Linux for the Audiophile - Snakeoil OS

[Norton]

I have not disparaged the software, merely suggested that no sane person would load something named snakeoil on an audio computer they they consider important. If you choose to do so, fine.

 

As for audio under Unix/Linux, well, let's just say I would trust my own experience before that of someone applauding snake oil.

 

I'm sure the name is intended as ironic, which is fine for us Brits but may not always travel well. It's not applauding Snake Oil, it's actually signifying that the product is the opposite of Snake Oil. Now, "bug head emperor", that's a name I don't get....

[mansr]

I'm sure the name is intended as ironic, which is fine for us Brits but may not always travel well. It's not applauding Snake Oil, it's actually signifying that the product is the opposite of Snake Oil. Now, "bug head emperor", that's a name I don't get....

My thoughts exactly.

[Norton]

Just to go completely OT , would love to know the origins of the phrase.

 

Can you extract oil from snakes? Would hipsters sell cold pressed artisan oil from free range snakes? Did someone actually sell it and claim miraculous properties? Or is it just generic shorthand for a non-existent product?

[mansr]

Just to go completely OT , would love to know the origins of the phrase.

 

Can you extract oil from snakes? Would hipsters sell cold pressed artisan oil from free range snakes? Did someone actually sell it and claim miraculous properties? Or is it just generic shorthand for a non-existent product?

Wikipedia to the rescue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil

[Norton]

"They named the product for the local tribe as "Seneca oil". Supposedly through mispronunciation, this became "Sen-ake-a oil" and eventually "snake oil"

 

 

"In Europe, viper oil had been commonly recommended for many afflictions, including the ones for which rattlesnake oil was subsequently favored"

 

Hmm not sure I 100% trust Wikipedia on this one...

 

But there's some material there for a great logo for this distro..

[mansr]

"They named the product for the local tribe as "Seneca oil". Supposedly through mispronunciation, this became "Sen-ake-a oil" and eventually "snake oil"

 

 

"In Europe, viper oil had been commonly recommended for many afflictions, including the ones for which rattlesnake oil was subsequently favored"

 

Hmm not sure I 100% trust Wikipedia on this one...

 

But there's some material there for a great logo for this distro..

The page says the "Seneca oil" explanation is probably made-up.

 

Also, http://wondermark.com/c1117/

[Jud]

A History Of 'Snake Oil Salesmen' : Code Switch : NPR

[Sal1950]

 

Linux in and of itself, even a stropped down version like this, is not a small or tiny OS by any means. But like I said, I really applaud these efforts, and think they will eventually lead to better sound. Besides, I like almost anything Unix-like.

-Paul

Paul, Simply out of curiosity I wonder what you would consider a small OS?

[Jud]

Paul, Simply out of curiosity I wonder what you would consider a small OS?

 

Not Paul, but two I like are the QNX Neutrino RTOS, and NanoBSD, successor to PicoBSD (which fit on a floppy).

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Tinycore is as small as it gets.

TinyMPD and Tinysqueeze are great distributions based on Tinycore.

[Paul R]

Paul, Simply out of curiosity I wonder what you would consider a small OS?

 

QNX is fairly small, and still has a full Unix flavor. Currently my favorite.

 

Femto OS, VRTX, etc. They can be fairly large in terms of development environment, but the run time is tiny. Also has the advantage of being a real time OS, so priorities, scheduling, etc. can be well controlled.

[Sal1950]

Thanks for the response guys, some new stuff to me. Interesting what can be considered a OS, like starting from a base kernel level and building from there.

[YashN]

Tinycore is as small as it gets.

TinyMPD and Tinysqueeze are great distributions based on Tinycore.

 

Very cool.

[rocl444]

i'm another one who has tried Daphile and loved it for it's concept but used vortexbox because it had superior sound quality. i'm really unsure with linux and need my hand held so i thought i would give this a go. i'm also an aussie living in NZ so i got the humour straight away.

 

very difficult to compare sound, but it is at least as good, or maybe a bit better(different in a good way for me?) than VB. i was early on in the beta testing and my hand got held and i was able to install and enjoy.

 

yesterday i updated my firmware - again simple and easy once i had some simple instructions.

 

i am really enjoying the experience so far. i decided i wanted to support this approach so i made a small donation as a form of encouragement.

[ds2k]

I'm using daphile on ECS Liva, and would love to try the Snakeoil OS. Thanks for your efforts to bring a new distro to computer audio

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[snakeoil.os]

Thanks for the response guys, some new stuff to me. Interesting what can be considered a OS, like starting from a base kernel level and building from there.

Another example of a tiny OS would be busybox.

 

480 MB isn't considered big in today's world. And perhaps in the future I may ditch Ubuntu and use BusyBox. Is this high up in my todo list? Nope. Why? Other than a smaller download, most people typically wouldn't care for the difference. In some countries downloading a 500 MB file and a ~50 MB file takes them same amount of time.

 

Obviously I will still build new ISO for first time users to install. But once people installed Snakeoil, any subsequent changes/updates are done as 'firmware upgrades", which stands at 20 MB for now.

 

i'm another one who has tried Daphile and loved it for it's concept but used vortexbox because it had superior sound quality. i'm really unsure with linux and need my hand held so i thought i would give this a go. i'm also an aussie living in NZ so i got the humour straight away.

 

 

very difficult to compare sound, but it is at least as good, or maybe a bit better(different in a good way for me?) than VB. i was early on in the beta testing and my hand got held and i was able to install and enjoy.

Have to give yourself more credit than that. I only supplied the manual and videos. If you look back, the manual/videos purpose is giving you the confidence to go ahead. You did everything on your own - installed the OS yourself, set it the various pages yourself, and upgraded the software yourself.

 

Gotta love that!

 

yesterday i updated my firmware - again simple and easy once i had some simple instructions.

 

 

i am really enjoying the experience so far. i decided i wanted to support this approach so i made a small donation as a form of encouragement.

Thank you for your support. Your donations really made it easier for me commit to Snakeoil and move to another web host (the previous hosting company gave me so much grief).

 

I was encouraged myself too. Snakeoil is a Team WA effort. There is this group of crazy Hifi enthusiasts here in Perth - crazy as in they think big. It is them who gave me the idea and egged me on to create this LiveCD, including posting here.

 

Most of the ideas in Snakeoil, including things like usability, etc all come from this collective wealth of experience. And I am very glad (and a bit grateful) that you are enjoying this experience too.

 

I'm using daphile on ECS Liva, and would love to try the Snakeoil OS. Thanks for your efforts to bring a new distro to computer audio

Happy to see you willing to look past the name Snakeoil and have a go. If you have any issues, be it general questions, usability issues, or anything that just look plain wrong, please let me know (preferably in this thread, or privately via PM or email).

[ds2k]

I would like to ask some question before installing Snakeoil OS:

 

1. My mini PC has Intel Bay Trail-M N2807 and Realtek RTL8111G Gigabit Fast Ethernet , then which download I should take? Atom of generic one?

2. My mini PC only support UEFI boot. Does Snakeoil support that boot yet. If not, is there any workaround. I'm using rEFInd Boot Manager as a workaround to run Daphile on that mini PC. The PC firstly boots with rEFInd, then rEFInd loads Daphile boot from Daphile partition.

[snakeoil.os]

I would like to ask some question before installing Snakeoil OS:

 

1. My mini PC has Intel Bay Trail-M N2807 and Realtek RTL8111G Gigabit Fast Ethernet , then which download I should take? Atom of generic one?

N2807 is a Celeron, download the generic one. And yes, the Realtek NIC should work.

 

2. My mini PC only support UEFI boot. Does Snakeoil support that boot yet. If not, is there any workaround. I'm using rEFInd Boot Manager as a workaround to run Daphile on that mini PC. The PC firstly boots with rEFInd, then rEFInd loads Daphile boot from Daphile partition.

I have tried Snakeoil with my computer set to UEFI boot only and it works. So at least you can still try out the LiveCD.

 

Installation wise if not wrong it'd need to pull additional stuffs from the Ubuntu repository (so this require an Internet connection).

 

Also, I'm compiling a list of hardware that works straight out of the box. If you have installed Snakeoil successfully, please let me know the make/model of your motherboard.

 

The RT kernel is pretty stripped down, hence it's inevitable it will not boot up on some equipment, the more feedback I get, the easier it is for me to tailor the kernel. Thanks in advance.

[ds2k]

Thanks. I will try it this weekend and feedback

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ds2k]

Thanks. I will try it this weekend and feedback

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Just update you that I've created an USB boot from your generic ISO using Rufus. Unfortunately my mini PC (ECS Liva) could not boot from that prepared USB.

[snakeoil.os]

Just update you that I've created an USB boot from your generic ISO using Rufus. Unfortunately my mini PC (ECS Liva) could not boot from that prepared USB.

What's the error message? Did it stop at "Can't find filesystem", or was it something else?

[ds2k]

What's the error message? Did it stop at "Can't find filesystem", or was it something else?

I plug USB stick to Liva, power on, select boot from that USB, then the Liva very quickly goes to next boot media (eMMC). It is so quick that I could not see any error message.

[snakeoil.os]

I plug USB stick to Liva, power on, select boot from that USB, then the Liva very quickly goes to next boot media (eMMC). It is so quick that I could not see any error message.

Hmm. I don't have this model to confirm for sure. But a quick google tells me it works with Linux in UEFI boot only mode. Does this mean it wouldn't work with LiveCDs in legacy (BIOS) mode?

 

Can you please try it on another machine and see if the USB stick works? If yes then the above is the most likely cause.. It look into using grub2 for the next ISO, and hopefully that'd work better with modern machines.

 

Snakeoil is designed primary for mITX atom based motherboards. But these days all motherboard seem to dolegacy/uefi (and yours is UEFI only), so might as well move to grub2. Will keep you posted.

 

Thanks for trying out Snakeoil.. I think you're the only one on CA to do so.

[ds2k]

You're welcome. The ECS Liva only supports UEFI boot. I have installed Win 8, Win 10, Win Server 2012, Daphile... on it so I can confirm it not support legacy (BIOS) boot.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

WARNING

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

This is a major bug.