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What OS Should I Install?


Jud

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I've got a third of a TB sitting here unused in my desktop. I currently have Windows 10 and Xubuntu running on it. I also have Catalina running on an old MacBook Pro laptop.

 

So what should I install in the empty space to play around with? I used and liked FreeBSD in the past, but stopped when I got into computer audio because it doesn't have enough users to have the latest audio drivers made for it. I'm not averse to peering around "under the hood" of an OS (using the command line/shell) - in fact I occasionally enjoy it a lot - though as I get older, I find myself tending toward convenience a little more.

 

Shouldn't be so GUI-oriented I can't play around a little, but I don't want to spend all my time with CLI either.  And must have up-to-date audio drivers.

 

Suggestions?

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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2 hours ago, Jud said:

I've got a third of a TB sitting here unused in my desktop. I currently have Windows 10 and Xubuntu running on it. I also have Catalina running on an old MacBook Pro laptop.

 

So what should I install in the empty space to play around with? I used and liked FreeBSD in the past, but stopped when I got into computer audio because it doesn't have enough users to have the latest audio drivers made for it. I'm not averse to peering around "under the hood" of an OS (using the command line/shell) - in fact I occasionally enjoy it a lot - though as I get older, I find myself tending toward convenience a little more.

 

Shouldn't be so GUI-oriented I can't play around a little, but I don't want to spend all my time with CLI either.  And must have up-to-date audio drivers.

 

Suggestions?

I run Debian/Raspbian on all my systems. For serving and transporting audio streams I meanwhile use almost exclusively Raspberry Pi devices. On these, I run MinimServer (https://minimserver.com/) and/or MPD and upmpdcli (https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/upmpdcli/) in a minimal (about 500 packages), headless Raspbian Lite distribution. On RPis that host transports such as the Allo DigiOne Signature, I typically turn off HDMI. Bluetooth, USB, LAN and the internal sound card. This reduces the power requirement of a RPi 3B+ to about 200 mA when the CPU frequency is fixed at 1 GHz and has turned out to be a very stable and reliable setup. I do not have time to play around with OS tweaking: I typically install a system by cloning an image saved on my laptop and run that system without upgrading for years. Audio Linux, Volumio and DietPi seem obvious candidates for filling in the space in your drive. I tried them a bit but mostly disliked their user interfaces and found them too complicated.     

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3 hours ago, Jud said:

I've got a third of a TB sitting here unused in my desktop. I currently have Windows 10 and Xubuntu running on it. I also have Catalina running on an old MacBook Pro laptop.

 

So what should I install in the empty space to play around with? I used and liked FreeBSD in the past, but stopped when I got into computer audio because it doesn't have enough users to have the latest audio drivers made for it. I'm not averse to peering around "under the hood" of an OS (using the command line/shell) - in fact I occasionally enjoy it a lot - though as I get older, I find myself tending toward convenience a little more.

 

Shouldn't be so GUI-oriented I can't play around a little, but I don't want to spend all my time with CLI either.  And must have up-to-date audio drivers.

 

Suggestions?

I use Linux and I like it A LOT for my project and many other thigns because it is so well supported and works 'good enough'.  Linux is too fat by my taste, but not as bad as Windows -- which will guaranteed work worse than Linux when really busy.   On the other hand, the whole world uses Windows, and a lot of the fancy tools are on Windows.   Linux has incomplete audio support also as I have to patch the audio subsystem every time I upgrade the kernel -- it isn't really the audio subsystem itself that needs to be patched, or the device driver -- but the audio USB layer that needs a simple patch.   Needing to patch where I must tells me that there is a layering issue in the Linux environment, but it is a simple patch.

 

If you do research type programming -- like I do, Windows is very suboptimal because of its distracting personality and its 'one-way, one program does it all approach', and most likely those who produce beautiful products on Windows lament needing to use Windows, or get locked in beacause developing for Windows is the best way to make good money.  If I was using Windows, the overhead for development would be significantly greater and somewhat distracting, but the work could be done.  Why put myself through the pain nowadays?

If mostly an end user, but do dabble in programming, then I'd have likely chosen Windows.

If I have to issue a command line to do anything audio, it doesn't bother me.  In fact, the fantastic flexibility and natural use of pipelining (instead of the hacked together pipelining in Windows) makes Linux the perfect building block OS for *simply* testing new ideas without needing to write a program to do it.

 

* I don't use the fancy patch-bay type audio capabilites in some of the higher level Linux audio subsystems.  I tried them, and kind of like them, but don't need the facilities. I use pulseaudio with some config changes.  Pulseaudio has lots of under the hood capabilities, but wouldn't call it the utlimate in user flexibility.

 

Of course, FreeBSD won't cut it -- it makes a great, smaller OS for an embedded system -- just grabbing a FreeBSD kernel, throw in a few utilities is so very simple on FreeBSD, while on Linux you have layers on layers of complexity -- but not nearly as bad as Windows.

* Linux and Windows both have a worse-than-FreeBSD case of what used to be called 'creeping-featuritis'.

 

No OS is perfect.

 

John

 

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https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=elementary

 

Maybe try this one.  

 

Now personally, I've been using Manjaro the last couple years.  Rolling release so no need to re-install from scratch with updated versions.  I previously used long term releases of Mint with Cinnamon which I really liked.  Manjaro is based upon Arch which is not quite cutting edge, but not far off of it.  I prefer the KDE desktop.  

 

I've tried various BSD releases, and some pique my fancy, but they just don't seem real world practical in my experience.  

And always keep in mind: Cognitive biases, like seeing optical illusions are a sign of a normally functioning brain. We all have them, it’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something that affects our objective evaluation of reality. 

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I was on Distrowatch myself and had a look at Manjaro, elementary and Mint as candidates. Might be Manjaro since I'm already running an Ubuntu variant, but nothing says I can't try them all.

 

Also, thanks for the suggestion, but Raspbian and variants are no go because there's no reason to be running a stripped down ARM-oriented OS on a desktop with an Intel 8700K CPU that sends music to my system wirelessly in another room via UPnP/DLNA. Apologies for not clarifying a bit more about my computer and audio system.

 

 

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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2 minutes ago, Jud said:

...

 

Also, thanks for the suggestion, but Raspbian and variants are no go because there's no reason to be running a stripped down ARM-oriented OS on a desktop with an Intel 8700K CPU that sends music to my system wirelessly in another room via UPnP/DLNA. Apologies for not clarifying a bit more about my computer and audio system.

I see the point. In this case, I would suggest that you run your preferred UPnP/DLNA server in the OS you feel most comfortable with. I do not expect the OS to have any significant impact on the sound quality as long as the wireless data transfer to the renderer is managed well and the CPU frequency scaling is off in all systems. I might be very wrong, of course and, if you play around with different operating systems, I would be interested in your findings.    

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16 minutes ago, Jud said:

a desktop with an Intel 8700K CPU that sends music to my system wirelessly in another room via UPnP/DLNA. Apologies for not clarifying a bit more about my computer and audio system.

 

Assuming that's 'all' it'll be doing audio wise, ie, simply running a UPnP/DLNA media server to provide the audio files wirelessly over the network to the UPnP/DLNA renderer in another room (so not actually involved decoding and playing any audio files) - why do you require up to date audio drivers and the like?

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

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2 hours ago, Cebolla said:

 

Assuming that's 'all' it'll be doing audio wise, ie, simply running a UPnP/DLNA media server to provide the audio files wirelessly over the network to the UPnP/DLNA renderer in another room (so not actually involved decoding and playing any audio files) - why do you require up to date audio drivers and the like?

 

Very good question, and there is an answer.

 

I run several players - Audirvana, HQPlayer, the Qobuz app - and various other apps to help me rip, download, convert (to AIFF), supply metadata for and back up music files to two external HDDs and the cloud (Backblaze). I not only send these files wirelessly to the main system, but play them locally, sometimes converted to DSD512, sometimes sent without sample rate conversion, in my small office system.

 

I also run a server on my OSs (Subsonic) that sends my local files via Internet at full resolution to my iPhone so I can play them while traveling or on my hour long daily walk.

 

And I'm further curious about playing with additional music utilities.

 

So while that's what the desktop does vis-a-vis the main system, that's not all I ask it to do.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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15 hours ago, Jud said:

I've got a third of a TB sitting here unused in my desktop. I currently have Windows 10 and Xubuntu running on it. I also have Catalina running on an old MacBook Pro laptop.

 

So what should I install in the empty space to play around with? I used and liked FreeBSD in the past, but stopped when I got into computer audio because it doesn't have enough users to have the latest audio drivers made for it. I'm not averse to peering around "under the hood" of an OS (using the command line/shell) - in fact I occasionally enjoy it a lot - though as I get older, I find myself tending toward convenience a little more.

 

Shouldn't be so GUI-oriented I can't play around a little, but I don't want to spend all my time with CLI either.  And must have up-to-date audio drivers.

 

Suggestions?

I use an old MacBook Pro for Tidal, Amazon Music and Quobuzas well as for Some Internet radio (especially when I want I want to record Internet radio, such as the Proms). I run OSX 10.11.6 El Capitan (the highest the hardware will support) and everything works fine. The nice thing is that with the Mac laptop, I can control it using my iPad  and a software solution called Remote Pro. It works through WiFi as long as the Mac and the iPad are on the same network and with it I can use my finger on the iPad as a mouse, scroll up and down and right to left, use the tablet’s virtual keyboard, launch apps, etc. With a Digital video to HDMI cable, I can view the laptop from my easy chair on my big-screen TV. Works great, I recommend it. also, being a Mac, drivers aren’t needed foe DACs, etc.

George

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3 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I use an old MacBook Pro for Tidal, Amazon Music and Quobuzas well as for Some Internet radio (especially when I want I want to record Internet radio, such as the Proms). I run OSX 10.11.6 El Capitan (the highest the hardware will support) and everything works fine. The nice thing is that with the Mac laptop, I can control it using my iPad  and a software solution called Remote Pro. It works through WiFi as long as the Mac and the iPad are on the same network and with it I can use my finger on the iPad as a mouse, scroll up and down and right to left, use the tablet’s virtual keyboard, launch apps, etc. With a Digital video to HDMI cable, I can view the laptop from my easy chair on my big-screen TV. Works great, I recommend it. also, being a Mac, drivers aren’t needed foe DACs, etc.

 

Hi George -

 

There are remote desktops for Windows and Linux also. My favorite that works on Windows, Mac and Linux is RealVNC. Just really a well made and easy to use product. And of course there's the old reliable Windows Remote Desktop, various other VNC and remote desktop apps, as well as some cool phone apps that let you remotely SSH into your computer.

 

It isn't that Macs don't need a (USB) DAC driver, it's that it's built into the operating system. Same with both Linux and Windows these days. But as I noted above, the MacOS driver won't let you do native DSD, only DoP, so I'm not happy about that.

 

Edit: By the way, I have a mid-2009 MacBook Pro on which I'm running Catalina, which the hardware doesn't officially support. There are a couple of websites that provide means to do this. It runs nicely. The main reason I bothered to install the newer OS version is that apps I use will likely start to drop support for El Cap soon.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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48 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Hi George -

 

There are remote desktops for Windows and Linux also. My favorite that works on Windows, Mac and Linux is RealVNC. Just really a well made and easy to use product. And of course there's the old reliable Windows Remote Desktop, various other VNC and remote desktop apps, as well as some cool phone apps that let you remotely SSH into your computer.

 

It isn't that Macs don't need a (USB) DAC driver, it's that it's built into the operating system. Same with both Linux and Windows these days. But as I noted above, the MacOS driver won't let you do native DSD, only DoP, so I'm not happy about that.

 

Edit: By the way, I have a mid-2009 MacBook Pro on which I'm running Catalina, which the hardware doesn't officially support. There are a couple of websites that provide means to do this. It runs nicely. The main reason I bothered to install the newer OS version is that apps I use will likely start to drop support for El Cap soon.

Yes, of course, the drivers are built-in. But from the user’s standpoint, none have to added.

my MacBook Pro is from Mid 2008 and El Cap is the highest it will support. If you know of a way to put a later OS on it, please let me know of the URL, I’d like to do that, you can send me a private message if you like. Thanks in advance.

George

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2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

my MacBook Pro is from Mid 2008 and El Cap is the highest it will support. If you know of a way to put a later OS on it, please let me know of the URL, I’d like to do that, you can send me a private message if you like. Thanks in advance.

 

http://dosdude1.com/catalina/

 

You know to make a backup before trying this.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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11 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Hi George -

 

There are remote desktops for Windows and Linux also. My favorite that works on Windows, Mac and Linux is RealVNC. Just really a well made and easy to use product. And of course there's the old reliable Windows Remote Desktop, various other VNC and remote desktop apps, as well as some cool phone apps that let you remotely SSH into your computer.

 

It isn't that Macs don't need a (USB) DAC driver, it's that it's built into the operating system. Same with both Linux and Windows these days. But as I noted above, the MacOS driver won't let you do native DSD, only DoP, so I'm not happy about that.

 

Edit: By the way, I have a mid-2009 MacBook Pro on which I'm running Catalina, which the hardware doesn't officially support. There are a couple of websites that provide means to do this. It runs nicely. The main reason I bothered to install the newer OS version is that apps I use will likely start to drop support for El Cap soon.

One warning about the Linux USB DAC driver though -- it is incomplete relative to current offerings.   Unless patched, there can be problems with things like the volume control mechanism.   I have a patch for (I think the D3) if anyone needs it.  The patch is trivical, and even when I do quick Linux kernel updates, it isn't really all that much trouble.  The hard part was to figure out the problem several years ago.

 

John

 

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I tried Manjaro and elementary. I couldn't get Manjaro to use as its default my preferred web browser, Vivaldi (for some reason Manjaro threw an error every time I tried to start Vivaldi as the Manjaro default web browser - it started and worked fine from the Internet apps menu), and my pacman-fu isn't sufficient to install the no longer supported package Subsonic. (Subsonic serves local audio files over the Web, allowing remote access to full resolution Redbook and hi res.) Manjaro uses a fork, Airsonic, instead, which I had tried before Subsonic, but gave up on because I couldn't quite get the hang of configuring it properly.

 

So, on to elementary. This distro has lots of UI ideas I like (e.g., it uses a dock that intelligently gets out of the way when app screens are maximized), and it incorporates Flatpak, which allows various apps such as Qobuz to be installed easily. But it's not a finished product. Apps often failed to launch, and shutdown and restart from the menu never worked. Qobuz launched but would never play sound.

 

Thus I'm on to Linux Mint, which is easy and familiar for me to work with because it's Ubuntu 18.04 dressed up in a very slightly different UI. I'm even using the XFCE version, which is the version of Ubuntu 19.10 I'm running (Xubuntu). Vivaldi, HQPlayer and Qobuz are all installed and working fine. I'll get around to installing Subsonic. But it does kinda feel like I'm running two virtually identical OSs. I'm probably wishing for the impossible, wanting a distro different enough to be interesting but with an easy learning curve that will allow me to install and run all my desired apps.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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