Spoiled by DSL

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Spoiled by DSL
started by: JohnS

Posted by JohnS on Mar. 27 2005,07:04

I've been using DSL for several months now for use as a music server/client with small dedicated computers. Today I decided to try Agnula which is billed as the end all of linux music distros.

Since I was familiar with DSL I decided to try the Debian version, this thing is huge. It takes forever to download and install (even with a high speed broadband connection) And then it set itself up as 1024x768, which is no good since I'm using it with a small 800x600 LCD sreen. So I had to bring the box (very tiny box BTW) into the room with the main computer and plug it into the main CRT display so I could see hat I was doing. There is nothing I could find like xsetup, I had to manually find the X files and configure stuff by hand. Then the ethernet didn't work, again I had to tweak the config files by hand. DSL got the net connection automatically. Then I tried a pen drive, no go, it doesn't have hotplug, I had to put in the pendrive and reeboot so it would recognize it, then manually edit fstab!

It even did a worse job of autodetecting and configuring the USB audio device, this is what it is supposed to be GOOD at and DSL was better!

There are two things it has going for it, it has the low latency kernel patches, and its a later kernel which has some fixes to make hotplug play nice with some USB sound devices. I can get around the hotplug issue with DSL and for what I'm doing the low latency issue is not a big deal. Agnula has TONS of audio applications all bundled into itself, which does beat finding and installing them, but the OS side of things stinks! DSL is SO much easier to install and use. For my case where I'm using it more as an embedded appliance type role raher than studio workstation environment, DSL blows Agnula out of the water.

Thanks for making it available.

John S.

Posted by noclobber on Mar. 28 2005,21:03

Sure makes you appreciate the work that's gone into Knoppix/DSL, doesn't it?

Could you start with DSL, then add enough stuff to it to give it the functionality of Agnula?

Posted by AwPhuch on Mar. 28 2005,21:41

Well there is the MyDSL repository..perhaps you could as Kent or one of the developers to whip you together one of those programs and you can test it for them

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by JohnS on Mar. 30 2005,02:36

There are two things that DSL does not have that would be nice, the low latency kernal patches, I don't have any clue how difficult that would be to add, and the other is something that was fixed in later 2.6 kernels that makes loading firmware into USB sound devices much easier. M-Audio makes some very popular USB sound devices, BUT they need to have firmware downloaded everytime they get powered up. There is a loader program called madfu, which works fine under DSL (once you compile it of course), BUT the device needs to see a USB bus reset in order to switch from waiting for firmware mode to running the firmware mode. The 2.4 kernels cannot do this properly, something was fixed recently that lets this happen properly with hotplug. With DSL you have to load the firmware (get a message saying it cannot be reset) then reboot without turning the power off to the device. When it comes up its working fine.

It would be very nice to have the reset feature working nicely, but the double boot DOES work.

The problem is I'm trying to get other audio nuts to use DSL for their music servers but this double boot issue is kind of a problem, you have to have a state dependant boot that does different things depending on what it did last time it booted. I can hack this up, but a lot of others are not very linux literate at all. they have no clue how to get around this.

The applications are not a problem, most of them are available as debian packages and load up fine with apt-get. A few need recompiling, but so far I have not had any problems with it all working together.

John S.

Posted by williahow on April 01 2005,06:38

Regarding double boot - On my laptop, for an M-Audio MobilePre USB device using madfu-firmware-0.4, following "make install" with the instructions below seems to allow device use straight away.

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/hotplug/usb/maudio_dfu /etc/hotplug/usb/
sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/hotplug/usb/maudio_dfu.usermap /etc/hotplug/usb/