I gave Linux Agnula A Try. Don't waste your time! It sucks

All this Linux talk piqued my interest, especially as it relates to my wallet because I am tired of paying excessive amounts of money on software that seems to be on a never ending upgrade mill. So I decided to follow the advice of some other posts and give this Linux Agnula thing a try. I've never used Linux before, but my Mac runs OSX.

The bottom line is Agnula and Linux sucks for this kind of work.

are supposed to download this pile of tripe. Ok, Download seems like a good bet.

So now I am met with what? WTF *IS* this stuff? Click on Gforge installation and you get met with this friendly page:

poo! WTF! I want to install a Linux music system, not design one!

So finally I figure out where to get this beast, WTF RhMudi is I don't know but it shows so promise as at least I see some ISO's there.

Looking in the INSTALL directory I am met with this little joy:

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How to install Rehmudi-2.0 --------------------------

A) Install From CDROM -----------------

If you had already installed Fedora Core 1

1. insert cdrom Rehmudi-2.0 into the CDROM Drive 2. be root and execute "mountmnt-cdrom" (mouting cdrom) 3. execute "cdmnt-cdrom" (enter in the directory where there is Rehmudi trees) 4. execute ".-install.sh" (install Rehmudi) 5. After installation : reboot your machine 6. during reboot kudzu will detect you materiels, click "OK" or "Configure" for all periphericals detected (all configuration will be done automatically) 7. you can test for example alsaplayer

nb : if you don't have any sound, check your sound mixer nb : not sound after checking your mixer , reboot your machine to take alsa driver effect nb : after reboot, always not sound, use alsaconf to configure manually alsa drivers that will update youretc-modules.conf file ... reboot

B) If your machine is blank (not OS installed in you machine)

å å å 1. insert first cdrom Fedora Core 1, boot on this cdrom å å å 2. follow anaconda instructions .... å å å 3. anaconda will ask you to insert the 2nd and 3th cdrom å å å 4. after installation , follow instructions of A) How to install from CDROM

nb : Test was done with "Desktop Installation" option of Fedora Core 1 installation ..... i will advice you to install complete distribution of Fedora Core 1 to avoid dependencies problems Rehmudi-2.0

More about installation of Fedora Core 1 before installing Rehmudi ------------------------------------------------------------------

1. first, you have to install all Fedora Core 1 with KDE or GNOME graphical interface. If you have already installed Fedora Core 1 full release, see next

I advice you to install the full distro of Fedora Core 1 because of all dependencies of Agnula Packages ...

If you did not install the full distro of Fedora Core 1, so update your Fedora Core 1 for full distro (it will only add all packages that were not installed during your latest install).

If you are still on Red Hat Linux 7.3, So update you machine on Red Hat Linux 8.0 , 9.0 and Fedora Core 1 in final

2. download "Rehmudi-2.0" (iso, tar.bz2 ) from

3. mountmnt-cdrom cdmnt-cdrom .-install.sh

"install.sh" script will prepare your system-hardware environment .... by installing kernel in Low Latency, alsa module (alsa-kernel), kudzu (for automatic detecting sound cards)

4. reboot your machine for the first time (it will configure all sound card, mouse,network interface etc ... devices ) and allow you to boot from the new kernel. Please boot on the "2.4.22-6.ll" or on the "2.4.22-6.ll.smp" kernel not on your old kernel.

During the reboot, kudzu will redetect all your hardwares, please click on OK for all kudzu detects

5. After rebooting your machine, test if you have sound with alsa drivers (execute xmms or alsaplayer)

If you don t have any sound check : mixer (alsamixergui) sound card connecting with your speakers In final, execute "alsaconf" for configuring alsa drivers detecting (-etc-module.conf)

nb : theorically, kudzu detect your sound card and update youretc-module.conf

6. Make the final reboot now to take Alsa sound devices effects.

Technical specification -----------------------

contain of agnulainstaller tree :

Bonus Changelog docs errors install.py install.sh listpackages oldconfig RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora RPMS SRPMS uninstall.sh

* Bonus contains some alsa packages and kernel with newer version and jdk for Jmax, you can find back install.py.old that is version 1.1 of rehmudi installer ... if you usually use it, feel free to use it back

~-listpackages-install.in contain the list of Agnula packages for install.py script it's now in ~-listpackages ~-listpackages-g*.rpm list of group dependances of packages for install ~-listpackages-ug*.rpm list of group dependances of packages for uninstall

* docs contains documentations of rehmudi-2.0, all descriptions of each RPM package

* errors, some errors compiling during rehmudi building, those RPMS will be not in rehmudi-2.0, just for developpers who want to contribute in our projetc and offer us patches ... thank you by advanced

olfconfig initially empty, but after installation ... it contains your old system configuration likeetc-modules.conf andetc-sysconfig-hwconf .... this directory is used for restoring your old configuration

install.sh install kernel Low Latency and pmw packages and call install.py for GUI installer

install.py GUI installer which install all Agnula packages

nb : the particularity of rehmudi-2.0 is : When Gui installeur is displayed, this allow you to select the packages that you want, by default all packages are choosen (set 1). nb : At line 168, you can switch button.setactive(1) or button.setactive(0) for select all or deselect all .

install.log is created by install.sh during the install process

docs-INSTALL is this file

RPMS contains all binary

SRPMS contains all SOURCES RPMS

Alsa drivers ------------

I've only subsbreastuted the PCI OSS drivers by the PCI ALSA drivers, if never you have an ISA sound card again, please configure it bye "redhat-config-soundcard".

If your ALSA soundcard driver is in the alsa-drivers-0.9 package, but it was not loaded in the memory (see bye "lsmod"), please add it into theetc-modules.conf manually and see www.alsa-project for detailed soon as possible. Check if alsasound service is UP if not execute "chkconfig alsasound on" Or execute "alsaconf".

How to boot by default on the new kernel ----------------------------------------

By default, the OS boot on your new kernel .... in Low Latency ... if not :

if the new kernel is on the first line, or "1" is it is on the second line ...) to boot you machine automatically on the new kernel

for example :

in myboot-grub-grub.conf

default=1 # boot on the 2.4.22-6.ll kernel by default timeout=10 splashimage=(hd0,0)-boot-grub-splash.xpm.gz breastle Red Hat Linux (2.4.22-6.ll) root (hd0,0) kernelboot-vmlinuz-2.4.22-6.ll ro root=-dev-md0 hdd=ide-scsi initrdboot-initrd-2.4.22-6.ll.img breastle Red Hat Linux (2.4.22-6.llsmp) root (hd0,0) kernelboot-vmlinuz-2.4.19-1.llsmp ro root=-dev-md0 hdd=ide-scsi initrdboot-initrd-2.4.19-1.llsmp.img breastle Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-3smp) root (hd0,0) kernelboot-vmlinuz-2.4.18-3smp ro root=-dev-md0 hdd=ide-scsi initrdboot-initrd-2.4.18-3smp.img

because my machine is 4 processors

Ardour ------

Before executing "ardour" (-usr-bin-ardour) do not forget to copy fromusr-ardourrc to $HOME-.ardourrc

"cpusr-ardourrc $HOME-.ardourrc" "-usr-bin-ardour"

nb: don t forget to run jackd before executing ardour ("jackd -d alsa")

Jmax ----

relocateable) Version : 4.0.2 Vendor: (none) 11:17:28 AM CEST localhost.localdomain Group : Applications-Multimedia Source RPM: Size : 1356317 License: GPL Signature : (none) Packager : Patrice Tisserand Summary : Java gui for jMax Description : Java Graphical User Interface for jMax

licensed as Free Software under the GNU General Public License (GPL), it depends upon a proprietary Java runtime environment, so in order to be able to use it, you would also have to find, install and run proprietary software. The AGNULA consortium only provides the package for completeness reference or reimplementation purposes. There are freedom-preserving alternatives to this package and we Python bindings. Should you choose to proceed, information about the Java Runtime Environments is available at Information about the Java situation and its problems along with the efforts to finally Free Java are available at

so What you have to do to make Jmax running :

cdmnt-cdrom-Bonus .-j2sdk-142-nb-351-bin-linux.bin export PATH=-opt-j2sdk-142-nb-351-j2sdk1.4.2-binusr-bin-jackd -d alsa # if jackd is not started, start it because Jmax need itusr-bin-jmax

remerciements

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HOLY poo CATWOMAN !!!!!!!!!

Anyone who doesn't get the poo scared out of them at this point is either a dedicated gearhead or a complete nut!

So, being a little bit of both I follow the instructions and with some mods it seems to install ok so now I go to use it.

First problem: A message saying I don't have access to my Soundcards Hardware. Huh?

Second problem: Jack is running as another user? Huh? I am the only user on this machine.

Ok, I scour the net and discover all this poo, and I do mean poo, has to be run as superuser. Yea I can't wait to see the Windows users try and wrap their little fingers around this crap.

So I get everything running, well sort of. I import a couple of waves in Ardour and it seems to work, at least until I go to save it and then the entire enchilada crashes!! Real quality huh!

I give Audacity a try and while it doesn't crash it is VERY slow at doing just about anything and this is on a Pentium 4 Hypothreaded with 2 gig of main memory and 7krpm drives.

I play with some of the seemingly 100's of plugins and don't hear anything I like.

After playing for a couple of hours, I trash this POS and file it in the circular file.

Conclusion is if you want to DESIGN audio software and tinker around with Linux, this might be just what you are looking for, but don't expect to ever make music with this pig. You'd be better off using the limited version of Cubase that comes with many soundcards.

Boyce