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Linux for the Audiophile - Snakeoil OS


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WARNING

when running the installation, the system formats all attached storage devices, not only the one selected.

This is a major bug.

Thanks for that bug report.

 

I'd double check this to see how it happens. Ubiquity should tell you whether the partitions will be formatted, or not, and usually, it does a very good job. You'd know if the partition will be formatted or not by looking at the "Format" column, if it's a ticked, it will be formatted. e.g.

 

partition_created.png

 

If Ubiquity tries to format everything, then have to resort to manual mode, this write-up should explain how.

 

I'd test and confirm this bug soon.

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I tried running Snakeoil software as I wanted to experiment with Linux environments on my audio system (after using Win10/Fidelizer/ProcessLasso/JRiver). Snakeoil really surprised me by the sound quality it offers! In my set-up it definitely beats other Linux based solutions I tried so far like the latest versions of Vortexbox 2.4 and Daphile.

 

Although the software is intended to be used on Atom based processors it also worked on my i5 processor out of the box without any problem. Eazy peazy to mount my NAS where my music is stored as well. The provided on-line manual is clear what settings should be used.

 

Personally I think this software really deserves a better name. I can advise everybody to give it a try. As it can be run in Live mode using an USB stick it’s without any risk. (especially if you decouple you existing hard-disk first like I did)

 

One of the features I would like to have most is some kind of configuration file containing the basic settings like IP-address, mounts etc. that can be loaded in the Live environment so I don’t have to go through this set-up every time.

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WARNING

when running the installation, the system formats all attached storage devices, not only the one selected.

This is a major bug.

As mentioned above I can't replicate this. Can you expand on this? thanks.

 

I tried running Snakeoil software as I wanted to experiment with Linux environments on my audio system (after using Win10/Fidelizer/ProcessLasso/JRiver). Snakeoil really surprised me by the sound quality it offers! In my set-up it definitely beats other Linux based solutions I tried so far like the latest versions of Vortexbox 2.4 and Daphile.

 

Although the software is intended to be used on Atom based processors it also worked on my i5 processor out of the box without any problem. Eazy peazy to mount my NAS where my music is stored as well. The provided on-line manual is clear what settings should be used.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

 

Personally I think this software really deserves a better name. I can advise everybody to give it a try. As it can be run in Live mode using an USB stick it’s without any risk. (especially if you decouple you existing hard-disk first like I did)

To be honest I thought people will simply laugh off the name and carry on, or perhaps maybe a bit of "WTF". Really did not anticipate some people's negative reaction towards a name - to the extent of using a word like 'abhor'.

 

Idioms like "don't judge a book by it's cover", or Shakespeare's quote of "rose by any other name would smell as sweet" really comes to mind. What's in a name really? I guess I just didn't factor in the cultural aspect properly when I sign up for a domain name. :( Being a new user here at CA certainly didn't help.

 

On the bright side, if you feel guarded about the name, and when Snakeoil really do sound good to you, then you know you're on to something here.

 

Looking past the name, what I'm doing is give audiophiles an easy to use Linux System with a web interface to do most of the tasks a typical audiophile needs to do.

 

For those who wants do more - there is a user account you can log in to to expand the OS's functionality. But if they don't know how to use Linux, they can tell me what they want and I can wrap up things in a neat bundle for them to upload to their Snakeoil computer.

 

Snakeoil is really about giving back the audiophile the power of choice - they can choose the kernel they want, they can choose the player they want. The Linux OS is simply too hard for first timer to dive immediately into, hopefully Snakeoil will change that.

 

Here in Perth we have an active discussion among the first beta testers on which kernel/player/hardware combination sounds best. None of them are Linux users. Snakeoil took out the complications of Linux, and let audiophiles concentrate on the things they like.

 

One of the features I would like to have most is some kind of configuration file containing the basic settings like IP-address, mounts etc. that can be loaded in the Live environment so I don’t have to go through this set-up every time.

This can be done if you setup the USB as a persistent media. There are more HOWTO articles on the Internet on this, but none of them are really targeted for the novice.

 

This is in my list of things to do. Hopefully I will get this persistent sorted out soon. Many people are asking for this so I'm already bumping the priority up.

 

With the latest 0.1.3 ISO, the booting sequence is already setup as such:

 

  1. if you boot LiveCD, the installer will pop up; and
  2. if you boot in persistent mode, the installer will not load (saving RAM and other computer resources).

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Enjoyed this thread so far and tried to use Snakeoil, but no luck so far.

 

I created a live cd USB using Rufus. On the PC I wanted to use with Snakeoil, when I interrupt boot up, it gives me a single USB option: "UEFI" followed by the name of the USB stick. If I select that option, the PC just ignores it and (eventually) boots into my normal operating system. Just by way of context, I installed Mint from a USB stick using the exact same option on this PC without problem 2 days earlier.

 

I then tried the Snakeoil USB in another PC just as a test. This time I got 2 USB options when interrupting boot: one as above and another one with just the name of the USB stick, not preceded by UEFI. Choosing the latter option it did boot and I selected the try Ubuntu option, but all I then see is a "basic" Debian style screen - is that right?

 

Advice on how I can get to run as live cd on the first PC gratefully received.

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One of the features I would like to have most is some kind of configuration file containing the basic settings like IP-address, mounts etc. that can be loaded in the Live environment so I don’t have to go through this set-up every time.

There is a second way to do this actually. Use two USB sticks, one USB with the ISO image, and the other USB to install Snakeoil to. We tried this earlier today and it works.

 

 

Enjoyed this thread so far and tried to use Snakeoil, but no luck so far.

 

I created a live cd USB using Rufus. On the PC I wanted to use with Snakeoil, when I interrupt boot up, it gives me a single USB option: "UEFI" followed by the name of the USB stick. If I select that option, the PC just ignores it and (eventually) boots into my normal operating system. Just by way of context, I installed Mint from a USB stick using the exact same option on this PC without problem 2 days earlier.

 

I then tried the Snakeoil USB in another PC just as a test. This time I got 2 USB options when interrupting boot: one as above and another one with just the name of the USB stick, not preceded by UEFI. Choosing the latter option it did boot and I selected the try Ubuntu option, but all I then see is a "basic" Debian style screen - is that right?

 

Advice on how I can get to run as live cd on the first PC gratefully received.

I havn't tried UEFI booting so far.

 

You can try this with Rufus, change the the 2nd option "Partition Scheme and target system type", and choose the last one ("GPT partition scheme for UEFI").

 

Rufus.png

 

That should work, at least as a liveCD. But to install you'd likely need the machine to be connected to the Internet, as it'd need to download more files.

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There is a second way to do this actually. Use two USB sticks, one USB with the ISO image, and the other USB to install Snakeoil to. We tried this earlier today and it works.

 

For me, one the key features of Snakeoil is that is makes running the OS from RAM so easy. I also assume that is one of the reasons why it sounds so good compared with for example Vortexbox which was installed on my HD.

Will installing Snakeoil to another USB stick still give me the opportunity running the OS totally from RAM without the USB stick plugged in?

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There is a second way to do this actually. Use two USB sticks, one USB with the ISO image, and the other USB to install Snakeoil to. We tried this earlier today and it works.

 

 

 

I havn't tried UEFI booting so far.

 

You can try this with Rufus, change the the 2nd option "Partition Scheme and target system type", and choose the last one ("GPT partition scheme for UEFI").

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25605[/ATTACH]

 

That should work, at least as a liveCD. But to install you'd likely need the machine to be connected to the Internet, as it'd need to download more files.

 

Thanks, will try again.

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For me, one the key features of Snakeoil is that is makes running the OS from RAM so easy. I also assume that is one of the reasons why it sounds so good compared with for example Vortexbox which was installed on my HD.

Did you use the 2nd boot option? That's the only way to load the OS onto RAM, but anything persistent (e.g. the casper-rw filesystem) will not be.

 

I agree on the easy part. You can just swap USB sticks and get different OSes, this is indeed a very powerful feature. e.g. one stick for high quality music playback, and then swap it out with a Kodi USB and you get a HTPC. (This "swapping OS" is the primary reason why I love a Raspberry Pi)

 

Personally I would like to think why Snakeoil sounds good is because I'm designing this from a audiophile first perspective, but quite frankly I reckon it's just pure dumb luck. :P

 

Will installing Snakeoil to another USB stick still give me the opportunity running the OS totally from RAM without the USB stick plugged in?

No. For this you'd need persistent. the rough steps for doing this would be, write out the ISO image in dd mode (rufus has the option to do so). Then with a partition manager, create a 2nd file system (format that as ext4), and label it casper-rw. modify /boot/grub.cfg and set the default to the 2nd menuitem, and in theory it will be good to go.

 

Once I have my second computer setup I will write out a walkthrough for this (not sure if I have missed any steps in the above paragraph).

 

Thanks, will try again.
Cheers, let me know how it goes.
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  • 1 month later...

Been nearly two months since my last post. Snakeoil ISO is now up to 0.1.4 and the ISO is now down to approx 400 MB now.

 

A lot of changes were made to the web interface, mostly to make it more user friendly for first time Linux newbies (have a few here in Perth). Snakeoil also comes in a 64 bit edition now. The website has also been re-organised and refreshed to make things easier to read, points/topics/information easier to find (always a work in progress).

 

If you are interested to try out Linux playback and want a distro that gives you more control (while remain relatively easy to use), give Snakeoil OS a go.

 

The link for the ISO download is here: Link to download thread.

 

And if you are going to install the 64 bit version, might as well upgrade to firmware 0.1.5-pre-release so that ulimits is working correctly (e.g. if you want to set squeezelite's or MPD-rt's output thread to realtime, it'd actually work).

 

0.1.5-pre-release also support different languages (ATM only supports English and Chinese). If you want to help translate Snakeoil's web interface to your local language, please feel free to do so and send me the translated xml file and it will be added to the final release.

 

As usual, any problems please report 'em here. I've only use and test Snakeoil in my own setup (mini ITX based) so it's somewhat impossible for me to anticipate any problems/issues you guys may have.

 

Anyways, hope you guys will like it.. Enjoy.

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How to install Jriver?

JRiver requires manual installation.

 

First of all you need to upgrade the firmware to the 0.1.5-pre-release.

 

Second step is to download the deb file from JRiver's website and install it on the computer by running the following command

 

dpkg -i /path/to/your/jriver_install_deb_file.deb

 

Once you've done that, JRiver will show up in the software list.

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I managed to write 0.1.4 64bit ISO to USB using Rufus, then tried to boot it to my miniPC but it could not boot. Please adjust the ISO so that I can create USB drive with option GPT boot UEFI.

 

My mini PC now is running Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS 64bit and Roon Bridge 64bit.

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I managed to write 0.1.4 64bit ISO to USB using Rufus, then tried to boot it to my miniPC but it could not boot. Please adjust the ISO so that I can create USB drive with option GPT boot UEFI.

 

My mini PC now is running Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS 64bit and Roon Bridge 64bit.

That is my bad.. Sorry.. Hopefully by 0.1.5 I will get that working (so that you don't need to re-author the ISO)..

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  • 4 weeks later...
will the system support other network card, broadcom for example? sound is great but without network it not usable

is no way to compile driver...

Can you tell me the motherboard brand and model so I know the model of the Broadcom network chip (and which kernel module to use).

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tg3 module for BCM5755 gigabit adapter

many thanks

Download this file, rename the downloaded file to vmlinuz.

 

On your ISO USB stick, replace /casper/vmlinuz with the file above. Booting up from this USB stick will now support the TG3 chip.

 

Will now work on UEFI next, my apologies for the extended delay ds2k!

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THANK YOU for creating this. I have been trying to hear MPD for months now, and while I'm pretty good with computers, installing and getting MPD to work for me was very difficult--and ultimately unsuccessful. One of my audiophile gurus encouraged me to try it and now I can finally hear it. The web GUI is great, as is the built-in web client. I'd happily donate a reasonable sum to keep this project going.

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THANK YOU for creating this. I have been trying to hear MPD for months now, and while I'm pretty good with computers, installing and getting MPD to work for me was very difficult--and ultimately unsuccessful. One of my audiophile gurus encouraged me to try it and now I can finally hear it. The web GUI is great, as is the built-in web client. I'd happily donate a reasonable sum to keep this project going.

Thanks for the positive comments. Making Linux easy out of the box for most people to play music almost straight away is one of the key design goals of Snakeoil OS (SQ of course is the primary goal).

 

Now if only I can make the ISO file itself boot in UEFI mode (or UEFI-CSM or whatever it's called). That feature will make it so much easier for other people to try Snakeoil (e.g. with Mac Minis, NUCs etc). I have installed Snakeoil manually on a Mac mini a while back so the underlying OS already works (grub2 works with UEFI).

 

But understanding the UEFI boot sequence so far still eludes me. So far managed to get grub2 to load in a UEFI system, however, booting seems to fail with a blank screen (Will try and enable serial console to debug this later this weekend if I have time).

 

If there's anybody around this woods who have created UEFI ISOs from scratch before and know how the procedure actually works please point me to the right direction. Thanks :).

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