Security updates for Windows XP end today

[Oldrottenhead]

i dragged over about 2gb of mp3s from external hard drive, still have 61.7gb free. of 74gb hard drive.

[Oldrottenhead]

i vaguely remember during install it saying you needed 9gb of free space on hard drive for full install.

[64Guitars]

74.5 GB is an odd size for a hard drive unless it's just one partition of a drive with multiple partitions. So I suspect that it's actuall 74.5 GiB (gibibytes rather than gigabytes). That would make it an 80 GB hard drive. Dolphin reports disk usage in GiB, so it would seem that the installation required about 10.8 GiB (74.5 - 61.7 - 2). That's about 11.6 GB.

[64Guitars]

Free software leaves me a bit confused. I could work for free too, but I still have to eat. I think is great all the voluntary work you find in the open community, but is it really Sustainable? Can the developers keep up the pace and the support when they have children of their own? I don't mind paying for software, providing the cost is right.

Yep, this confuses me too

Most open source developers have paying day jobs to support their families. They work on open source software projects in their spare time. Then again, developers working for companies like Canonical (Ubuntu) or Redhat, for example, do get paid for their work - open source software development is their day job. But most application developers work for free because they believe in their project and the concept of free open source software.

If an open source project is good and the developer decides he can no longer afford to spend time on it, it will often be picked up by another developer. Because the source code is freely available to anyone that wants it, this is possible and ensures that good projects will carry on even if the original developer abandons it.

Some of you may have heard that Avid Technology is having financial difficulty. They are the owners and distributors of Pro Tools as well as many other products. If they should go under and they don't sell the rights to Pro Tools to another company, Pro Tools users will be screwed. They will have no more support or updates. That probably won't happen but it illustrates the problem with closed source software like Pro Tools. This problem doesn't exist with open source software because anyone can get the source code and modify it to their own liking. So, if the original developer of a project disappears, the project can be picked up by someone else. It never really goes away unless something better comes along which makes it unnecessary to continue maintaining the older project. You could say that open source software is more sustainable than closed source software because nobody has the power to end an open source project. The developer can quit maintaining it but he can't stop anyone else from taking it on. Also, many open source projects involve several developers (in some cases, many). So even if one developer quits, there are still others who know the software and can continue to maintain it and improve it.

Oh, and I'd be interested in hearing about driver support for audio interfaces as well... (although I suspect it's more of a case of "talk to the hardware supplier" to see what drivers they do provide)

Actually, driver support is quite different in Linux than in the Windows world. In the Windows world, you generally have to download and install a separate driver for each piece of hardware that you add. With Linux, drivers for just about everything you could imagine are already included in the operating system or available in the repositories. When you buy a new piece of hardware and install it, it generally just works (most of the time). So you never have to install specific drivers. And hardware manufacturers seldom provide Linux drivers anyway. Most USB devices nowadays are class compliant, so they don't need any drivers.

For audio, Linux uses JACK which provides low-latency audio. It also allows you to route the audio output from one program into the input of one or more other programs. And you can route MIDI between applications and device too. It's a very powerful system. Because of JACK, there's no need for ASIO drivers for audio hardware and applications. Although, an ASIO bridge is provided with KXStudio to allow Windows programs such as REAPER to use JACK (the Windows program thinks it's using ASIO so it's happy).

But there is definitely some hardware that doesn't work with Linux. Usually it's because the manufacturers are unwilling to provide the necessary information for Linux developers to build proper drivers. Recently, my brother discovered that his Lexmark printer/scanner/copier wouldn't work in Linux. I did some digging and found that Lexmark refuses to provide information about their printers, so Linux doesn't support most Lexmark printers. Fortunately, most hardware manufacturers aren't so stubborn and stupid. They want to sell their products to Linux users so they gladly provide the necessary information to Linux developers to ensure that their product work in Linux. For example, I have three Hewlett-Packard printers (one is a printer/scanner/copier) and they all work just fine in Linux. I never had to install any separate drivers for any of them. They just worked.

If you're considering the purchase of some new hardware, you can check online to see if other Linux users are using the same hardware and if they had any trouble with it. Or you can buy from a local store that allows returns. Then if it doesn't work in Linux, you can take it back and try something else. I think most USB audio interfaces are class compliant, so you shouldn't have any trouble with those.

[64Guitars]

I think Linux, even user-friendly versions like Ubuntu have a steeper learning curve than Windows.

Maybe, but I'm not so sure. I think we become biased by what we're familiar with so anything that's different seems much harder to learn, though it probably isn't. To a young child learning to speak, it doesn't matter whether the language is English, Spanish, Italian, Greek, or whatever. The learning difficulty is about the same. But when an adult tries to learn a new language, they find it much harder because the language they're already familiar with interferes with their learning of the new language. I think it's the same with operating systems. If the first OS you learned was Linux, you probably wouldn't find it any harder to learn than someone whose first OS is Windows. And if someone who only knew Linux decided to learn Windows, they'd probably think the learning curve for Windows was much steeper than the learning curve for Linux. It's all relative I think.

I don't agree user friendly versions like Ubuntu or Mint are "light" in terms of computer specs. You need a modern computer to run them with decent speed.

It depends what you're comparing it to. When I said that Ubuntu and Mint work well with older hardware, I meant that if you have an older computer that works adequately with Windows XP, then it will work at least as well with Ubuntu or Mint. I think oldrottenhead confirmed this when he said that his laptop works faster with KXStudio than it did with Windows XP. The point I was trying to make is that you don't need to buy a new computer to use Ubuntu if your existing computer runs Windows XP adequately. It's a different story if you want to install Windows 8 on that same computer. It will probably be much too slow, if it works at all. Windows 8 needs more RAM, more disk space, and a faster processor than Windows XP or Ubuntu, so you'd probably have to buy a new computer to move from Windows XP to Windows 8.

But you're right that Ubuntu and Mint are not light in the sense that they'll work on ancient hardware like a 486 with 32 MB of RAM. For that, you'd need something much lighter such as Damn Small Linux.

I also think you forgot the most important: you can run a full OS from a pendisk! There are computers everywhere. If you carry a pendisk with your software and main docs, you can use any computer you find as your own, and without significative security issues (not 100% sure about that).

I have a plan to get e.g. puppy Linux, energy xt (it is payable, but cheap) and have a portable studio I can use virtually anywhere, at least to make all the mixing, editing, etc.).
So far I failed for a number of reasons (puppy Linux doesn't have much music software; other OS are too big for the pendisk, etc.)

Maybe you just need a bigger, faster pendrive. Prices are coming down on those things all the time. You can get a 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive (pendisk) for under $40 now. These are usually much faster than the old USB 2.0 drives. And I don't just mean the USB interface. The read/write speed of the flash memory is faster too.

I once installed Ubuntu 10.04 on an 8 GB USB 2.0 flash drive and it worked reasonably well from what I recall. So I think KXStudio would probably work okay from a 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drive. As oldrottenhead discovered, the full KXStudio install only needs about 12 GB of storage, so even a 16 GB USB flash drive should work. But why scrimp on storage when the prices are so low? Of course, a lot depends on the amount of RAM and the processor of the computer that you plug the USB flash drive into.

And yes, in theory we can argue about Linux vs Windows, but in the end, people pay for ease-of mind. If Windows and all its ecosystem is expensive and limited, Apple is even worse. And yet it is now one of the biggest  companies in the world.

I think people choose Windows and Mac because they don't know any better. They think that something that's free can't be any good. That's a shame because Linux is better than Windows in many ways. I don't know how it compares to OS X (also UNIX-based) because I've never tried it. But the impression I get is that Apple locks users into their way of thinking even worse than Microsoft does. So Linux is the only way to get software freedom. Well, maybe not the only way. There are a few other free operating systems such as BSD and its derivatives, but they're not nearly as popular as Linux (except OS X which is a derivative of BSD. But it's neither free nor open).

[AndyR]

Guys - you are heroes!

64G for the info...

... and orh for the "oh f*** it, let's GO!" spirit of adventure on his old laptop

That's pretty much the route I'm gonna go on my old laptop too - but it's very re-assuring seeing someone else blaze a trail first.

Not sure whether I'll get time this weekend, but my old laptop is gonna be seeing some "action" pretty soon!

[dasilvasings]

Thank you very much for all the answers


Makes sense. After all, the way programmers develop open source is not so different on how we deal with voluntary work. I still have an issue of productivity (8h/ day vs 1h/day, although organization can mitigate that), and working ethics (if I am paid to develop MS office, I certainly won't be developing Open Office in my spare time), but again that is such a specific issue, that I don't think it is worth discussing.

Professionally, in my unreal life, I have been working with closed source equipment developed by hardware companies, and it is a pain in the neck, because once you specify them, you cannot escape them, and then you have a maintenance contract attached that you simply can't control. I understand very well the advantages of "payable" open source. You pay for it, the software is yours. Fine. Just by curiosity, in this area, since the suppliers are basically hardware companies that develop software (they tend to give a turn-key solution), it is very difficult to find open source software. There is global trend in selling software as a service (SAAS), so that is basically an annual subscription of the service. But hat is probably because this is a relatively competitive market with some 20 players worldwide.

My project of the "studio-in-a-stick" is not a priority for the time being. I am not an expert in Linux, and I am still trying to understand what is persistency, and which Linux distribution will be light enough to hold my studio;  My objective is to work in any computer I find, so that can be my "Win7 laptop", of my dad's old Pentium. I am aware modern software uses too much resources for a very limited increase in efficiency (as in "productivity"), so the point is to "travel light". The USB3.0 is a good idea, even though old computers don't have it. In the meanwhile, I will definitely try KXStudio.

Because of music, and completely against what I think, I bought an Ipad. I think I never spent so much money in software (excluding the cost of the Windows OS) like now with the Ipad. First of all because the app market is wonderfully designed to make stupid people like me spend money, but also because apps are cheap and you don't bother to make an analysis of cost/ benefits/ risks.

However, and in the light of what you shared with us, what if the apps stop being supported? There are huge companies developing apps, but you also have a lot of independent (part time?!?) developers running their small business of... closed source software... Does it mean all the app market will be in a couple of years dominated by industry giants? Hmmm. Open source makes sense!

Sorry for posting so much spare thoughts. I think I have to make a song about this 



 

[Oldrottenhead]

... and orh for the "oh f*** it, let's GO!" spirit of adventure on his old laptop Cheesy

was more out of necessity than heroics, my laptop was virtually useless, it took ages to boot up, and you could never run more than one programme at a time or it would ground to a halt. installing kxstudio looks as if it is going to give it a new lease of life, tho i think it will still struggle with some of the bigger music software programmes.

[Flash Harry]

Oh my goodness - looks like we have had a break out of wispy beards and open toed sandals with camel coloured socks - anyone getting the urge to wear corduroys and a green jumper with leather arm patches?

[Oldrottenhead]

i would never be seen dead in socks n sandals.