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Thread: Thought I'd try something new......

  1. #1
    Imagine's Avatar
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    Default Thought I'd try something new......

    OK - my backup lappy screen somehow got smashed in the back of the van on Saturday night (don't ask how...it's flight cased etc. but happens sometimes).

    So, here I sit playing with a spare backup machine (yes....I have backups of the backup). It's not that powerful by today's standards and I really couldn't be bothered with Windoze tonight seeing how the last update seems to have made my office machine very selective as to when it's going to let me connect to the interweb.

    I've installed Ubuntu on it! (Peter....stop looking so bewildered over in the corner there!)

    More to the point, I've also sussed out how to install something called Mixxxxxxxx, and it's talking to my VMS4.1 (backup mixer which is used with the backup lappy) - result! (I feel really clever at this point )

    So - time for some questions from the knowledgeable folks among us (this is probably going to tickle Justin;s fancy more than anyone).

    For mobile DJing....just how stable is Linux? The machine is more than capable of running it (although could probably do with a bigger hard drive in it...I can deal with that).
    How stable is Mixxxxx? I realise it's not as full featured as VDJ which is my main weapon of choice (and at £300 for the license will remain so until it wears out!)....but this is only the fail-safe for when the main system goes boobies up and appears to do what I'd need it to do in the event that the master playout goes North.

    And finally.....I currently use Freestyler on the main playout with an Entec Open DMX dongle thingy which I've added a WiFi card from China into (mainly because there's a VDJ plugin which sends FS the beat grid and plays nicely with my lighting sequences). Obviously FS isn't available on Linux....is there something similar or better which would do the job, and even better use either a code sent from Mixxxx or at least the internal mic to pick up the beats to move the sequences along in time with the music?

    Am I asking too much? Dunno....I'm just amazed that I've got Linux to actually do something at the moment....huge learning curve coming up

  2. #2

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    Quote Originally Posted by Imagine View Post
    OK - my backup lappy screen somehow got smashed in the back of the van on Saturday night (don't ask how...it's flight cased etc. but happens sometimes).

    So, here I sit playing with a spare backup machine (yes....I have backups of the backup). It's not that powerful by today's standards and I really couldn't be bothered with Windoze tonight seeing how the last update seems to have made my office machine very selective as to when it's going to let me connect to the interweb.

    I've installed Ubuntu on it! (Peter....stop looking so bewildered over in the corner there!)

    More to the point, I've also sussed out how to install something called Mixxxxxxxx, and it's talking to my VMS4.1 (backup mixer which is used with the backup lappy) - result! (I feel really clever at this point )

    So - time for some questions from the knowledgeable folks among us (this is probably going to tickle Justin;s fancy more than anyone).

    For mobile DJing....just how stable is Linux? The machine is more than capable of running it (although could probably do with a bigger hard drive in it...I can deal with that).
    How stable is Mixxxxx? I realise it's not as full featured as VDJ which is my main weapon of choice (and at £300 for the license will remain so until it wears out!)....but this is only the fail-safe for when the main system goes boobies up and appears to do what I'd need it to do in the event that the master playout goes North.

    And finally.....I currently use Freestyler on the main playout with an Entec Open DMX dongle thingy which I've added a WiFi card from China into (mainly because there's a VDJ plugin which sends FS the beat grid and plays nicely with my lighting sequences). Obviously FS isn't available on Linux....is there something similar or better which would do the job, and even better use either a code sent from Mixxxx or at least the internal mic to pick up the beats to move the sequences along in time with the music?

    Am I asking too much? Dunno....I'm just amazed that I've got Linux to actually do something at the moment....huge learning curve coming up
    I run mixxx on top of Xubuntu (Ubuntu's window manager sucks & is bloated as hell) from an SSD. Boots in like 15 secs, and is bombproof except when the USB controller gets panicked by something (hasn't happened since I fitted ferrites to the USB cables I use).

    I also, on my playout laptop (yikes you say, but HUSH, I say!) do all my DMX controlling too. Piece of cake. I'm plotting to do away with that though cos switching between programs is a chore sometimes (yes I know it's only clicking on the bottom taskbar but...)... Raspberry Pi with QLC+, wifi dongle, USB DMX adapter (wireless DMX of course too!) and TouchOSC running on an Android tablet. Seriously good fun.

    You can quite easily send beats out of Mixxx over MIDI. Search the mixxx forums. Somebody wrote a thing.

    Oh and how bombproof is bombproof? Well, I've had to unplug my controller & merely restart Mixxx THREE times out of oh I dunno.. how many gigs will I have done in 23 months? It's under 1% dropout rate anyway. There's only been one time I had to reboot, but that was because I'd transferred a file over an SD card & just yoinked it out. Mixxx was still playing music, but the whole system went unresponsive. Came back up in a shake of a lamb's tail, but backup was already on standby anyway.
    Last edited by Nakatomi; 07-09-2016 at 01:11 AM.

  3. #3

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    As for feeling clever Wayne... You've only just installed it. Here's a little about my experiences with Linux so far...

    I got into Linux about 15 years ago when I bought a TV tuner card. It didn't work in Windows for more than 5 minutes at a time so a work colleague said "try mythtv". I searched on it & responded with "Gah! NO! You need Linux to run that!". So, off I went on a long voyage of discovery - using a version of Linux called Gentoo. I was intrepid, and impressionable so I did what I thought best - do a 'stage 1 install' which essentially means downloading a bare minimum system & compiling literally everything else. On a 900Mhz Athlon box.

    So then came to the point where I needed to make the TV tuner card work. Except it wouldn't, cos the kernel wasn't new enough. The card would work, but only with patches to the kernel. I was no stranger to kernel compilation by this point though, but because I was working from a windows machine reading docs off the internet & typing commands in on the linux machine, I was puzzled for almost a whole night why the command patch -pl < dvbtunerpatch.patch wouldn't work. It kept saying l is not a number. I KNOW IT ISN'T! I'm copying it off a screen though! Took me ages to realise that in the courier font, the number 1 and the lower case l look very similar

    From there, I got the system working, but because I'd got lazy I was doing everything as root & hadn't got around to setting up a general user yet. The rm -rf / command I used (damn premature return key!) wiped the whole system clean meaning I had to start again. I didn't repeat that mistake. Ever.

    I got mythtv running, and eventually added more TV tuners & storage.. and it's still going to this day. I became a major contributor to the mythtv project in terms of GUI themes (skins if you like) and even added new features I wanted. I tried to add more, but sadly my coding skills are so-so (and OO programming to the uninitiated is a hard hill to climb).

    I know people who've written programs galore, and even device drivers. I've taken MythTV on the road to various Linux expos to show it off & acted as unofficial spokesman - all a very long time ago now, but it was great fun a lot of the time doing unprepared presentations & meeting the great unwashed Linux user.

    We still use MythTV at home - it's our video recorder & film repository. I've tried to give it up many a time, but sadly all the alternatives are just yucky (Sky, Youview etc) , not as joined together or just plain illegal & unreliable (Kodi & plugins.. Blech). Its days are numbered though - one of the tuner cards is on its way out (it's been on 24/7 for the best part of 15 years now!) & the others will likely follow. To replace them will just be too expensive - needing a new motherboard, CPU etc too..

    So yeah - you've had your first taste of Linux. I'm not in any way trying to trivialise what you've achieved - just wait til it doesn't do quite what you want it to do. Will you break out an editor & try hacking bits on it yourself? Go on, you know you wanna..

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