now, if not completely finished and released. tl;dr Priorities is the name of the game. It's games first, everything else sucks the hind teat. But I've found, over the years, that stackexchange.com often has contributors that provide insights into overcoming many of the deficiencies we've discussed here. You might consider trolling through that site for awhile.... Just a thought. HTH sumgai p.s. I am emphatically not against games, everyone is just as entitled as I am to his/her proclivities. I'm just not interested, at least not until I've finished curating my 2.3 TB collection of music.... which grows at about 100 to 150 MB a day. Sigh. I'm getting too old for this. p.p.s. PM me if you're interested in what I'm collecting, etc.  |
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Post by thetragichero on Nov 20, 2022 18:06:50 GMT -5
still have not gotten my main recording rig working on Linux, partially because it had been in a box in storage for almost a year. i have done a bit in my laptop with a super cheap usb mixer, although found out the hard way that monitoring and recording happened on the same "pipe" so the only way to monitor the geetar track I'm currently recording is by owning everything to one channel and taking a headphone off.... I'm sure that's more the interface
r/linuxaudio can be helpful
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Post by cynical1 on Nov 21, 2022 10:03:54 GMT -5
Priorities is the name of the game. It's games first, everything else sucks the hind teat Sadly, this seems to be the way of technology in general. Entertain me or be damned. There's also a severe dumbing down of the OS, it's functionality and access for the user to make things work. Windows seems to be drifting towards the philosophy that most of their users have their heads perennially stuck in a mayonnaise jar. Linux is just the opposite. It's like buying what you thought was a car, only to discover a pallet of parts and the instructions to assemble it in Latin. I remember trying to get Studio64 working when I still lived in Wisconsin. It just seemed like it would be easier to get a physical studio built and working than getting that thing to run longer than a Chihuahua in the snow. To be fair, Ardour , Rosegarden and Hydrogen have been stable and all seem to like each other. I'm satisfied with the features all seem to contain. I do miss my vst's and vsti's. I know Linux has equivalents...but it's Cadillacs and Yugos from what I've seen. Sorry penguin guys... To get back to your point, if games are the driver...and Linux, while improving, is still on the porch when it comes to running games...or finding games...and if the money is in games...and no one has found a reliable way to monetize Linux games...what does Linux want to be? I can't help but think the whole open source world has taken a way too altruistic approach to development to attract other serious or commercial software developers to port their apps to Linux. To paraphrase, "Software for software's sake, money for God's sake". While I do appreciate the fact that most of this stuff is free, a free bucket isn't much use if it's a free bucket with a hole in it. I would pay for functionality. HTC1 |
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Post by cynical1 on Nov 21, 2022 10:09:10 GMT -5
p.p.s. PM me if you're interested in what I'm collecting, etc. Any Grunge? HTC1 |
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Post by sumgai on Nov 21, 2022 11:37:13 GMT -5
p.p.s. PM me if you're interested in what I'm collecting, etc. Any Grunge? HTC1 Sorry, no grunge here. |
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Post by cynical1 on Nov 21, 2022 11:58:11 GMT -5
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Post by Yogi B on Nov 21, 2022 23:04:53 GMT -5
Drag and drop multiple MIDI drum pattern files into the same track to create a drum track on the fly. ... Try and drag another and it overwrites whatever was there with the new file. I had been thinking why would you want multiple overlapping drum parts inserted into a single track, but now I've realised it's more likely that you're talking about concatenating them. Is there no facility to copy MIDI events from one track to another — such that you could use one (or multiple) additional temporary track(s) to load in the individual patterns, then copy them into a main track?
Priorities is the name of the game. It's games first, everything else sucks the hind teat Sadly, this seems to be the way of technology in general. Entertain me or be damned. ... To get back to your point, if games are the driver...and Linux, while improving, is still on the porch when it comes to running games...or finding games...and if the money is in games...and no one has found a reliable way to monetize Linux games...what does Linux want to be? Well Valve have bet on Linux being good enough for the Steam Deck, and with Proton (A customised fork of Wine which includes DirectX to Vulkan translators) the situation is definitely better than even just a few years ago. ProtonDB lists game compatibility, and currently reports 5% of the entire Steam catalogue just working perfectly (platinum rating) and a further 5% running perfectly after tweaks (gold rating). Percentagewise that may not seem like much, but is 7500 games — plus, using metric of the entire catalogue includes many games that aren't popular enough to have any rating yet and a very long tail of shovelware that probably never will. A better metric may be out of the games that have any rating, in this case 40% are platinum and a further 34% are gold. It seems that current biggest shortcoming is with multiplayer games that incorporate anti-cheat mechanisms, which understandably take offence at being run via a compatibility layer. |
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Post by cynical1 on Nov 22, 2022 6:28:01 GMT -5
I had been thinking why would you want multiple overlapping drum parts inserted into a single track, but now I've realised it's more likely that you're talking about concatenating them. I used to run EZDrummer through Sonar Producer 6. (yeah, this was around 12-15 years ago) EZDrummer was a vsti plugin that talked to Sonar like they were old friends. In Sonar you could toggle between your Track window and the MIDI window, so you could either reposition a bar or edit it on the fly, then play it back through the Track view. I have thousands of short little MIDI files, most just giving you a bar or two of a drum part. You can take these subtle variations and make a respectable drag and drop drum track in about an hour...fills and all. The best part was using it to practice with. You could slap a few bars together, loop it and play along. When Asmith and Newey were here in 2013 that was where I pulled the drums from that we played to. Newey may remember better, but I think it took less that a few minutes to assemble and play back...in stereo... Well, yes, there is. Does it have the functionality of what I had in Windows 7 over 10 years ago? Not that I've found so far. To be fair, I'm still technically hamstrung with the Delta LT1010 card working 100% in Linux. This card always tied into a stereo receiver AUX input so I could mix through the stereo...rigged monitor system, but effective. I don't have the physical space to set that up where I live now, so I can't say with any certainty if Ardour can do this or not. It appears to have this functionality, I just can't hear the output...so there's that... I have tried about a half dozen MIDI sequencers in Linux. They all have good and bad features...but none seem to have the ability to drag a file from a FILE BROWSER window into a MIDI track within that sequencer to assemble a full song drumtrack. I can drag multiple files into a few, but each file you drag creates it's own track...all on the first bar. Interesting, but not particularly usable. Sure, you can drag these all into one track, on most of them. This is like coming back from the grocery store and leaving the bags in the car while you walk each individual item to the house. Same result in the end, just a huge waste of time. Linux has come a long way since I first had to put pre-Novell SuSE on a workstation. Took forever to get it working...only to find out, at the time, that MAC had more software ported to it than Linux. I am surprised at how far Linux has come over that past 25+ years. I'm running Linux Mint 20.x, which I have grown to dislike less and less over time. I believe it's just the "tribal knowledge" culture that exists in the Linux world that makes it so trying to use. It seems like the only way to get three Linux developers to agree on one standard is to make sure two are dead. [RANT] Wine. Don't get me started... It's like VMWare on a MAC so you can get your e-mail through Outlook. Rather than admit defeat, why not develop something comparable and steal the market, or fix all the holes in your OS to attract serious software developers to port to your OS. Nope, here's another workaround...or Masonic Handshake Code to run in xterm to fix a hole we never knew existed...or did know about, but never bothered to fix...SUDO this, hundino[/RANT] I still have more screwing around to do just to test this stuff. It just strikes me as odd that there's this much work to solve a problem that you know was solved over a decade ago...progress. HTC1 |
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