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I’m very well with Ubuntu Studio 9.10, but I’ve tried last Indamixx Transmission OS. I’m pretty disappointed of the incompleteness of the UI and documentation, but the price was fine so I bought it.

Reading on Creating Digital Music I’ve read some comments about Debian testing as perfect for this, so I’m writing this post keep tracking of the software I install on it and the config tweaking to make it a fully functionable Linux Audio Workstation!

First of all the Debian version.

I choose Debian Testing netinstall. The latest daily build can be found here.

I’ve chosen an alternative desktop (LXDE) under advanced options at the cd-rom boot due to the speed of this light DE. English as language and the most used (default) options for the rest.
The partition (all in /) has been formatted in ext4 to increase speed; Install only the laptop metapackage (obviously the desktop environment) and the SSH server too.

Software installed:

Named as package in Debian; obviously you won’t need all of those (like emacs or gnome-do) but this is my list, not yours…

• jackd
• qjackctl
• ardour
• mixxx
• patchage
• vlc
• jack-rack
• sooperlooper
• wine
• gnome-do
• epdfviewer
• lmms
• emacs23-nox
• build-essential
• libncurses5-dev
• zlib1g-dev
• kernel-package
• network-manager

Kernel compilation:

You need to compile a RT kernel so let’s patch it! In this case I use a 2.6.31 vanilla kernel:

• wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.31.6.tar.bz2
• wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/patch-2.6.31.6-rt19.bz2
• tar xvjf linux-2.6.31.6.tar.bz2
• cd linux-2.6.31.6/
• bzcat ../patch-2.6.31.6-rt19.bz2 |patch -p1
• make clean && make mrproper
• make menuconfig
  Set the following values:
  • processor type and features -> Preemption mode -> complete preemption
  • processor type and features -> Timer frequency -> 1000Hz
  • Kernel Hacking -> Disable kernel debugging

  And in general disable what you don’t want to use in this kernel (you really need XBOX controller drivers?)

• make-kpkg clean
• export CONCURRECY_LEVEL=2
• time fakeroot make-kpkg –initrd –append-to-version=-rt-20100112 kernel_image kernel_headers (change the date if you want…)
• Now install all the *.deb packages in the directory

Another (maybe simpler) way to obtain a real time kernel:

• Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:
  deb http://debian.pengutronix.de/debian sid main contrib non-free
• give a sudo apt-get -q update
• when error appears give a sudo apt-get -q –allow-unauthenticated install pengutronix-archive-keyring
• sudo apt-get -q update
• sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6-rt-686

That’s it! Now you should have a 2.6.31.2-rt13-1-686 shiny new kernel!

Another (even simpler) way to obtain an updated kernel:

Stole it from the latest Ubuntu Studio!

I did do because I cannot manage my wifi card with the rt kernel included in the fedora repos and seems that the patch give a mess with my Ralink card.

Tweaking:

• Enabled bash completion (uncomment the entry in /etc/bash.bashrc)
• Add your local user to the sudo group (Ubuntu like behaviour); as root: adduser youruser sudo
• Enable real-time support while installing jackd
• To add a menu entry of an application that does not shows in the menu do that:
  • launch lxshortcuts -o appname.desktop (change appname, obviously)
  • fill all the fields (for example, I use sooperlooper so put “slgui” without quotes in the command field
  • mv appname.desktop /usr/share/applications/
  • Now the applications will show in the “other” menu so you can add it to a panel…
• This the qjackctl settings to obtain best performances (can be different from yours, feel free to experiment with):
  • Frames/Period: 512
  • Sample Rate: 48000
  • Periods/Buffer: 3

Comparisons:

• Fully updated Transmission OS (Indamixx): latency 23.2 ms
• Debian Testing (prepared with this guide): 32 ms
• For Ubuntu Sudio 9.10 (same jackd settings): 32 ms (as Debian)