ALSA or Jack2 for Audio Production on Linux?

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So I'm about to convert an old Microsoft Surface Pro to a Linux machine as my first foray into the Linux universe.

I've had, have, and will have a TON of questions. Fortunately, most of them are already answered online. However, not all of them are and I figure there's gotta be some fellow geeks here who have some helpful advice or at least have an opinion to share when it comes to Linux.

So anyway, as the title suggests, I'm confused about which audio driver to use. My main concern is latency and RAM/CPU usage. I gather that my best options are to use ALSA on its own or use Jack2. When using my DAW, I'm not planning on having any other programs running and using just a single dedicated audio interface (so sharing/splitting the audio between applications or devices shouldn't be an issue). However, I have a midi interface I wanna use (assuming it's supported) that will require routing multiple midi ports.

I've been researching it a little bit and I still can't seem to find a definitive answer to what I'm looking for despite all the info I've come across. My thinking is that using only ALSA would create less overhead since Jack2 essentially "sits on top of" ALSA and uses it anyway. Yet Jack2 can operate synchronously and possibly handles midi better? Jack2 also creates more audio routing options which I think shouldn't be necessary since I'm planning on using a dedicated daw and audio playback device.

If there's anyone who feels like talking tech and can enlighten me, I'm all ears :). Thanks!


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I'm pretty sure the only sound driver you need will be ALSA or OSS (I think ALSA is easier to set up). Sending sound directly to the driver means that only one audio stream can be played. If you want to be able to play audio from multiple programs/threads at once, you will need a sound server. Personally, I use PulseAudio, but JACK is another sound server, so installing this will (I presume) also allow you to listen to multiple audio streams simultaneously.

I don't know much about audio production, but I've always found the Arch Linux wiki pages to be really informative, even if you're using another Linux distro. The wiki entry for "professional audio" seems to take JACK/JACK2 as a fundamental requirement -- it doesn't even explain why. But there's a lot of useful information here, on how to reduce latency and configure MIDI.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Professional_audio

The entry for JACK, has this useful nugget of information:

Q: What is the difference between JACK-MIDI and ALSA-MIDI?
A:
The former has improved timing and sample accurate MIDI event alignment. It extends or may even replace the latter but at this point they both co-exist.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/JACK_Audio_Connection_Kit

And some info on the differences between JACK and JACK2:
https://github.com/jackaudio/jackaudio.github.com/wiki/Q_difference_jack1_jack2

I don't know if any of that helps, or I'm just telling you stuff you already know! :)
 
tiny said:
I'm pretty sure the only sound driver you need will be ALSA or OSS (I think ALSA is easier to set up). Sending sound directly to the driver means that only one audio stream can be played. If you want to be able to play audio from multiple programs/threads at once, you will need a sound server. Personally, I use PulseAudio, but JACK is another sound server, so installing this will (I presume) also allow you to listen to multiple audio streams simultaneously.

I don't know much about audio production, but I've always found the Arch Linux wiki pages to be really informative, even if you're using another Linux distro. The wiki entry for "professional audio" seems to take JACK/JACK2 as a fundamental requirement -- it doesn't even explain why. But there's a lot of useful information here, on how to reduce latency and configure MIDI.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Professional_audio

The entry for JACK, has this useful nugget of information:



https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/JACK_Audio_Connection_Kit

And some info on the differences between JACK and JACK2:
https://github.com/jackaudio/jackaudio.github.com/wiki/Q_difference_jack1_jack2

I don't know if any of that helps, or I'm just telling you stuff you already know! :)

All of this info is extremely helpful and appreciated. Some of it I knew/partially knew and much of it's new. I'll have to check those links out when I get a chance.

Based on that quote below, it seems like Jack may be the way to go. Not to mention even though I only plan on using a single interface/program when working with audio, there will be times where I may want to split and share the audio if I'm working on something else. It also sounds like Jack actually addresses MIDI in addition to audio (although I believe ALSA has some midi implementation as well, although it seems to be sub par compared to Jack). I'll definitely have to do some more sleuthing. Thanks!

The reason there's separate audio drivers for music/sound production vs music/sound playback has to do with performance and convenience.

Drivers designed for "consuming" sound media, such as browsing the web or playing music, are usually Windows WASAPI or Linux PulseAudio (Mac uses Core Audio for everything, which adapts to the needs of the user interestingly enough). These drivers automate a lot of things and use DSP (digital signal processing) to analyze and process the sound to make a convenient and nice listening experience. For instance, it will do sample and bit depth conversion on the fly to a format that's capable of being played back and will dynamically change the buffer size to avoid underruns (audio drop outs/clicks or pops). It can also adjust volume to create a consistent listening experience between different audio sources.

Audio production drivers (such as Windows ASIO or Linux Jack) try to deliver the audio as unaltered and fast as possible. You typically don't want the added delay of all that signal processing nor the coloration to the audio that using consumer drivers usually introduce.

And that's why there are usually separate drivers designed for different uses in case you were wondering. Also, I think OSS has been deprecated from what I've been reading. Anyway, thanks for the info and links!
 
Yeah -- I reckon JACK's your man. :p

TheCaptain said:
Based on that quote below, it seems like Jack may be the way to go. Not to mention even though I only plan on using a single interface/program when working with audio, there will be times where I may want to split and share the audio if I'm working on something else. It also sounds like Jack actually addresses MIDI in addition to audio (although I believe ALSA has some midi implementation as well, although it seems to be sub par compared to Jack). I'll definitely have to do some more sleuthing. Thanks!

ALSA is the driver regardless of whether or not you install JACK. JACK is a sound server that takes multiple inputs and passes them as a single output to ALSA.

So... I'd imagine that anything that JACK does will only add to or improve ALSA's features.

TheCaptain said:
The reason there's separate audio drivers for music/sound production vs music/sound playback has to do with performance and convenience.

Drivers designed for "consuming" sound media, such as browsing the web or playing music, are usually Windows WASAPI or Linux PulseAudio (Mac uses Core Audio for everything, which adapts to the needs of the user interestingly enough). These drivers automate a lot of things and use DSP (digital signal processing) to analyze and process the sound to make a convenient and nice listening experience. For instance, it will do sample and bit depth conversion on the fly to a format that's capable of being played back and will dynamically change the buffer size to avoid underruns (audio drop outs/clicks or pops). It can also adjust volume to create a consistent listening experience between different audio sources.

Audio production drivers (such as Windows ASIO or Linux Jack) try to deliver the audio as unaltered and fast as possible. You typically don't want the added delay of all that signal processing nor the coloration to the audio that using consumer drivers usually introduce.

And that's why there are usually separate drivers designed for different uses in case you were wondering. Also, I think OSS has been deprecated from what I've been reading. Anyway, thanks for the info and links!

Huh. I hadn't really thought about it, but thanks -- that's very interesting. :) I sort-of had it in my head that pro-audio drivers were all about minimising latency, but hadn't really considered what standard audio drivers do.

------------------
LONG POINTLESS ANECDOTE:

I have mates in the (small time) music industry. One had terrible latency problems with Cubase under Vista. I spent months troubleshooting the problem, playing around with the ASIO4ALL drivers, setting up a dual-boot system so he had a clean OS to use just for music production -- nothing worked.

I'd heard how GNU/Linux was used in professional media setups, and looked at building an Arch Linux production OS with a custom low-latency kernel... the only thing was there were no drivers for his USB sound card.

A year later, I persuaded him to upgrade his crappy 32-bit Vista PC and get a top-of-the range 64-bit machine with plenty of RAM and an SSD. I cleanly installed Windows 7 and left him to it... I couldn't believe it when I got a call a few hours later to say that he was still having latency problems.

After spending a good year-and-a-half trying to fix the problem, I gave up. A few months later, I got a rather sheepish call:

Oh... I think I've figured out the latency problem! :blushie: Ahhh... Hehe... Um.... Well... The first thing I did after you'd set up the PC each time was to install a pirated add-on I have. I just uninstalled it, and everything works perfectly.

:wallbash: :pcwhack: :censored:

So... just in case you come across a similar issue... :p
 
tiny said:
ALSA is the driver regardless of whether or not you install JACK. JACK is a sound server that takes multiple inputs and passes them as a single output to ALSA.

The fact that Jack uses ALSA is one of the things that has me kinda confused and why I didn't just jump straight to jack off the bat. Cause regardless, ALSA is gonna be used for the sound driver, so having that extra lair (Jack) on top of ALSA, could only match ALSA's native latency at best and, if anything, hurt performance by having all that extra processing.

Yet on the flip side, I've read that Jack2 doesn't use the ALSA midi sequencer. And because of that, Jack2 significantly improves midi performance. So maybe it uses it's own proprietary driver to handle midi before syncing it up with the ALSA audio?

tiny said:
I have mates in the (small time) music industry. One had terrible latency problems with Cubase under Vista. I spent months troubleshooting the problem, playing around with the ASIO4ALL drivers, setting up a dual-boot system so he had a clean OS to use just for music production -- nothing worked.

I'd heard how GNU/Linux was used in professional media setups, and looked at building an Arch Linux production OS with a custom low-latency kernel... the only thing was there were no drivers for his USB sound card.

A year later, I persuaded him to upgrade his crappy 32-bit Vista PC and get a top-of-the range 64-bit machine with plenty of RAM and an SSD. I cleanly installed Windows 7 and left him to it... I couldn't believe it when I got a call a few hours later to say that he was still having latency problems.

After spending a good year-and-a-half trying to fix the problem, I gave up. A few months later, I got a rather sheepish call:

Oh... I think I've figured out the latency problem! :blushie: Ahhh... Hehe... Um.... Well... The first thing I did after you'd set up the PC each time was to install a pirated add-on I have. I just uninstalled it, and everything works perfectly.

:wallbash: :pcwhack: :censored:

So... just in case you come across a similar issue... :p

Lol That's one of the reasons I don't use pirated software anymore. The reliability and support you get from owning a license is worth it, but it is pricey as heck. At least they were able to figure it out eventually [emoji16]

tiny said:
I'd heard how GNU/Linux was used in professional media setups, and looked at building an Arch Linux production OS with a custom low-latency kernel... the only thing was there were no drivers for his USB sound card.

One of the reasons I'm starting this Linux build is to get some practice with Unix and then ultimately make my own custom OS using Arch Linux for media creation/editing. So far, I've just been playing with Terminal on my Mac and researching various Linux topics. I've played with Ubuntu a very small amount before, but currently don't actually have any Linux build to play with atm. I don't want to run it as a VM or create a partition for it due to storage constraints, but I should hopefully be getting that Gen 1 Surface Pro I mentioned before around Christmas.

I'm gonna put Lubuntu on it (possibly a minimal install of it if that's even an option). I'm kinda segueing into a second question/discussion here if you're game.

Do you have any opinions on:

1.) light weight Linux distros

AND/OR

2.) BTRFS file system for desktop use?

Oh ya, and I guess the should mention I am going to use Jack. Kinda figured that out after reading your initial post, but I just like talking tech (I'm assuming it's mutual lol :D)


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TheCaptain said:
The fact that Jack uses ALSA is one of the things that has me kinda confused and why I didn't just jump straight to jack off the bat. Cause regardless, ALSA is gonna be used for the sound driver, so having that extra lair (Jack) on top of ALSA, could only match ALSA's native latency at best and, if anything, hurt performance by having all that extra processing.

Yet on the flip side, I've read that Jack2 doesn't use the ALSA midi sequencer. And because of that, Jack2 significantly improves midi performance. So maybe it uses it's own proprietary driver to handle midi before syncing it up with the ALSA audio?

I really don't know, but from what little I've read about JACK, and from what I understand about drivers and sound servers... I presume that despite JACK being "an extra layer", it probably does clever pro-audio things like telling ALSA that latency is a priority (rather than leaving ALSA to its default settings)...? :dunno:

TheCaptain said:
Lol That's one of the reasons I don't use pirated software anymore. The reliability and support you get from owning a license is worth it, but it is pricey as heck. At least they were able to figure it out eventually

Argh -- tell me about it! It was a good few hundred quid for the add-on, but if I was charging for my time trying to fix the problem, it would have run in to the thousands! Grrr!

TheCaptain said:
One of the reasons I'm starting this Linux build is to get some practice with Unix and then ultimately make my own custom OS using Arch Linux for media creation/editing. So far, I've just been playing with Terminal on my Mac and researching various Linux topics. I've played with Ubuntu a very small amount before, but currently don't actually have any Linux build to play with atm. I don't want to run it as a VM or create a partition for it due to storage constraints, but I should hopefully be getting that Gen 1 Surface Pro I mentioned before around Christmas.

I'm gonna put Lubuntu on it (possibly a minimal install of it if that's even an option). I'm kinda segueing into a second question/discussion here if you're game.

Do you have any opinions on:

1.) light weight Linux distros

I'm not overly familiar with all of the GNU/Linux distros out there, although I've tried quite a few in my time. I'm very biased, verging on evangelical! But in my experience, Arch Linux is the perfect distro for pretty much anything... so long as you're prepared to read the wiki and put in a little time to set up the perfect system.

I'm not a Unix/Linux guru by any stretch of the imagination, but... I am a control freak. I always think that my computer should just be doing what I tell it, rather than running all sorts of mystery background processes and "trying to be clever".

When you install Arch Linux, you start with a text-only shell and not much else. It's a blank canvas. Anything you want has to be installed and configured. This is perfect for low-spec systems (Arch even runs on the Raspberry Pi), perfect for control freaks (like me), and perfect for "specialist applications" (like audio production) as you can install only what you need and tweak the system accordingly.

I fell in love with Unix after using it for a year in the mid-90s, and spent years looking for some kind of Unix-like system that didn't require a mainframe so I could run it at home! I came across GNU/Linux as a curiosity, and it was amazing... apart from the fact that I would completely trash every distro within weeks.

Arch is the only distro I haven't perpetually destroyed. You can set it up however you like. The Arch wiki is incredible -- you don't need to be a Linux guru if you can follow step-by-step instructions. And the best part of having a blank canvas and "just following instructions" is that you get a full guided tour of how everything works. You might be able to install Ubuntu in 30 minutes. Arch might take a few hours (or more) as you gradually build the system you want... and you'll have to look up concepts you don't understand... but it really is worth it!

It's definitely worth a look, anyway. I've been using it for years -- it's particularly handy on my low-spec netbook, but it's the main OS on my high-spec desktop PC too. It's like Lego -- you just build what you need.

Personally, I use the XFCE desktop environment, which is lightweight enough to run on very slow hardware, but clean and simple enough to be all that you need.

TheCaptain said:
2.) BTRFS file system for desktop use?

Ah... I don't know too much about filesystems... What would be the reason for using btrfs over, say, ext4...?

TheCaptain said:
...I just like talking tech (I'm assuming it's mutual lol :D)

Oh, yeaahhh! :biggrin:
 
tiny said:
I really don't know, but from what little I've read about JACK, and from what I understand about drivers and sound servers... I presume that despite JACK being "an extra layer", it probably does clever pro-audio things like telling ALSA that latency is a priority (rather than leaving ALSA to its default settings)...? :dunno:

That's been my overall impression of it as well. I've read multiple accounts of it not only not adding to latency, but helping it in some circumstances. But you know how it goes...research, find an answer, and research it some more! Lol

tiny said:
Argh -- tell me about it! It was a good few hundred quid for the add-on, but if I was charging for my time trying to fix the problem, it would have run in to the thousands! Grrr!

Well, you're certainly a good friend for helping out. Then again, I'm sure you probably can't help yourself haha

tiny said:
I'm not overly familiar with all of the GNU/Linux distros out there, although I've tried quite a few in my time. I'm very biased, verging on evangelical! But in my experience, Arch Linux is the perfect distro for pretty much anything... so long as you're prepared to read the wiki and put in a little time to set up the perfect system.

I'm not a Unix/Linux guru by any stretch of the imagination, but... I am a control freak. I always think that my computer should just be doing what I tell it, rather than running all sorts of mystery background processes and "trying to be clever".

When you install Arch Linux, you start with a text-only shell and not much else. It's a blank canvas. Anything you want has to be installed and configured. This is perfect for low-spec systems (Arch even runs on the Raspberry Pi), perfect for control freaks (like me), and perfect for "specialist applications" (like audio production) as you can install only what you need and tweak the system accordingly.

I fell in love with Unix after using it for a year in the mid-90s, and spent years looking for some kind of Unix-like system that didn't require a mainframe so I could run it at home! I came across GNU/Linux as a curiosity, and it was amazing... apart from the fact that I would completely trash every distro within weeks.

Arch is the only distro I haven't perpetually destroyed. You can set it up however you like. The Arch wiki is incredible -- you don't need to be a Linux guru if you can follow step-by-step instructions. And the best part of having a blank canvas and "just following instructions" is that you get a full guided tour of how everything works. You might be able to install Ubuntu in 30 minutes. Arch might take a few hours (or more) as you gradually build the system you want... and you'll have to look up concepts you don't understand... but it really is worth it!

It's definitely worth a look, anyway. I've been using it for years -- it's particularly handy on my low-spec netbook, but it's the main OS on my high-spec desktop PC too. It's like Lego -- you just build what you need.

Personally, I use the XFCE desktop environment, which is lightweight enough to run on very slow hardware, but clean and simple enough to be all that you need.:

There is so much of this that matches my feelings and reasoning it's scary lol.

Here's my long anecdote lol:
I started with Windows 98 or some pre Windows ME edition (I remember there being significantly less BSODs back then, then again I didn't use it as intensely either). All was smooth sailing (even through Vista) until Windows 8. Then that's what spurred my interest in checking out Apple. In 2013 I got my MacBook pro and oh man, that was a complete joy. What impressed me wasn't the interface or organizational paradigm they used (which I did think was an improvement over Windows), but after 4+ years, it was still running as good as new. Most of my windows systems showed their age at the 4 year mark, not that they were unusable, but they were noticeably slower and usually required some cleaning up to get them partially back to good as new.

Honestly, Windows and OS X are exactly the same for 90% of users imo, unless you're a developer or customize your OS with scripts and such. There's a desktop, left click, right click, aliases/shortcuts and directories for media and programs. So after wondering why I thought it was so much better, I landed on the kernel. I figured (and this is my current thinking) that Unix was superior to Windows NT (and especially that the Windows registry system was crap). Then that's what lead me to start getting interested in Linux.

I want the Unix kernel being the engine of the OS, but behaving exactly as I want. Arch Linux fits that bill perfectly! I think it's kinda interesting how I started on the opposite end and slowly worked my way over (with OS X being the middle man hehe). OSX will probably be my main OS though since I like it's efficiency/reliability AND commercial software is made for it (ie Adobe etc)

I'm assuming the default shell Arch comes with is Bash?

When you first install Arch, what do you start with exactly? An empty bin directory and that's it?

Will sudo apt-get install... work out of the box on Arch?

This is the sort of stuff I usually Google and am sure the Arch wiki probably answers. So if you start getting tired of humoring me, no worries! I can and absolutely will research this on my own, not to mention once I actually start building the system a lot of these questions will be answered.


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tiny said:
Ah... I don't know too much about filesystems... What would be the reason for using btrfs over, say, ext4...?

The main reason I'm interested in btrfs is that it's been optimized for flash storage.

It also natively supports snapshots for backup/roll back support.

Another reason is that it has RAID support built into the file system itself. While I don't see this being a major reason for using it (especially for desktop use), I still think it sounds kinda cool and neat. And it may become a feature worth utilizing at some point.

But I've also heard of corruption problems occurring with raid arrays using the btrfs file system EEK!


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I use a RME BabyFace pro. THis is my second RME interface, the first having been a 24 channel PCIBus card. I needed the inputs (currently using about 5, it supports up to 10).
The older card I used the multiple outs.

I'm mostly an OS/X guy, but there is a good Linux RME community.
 
willnotwill said:
I use a RME BabyFace pro. THis is my second RME interface, the first having been a 24 channel PCIBus card. I needed the inputs (currently using about 5, it supports up to 10).
The older card I used the multiple outs.

I'm mostly an OS/X guy, but there is a good Linux RME community.

Thanks for the info. Right now I'm using the NI Komplete Audio 6 with OSX which works awesome and I like. But eventually I was thinking about upgrading to an RME Fireface or UAD Apollo for the additional ins and I wanna try to avoid USB. I'm super glad to hear that RME supports Linux (I was leaning more towards RME to begin with). I found out that the makers of my midi interface, Motu, don't support Linux, it almost sounds like they're anti-Linux. So that made me nervous about other hardware support.


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TheCaptain said:
There is so much of this that matches my feelings and reasoning it's scary lol.

Here's my long anecdote lol:
I started with Windows 98 or some pre Windows ME edition (I remember there being significantly less BSODs back then, then again I didn't use it as intensely either). All was smooth sailing (even through Vista) until Windows 8. Then that's what spurred my interest in checking out Apple. In 2013 I got my MacBook pro and oh man, that was a complete joy. What impressed me wasn't the interface or organizational paradigm they used (which I did think was an improvement over Windows), but after 4+ years, it was still running as good as new. Most of my windows systems showed their age at the 4 year mark, not that they were unusable, but they were noticeably slower and usually required some cleaning up to get them partially back to good as new.

Ha ha -- cool! It sounds like you might really like Arch, then. It uses a rolling-release model unlike other OSes, so there will never be a "new version" you need to install -- everything can be updated from an existing installation. I bought a low-spec Asus EEE 901 netbook almost ten years ago, and it's still happily running the original installation of Arch (with updates). It really is rock solid. Nothing slows down over time.

There is no real "bloat" to the system as you only install what you need to. If something does go wrong, you can remove the component, restore config settings, and... you're back to a "clean" system... unlike with Windows which needs to be wiped and reinstalled periodically. And unlike other Linux distros that try to be Windows-like by trying to do things automatically "behind the scenes". With Arch, you are the one in control.

TheCaptain said:
Honestly, Windows and OS X are exactly the same for 90% of users imo, unless you're a developer or customize your OS with scripts and such. There's a desktop, left click, right click, aliases/shortcuts and directories for media and programs.

It's the same for Unix and GNU... except that Unix comes from a time when ONLY large businesses and universities had computers -- and these would be single machines operated by technicians, with multiple users attached via dumb terminals.

Windows and Mac OSes are designed with consumers in mind; Unix and GNU are designed with the assumption that there will be a technically-competent systems administrator to oversee the installation. This is why it comes as such a shock to Windows users who aren't used to being exposed to that level of control.

The popular GNU/Linux distros (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) try to emulate Windows by automating and "simplifying" everything from the point-of-view of a non-technical end-user. They heap layer upon layer of complexity to make sure that the OS can fix itself, detect the "right" settings, and second-guess everything the user does.

Arch cuts out all that crap. It has a reputation for being "hard to use" because it is hard for end-users to just install and use without any knowledge of how their system is set up. But it is easy for systems administrators because there aren't a billion layers of complexity. If you know what you want, Arch makes it easy. And the wiki is so good, you don't need to be an expert if you can just grasp the basics. The main principle behind Arch is "don't overcomplicate things".

TheCaptain said:
So after wondering why I thought it was so much better, I landed on the kernel. I figured (and this is my current thinking) that Unix was superior to Windows NT (and especially that the Windows registry system was crap). Then that's what lead me to start getting interested in Linux.

I don't think Linux (i.e. the kernel) is what is so great. It is a masterful feat, and nothing would work without it, but it's really just the last piece of the jigsaw that completes GNU. GNU is what makes GNU/Linux so great!

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/about-gnu.html

TheCaptain said:
I want the Unix kernel being the engine of the OS, but behaving exactly as I want. Arch Linux fits that bill perfectly! I think it's kinda interesting how I started on the opposite end and slowly worked my way over (with OS X being the middle man hehe). OSX will probably be my main OS though since I like it's efficiency/reliability AND commercial software is made for it (ie Adobe etc)

I'm not overly familiar with Apple's OSes. I have tried to use them but I just can't get my head round how anything actually works! But... if you want efficiency and reliability, I reckon GNU/Linux could beat Apple hands down. As for software... yeah... Apple is popular with music producers for a reason -- there are some great apps that are only available for Apple devices (or so I've heard).

TheCaptain said:
I'm assuming the default shell Arch comes with is Bash?

Yeah -- that would be the "normal" way to do things. Installing the "core" group gives you bash as the default shell, but you can use whichever shell you like, switch between them -- whatever you want.

TheCaptain said:
When you first install Arch, what do you start with exactly? An empty bin directory and that's it?

It depends what you install! You really are in full control. The "normal" thing to do would be to install the "core" group (which contains the individual packages required for a default minimalist Arch installation including bash) and the "base-devel" group if you need to compile and build packages yourself (which you probably will if you want to install non-mainstream software).

The idea behind Arch is to "keep it simple", so... if you install the "core" group of packages, you end up with a fully-functional Bash shell, and all the usual GNU utilities in /usr/bin (cp, mv, ls, more, vi, etc,). Nothing fancy, but you don't need to teach Arch how to suck eggs.

So... once you've installed "core", you've got the basics -- you don't need to get into any tedious nitty-gritty. Then, you'll probably want to install X and a desktop manager. My favourite by far is XFCE because it does everything you need whilst being incredibly lightweight. It looks a bit like the Windows XP (classic theme) desktop, although its more flexible. It's perfect for low-spec devices as it's simple and fast, but I use it on my high-spec desktop PC becuase it just works and doesn't have any pointless bloat to annoy me!

TheCaptain said:
Will sudo apt-get install... work out of the box on Arch?

No. You'd first need to install and configure sudo. Most apps don't require special configuration, but as a security app, you want to make sure sudo is set up exactly as you want, so Arch leaves this to you. (It's very easy -- one command installs it, edit a text file annotate with comments to configure, and the wiki guides you through everything.)

Also, apt is the Debian package manager. Arch uses its own package manager called pacman. This is one of the things that you need to familiarise yourself with. You should never perform a partial update to the system: as a rolling-release distro, if you mix old packages with new packages, you may experience errors. You should also consult the wiki before installing any software to see if there's any information about it.

So update the entire system with pacman -Syu, immediately before installing new packages, then you avoid partial updates. These other commands are all you need (to begin with):

pacman -S sudo (install the package or group named "sudo")
pacman -Rs sudo (uninstall the package/group "sudo" and any packages that are only needed by sudo)
pacman -Ss sudo (search and list available packages that contain "sudo" in their name or description)
pacman -Qi sudo (show information about sudo -- only works if sudo is installed)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/pacman

TheCaptain said:
This is the sort of stuff I usually Google and am sure the Arch wiki probably answers. So if you start getting tired of humoring me, no worries! I can and absolutely will research this on my own, not to mention once I actually start building the system a lot of these questions will be answered.

I'm not humouring you at all! You're humouring me by letting me rave on about how good Arch is! Usually people just tell me to shut up! :laugh: But it's soooo clean and fast and simple and adaptable. :biggrin: Subject to my randomness, I'm more than happy to (try to) answer any questions you may have. :)

TheCaptain said:
The main reason I'm interested in btrfs is that it's been optimized for flash storage.

It also natively supports snapshots for backup/roll back support.

Another reason is that it has RAID support built into the file system itself. While I don't see this being a major reason for using it (especially for desktop use), I still think it sounds kinda cool and neat. And it may become a feature worth utilizing at some point.

But I've also heard of corruption problems occurring with raid arrays using the btrfs file system EEK!

Hmmm... I've played around with a few different filesystems but I haven't really noticed any performance differences, and I've heard a few horror stories of people using new-ish filesystems and losing data.

I'm quite conservative when it comes to filesystems. A bug in a filesystem could cause all sorts of hard-to-troubleshoot problems, including random data corruption that might not be noticed for a long time. I still use ext3 on hard drives, and ext4 on SSDs for most partitions.

Unless you have a performance issue with ext2/3/4, I'd be tempted to stick to them for internal drives -- they have a reputation for stability. If you do have performance issues, maybe keep ext2/3/4 for system partitions, and use a separate partition with a fancy new-fangled filesystem for audio data files...?
 
tiny said:
Ha ha -- cool! It sounds like you might really like Arch, then. It uses a rolling-release model unlike other OSes, so there will never be a "new version" you need to install -- everything can be updated from an existing installation. I bought a low-spec Asus EEE 901 netbook almost ten years ago, and it's still happily running the original installation of Arch (with updates). It really is rock solid. Nothing slows down over time.

It sounds like the OS source is a repository you can pull from to update. If that's the case, that sounds awesome. I wish everything used some form of SVN or CVS system. Since learning about that I've been blown away by how much sense it makes. Seriously, everything could benefit from that.

tiny said:
There is no real "bloat" to the system as you only install what you need to. If something does go wrong, you can remove the component, restore config settings, and... you're back to a "clean" system... unlike with Windows which needs to be wiped and reinstalled periodically. And unlike other Linux distros that try to be Windows-like by trying to do things automatically "behind the scenes". With Arch, you are the one in control.

It's the same for Unix and GNU... except that Unix comes from a time when ONLY large businesses and universities had computers -- and these would be single machines operated by technicians, with multiple users attached via dumb terminals.

Windows and Mac OSes are designed with consumers in mind; Unix and GNU are designed with the assumption that there will be a technically-competent systems administrator to oversee the installation. This is why it comes as such a shock to Windows users who aren't used to being exposed to that level of control.

The popular GNU/Linux distros (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) try to emulate Windows by automating and "simplifying" everything from the point-of-view of a non-technical end-user. They heap layer upon layer of complexity to make sure that the OS can fix itself, detect the "right" settings, and second-guess everything the user does.

Arch cuts out all that crap. It has a reputation for being "hard to use" because it is hard for end-users to just install and use without any knowledge of how their system is set up. But it is easy for systems administrators because there aren't a billion layers of complexity. If you know what you want, Arch makes it easy. And the wiki is so good, you don't need to be an expert if you can just grasp the basics. The main principle behind Arch is "don't overcomplicate things".

I can see myself (eventually) making my own bloated Arch system lol. There are so many little things I wanna implement that are honestly probably already implemented in most consumer OS's. For instance, I want to implement a copy on write system that automatically creates or validates a checksum everytime a new file is written or copied. Sometimes I'll leave certain peripherals powered on (a midi interface or midi controller etc.) and I wanna receive a warning if my system is shutting down and it detects any of these devices (I'm working on a script for this for my Mac), I want my media organized in a more logical way as well as include a "projects" folder as opposed to only a "music, pictures, videos, documents" directory (I've already implemented this to an extent and want to create yet another script to automate this as well on my Mac). Well, you get the point, I always end up tweaking my environment to my liking, with Arch, that cuts out the middleman. I don't tweak the environment to my liking, I create an environment to my liking :). So ya, control, knowing what's going on, and only having relevant processes take place sounds nice lol

tiny said:
I don't think Linux (i.e. the kernel) is what is so great. It is a masterful feat, and nothing would work without it, but it's really just the last piece of the jigsaw that completes GNU. GNU is what makes GNU/Linux so great!

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/about-gnu.html

I think I gotch ya, GNU is what helped Unix evolve into the "Linux" we know and love today (except it's GNU/Linux).

tiny said:
I'm not overly familiar with Apple's OSes. I have tried to use them but I just can't get my head round how anything actually works! But... if you want efficiency and reliability, I reckon GNU/Linux could beat Apple hands down. As for software... yeah... Apple is popular with music producers for a reason -- there are some great apps that are only available for Apple devices (or so I've heard).

I don't fully understand how OS X (or Windows for that matter) works either, I'm sure few people do, minus teams of people who helped develop it and even then, they probably can't fully understand how every part works without the help of other teams haha. All I know, is that I have tons of programs installed on both my PC and Apple computer. If we're including plugins, we're talking upwards of around 1000 or more. I think that's one of things causing my PC to be less stable and having "a lot of programs" installed is no excuse IMO, the OS should be designed for that after all. My OS X system works wonderfully despite having many of the same programs installed, and when the programs are running they run more efficiently. For example, I get significantly less CPU usage and pops, clicks, and drop outs when running audio unit plugins within a DAW on my Mac vs running VSTs on my PC. And my PC has similar specs, an i7 (albeit an older generation one), SSD, 16gb or RAM.

tiny said:
Yeah -- that would be the "normal" way to do things. Installing the "core" group gives you bash as the default shell, but you can use whichever shell you like, switch between them -- whatever you want.

It depends what you install! You really are in full control. The "normal" thing to do would be to install the "core" group (which contains the individual packages required for a default minimalist Arch installation including bash) and the "base-devel" group if you need to compile and build packages yourself (which you probably will if you want to install non-mainstream software).

The idea behind Arch is to "keep it simple", so... if you install the "core" group of packages, you end up with a fully-functional Bash shell, and all the usual GNU utilities in /usr/bin (cp, mv, ls, more, vi, etc,). Nothing fancy, but you don't need to teach Arch how to suck eggs.

So... once you've installed "core", you've got the basics -- you don't need to get into any tedious nitty-gritty. Then, you'll probably want to install X and a desktop manager. My favourite by far is XFCE because it does everything you need whilst being incredibly lightweight. It looks a bit like the Windows XP (classic theme) desktop, although its more flexible. It's perfect for low-spec devices as it's simple and fast, but I use it on my high-spec desktop PC becuase it just works and doesn't have any pointless bloat to annoy me!

This sounds pretty spot on. I wanna customize the heck out of it, but I don't wanna reinvent the wheel...yet lol. Besides, bash is the only CLI I've got experience with and it more or less makes sense, not to mention it's friggin everywhere. I do wanna take a crack at zsh at some point, but for now I use and like bash and think of all the CLI's that are out there, it's probably the best one to understand imo


So when you install X and a desktop manager, do you pretty much select a default directory for the desktop and navigate from there? Of all the things involved, implementing a GUI seems the most foreign to me.



tiny said:
No. You'd first need to install and configure sudo. Most apps don't require special configuration, but as a security app, you want to make sure sudo is set up exactly as you want, so Arch leaves this to you. (It's very easy -- one command installs it, edit a text file annotate with comments to configure, and the wiki guides you through everything.)

I don't know why, but this surprised the heck out of me. Sudo was just always "that thing that worked that way" lol, but I guess that can be applied to every digital function till you break it down to the machine code or ¿microcode? heheh. Conceptually, I've hard time picturing the abstraction of how sudo would be implemented (unless it's just a privilege sort of thing), but I'm not too worried about it. Once I start really cracking into the Arch wiki and piecing everything together it'll workout or can be made to work out.

tiny said:
Also, apt is the Debian package manager. Arch uses its own package manager called pacman. This is one of the things that you need to familiarise yourself with. You should never perform a partial update to the system: as a rolling-release distro, if you mix old packages with new packages, you may experience errors. You should also consult the wiki before installing any software to see if there's any information about it.

So update the entire system with pacman -Syu, immediately before installing new packages, then you avoid partial updates. These other commands are all you need (to begin with):

pacman -S sudo (install the package or group named "sudo")
pacman -Rs sudo (uninstall the package/group "sudo" and any packages that are only needed by sudo)
pacman -Ss sudo (search and list available packages that contain "sudo" in their name or description)
pacman -Qi sudo (show information about sudo -- only works if sudo is installed)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/pacman

Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I think the fact the package manager is called pacman is probably gonna be my favorite part of the entire system lol. And thanks for the heads up about updating and the quick command references. I haven't gotten my system to install it on yet, but now I really can't wait. I wanna start getting my hands dirty asap!

tiny said:
I'm not humouring you at all! You're humouring me by letting me rave on about how good Arch is! Usually people just tell me to shut up! :laugh: But it's soooo clean and fast and simple and adaptable. :biggrin: Subject to my randomness, I'm more than happy to (try to) answer any questions you may have. :)

Well, I can't really answer questions on the subject (correctly at least hehe), but I'm glad the humoring is mutual lol

tiny said:
Hmmm... I've played around with a few different filesystems but I haven't really noticed any performance differences, and I've heard a few horror stories of people using new-ish filesystems and losing data.

I'm quite conservative when it comes to filesystems. A bug in a filesystem could cause all sorts of hard-to-troubleshoot problems, including random data corruption that might not be noticed for a long time. I still use ext3 on hard drives, and ext4 on SSDs for most partitions.

Unless you have a performance issue with ext2/3/4, I'd be tempted to stick to them for internal drives -- they have a reputation for stability. If you do have performance issues, maybe keep ext2/3/4 for system partitions, and use a separate partition with a fancy new-fangled filesystem for audio data files...?

I'll look it up more, but it sounds like ext4 will be it then. The stability issues are extremely important (none to surprisingly) and while I certainly love performance, there's gotta be a balance between stability and performance. Besides, I feel most modern software on most modern hardware won't cause any performance issues in 99% of circumstances.

I've been on vacation but I've been going over what you shared, I really appreciate all the info and links, thank you very much
 
TheCaptain said:
It sounds like the OS source is a repository you can pull from to update. If that's the case, that sounds awesome. I wish everything used some form of SVN or CVS system. Since learning about that I've been blown away by how much sense it makes. Seriously, everything could benefit from that.

Yep -- that's essentially how it works. I was sceptical as it was a new concept to me at the time, but it works so well. If there are any major changes requiring manual intervention, they'll be listed as an announcement at the top of the Arch home page.

The installation process is interesting too. There is no "installation program" that guides you through. Instead, you follow the steps in the wiki to boot a live CD, which takes you to a bash shell, where (essentially) you can set up your partitions, use pacstrap to install packages to them, chroot to the new installation, then finish up by configuring fstab and a boot manager.

It's really handy to understand what chroot does. If you ever have a problem that means that Arch is unbootable, you can boot the live CD again, mount your partitions, fix the problem, then chroot to test and fix boot problems. This is another reason that makes it very unlikely that you will ever need to reinstall Arch from scratch.

After that, I'd make sure you have the right SSD settings -- enabling periodic TRIM, updating firmware, and generally making sure that you don't have any errors.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

Don't be put off by the installation process. It all helps you learn how to control, maintain and fix a (mostly) rock-solid system. Again, it's a lot easier than it looks. And everything is set up exactly as you want! The wiki is really comprehensive and well-written. :smile:

-------

The Arch forum can be a bit daunting, though. They don't tolerate fools, and if you post a question, you're expected to explain all the steps you have tried to fix the problem, along with the relevant logs or settings. And you're expected to have searched the forum, wiki and internet for solutions first.

But... once you get used to it, this is what makes Arch so good. The wiki is comprehensive without being tediously bloated, and there are no "stupid" threads on the forum -- you can skim through and find solutions to problems quite easily.

When I have gone to post a new thread on the forum, the effort of trying to explain myself and supply the relevant information usually leads me to solve the problem without needing to post anything!

I once had a major issue when Arch moved from using init to systemd, and /usr had to be on the same partition as root (/). Due to the limited storage space on my old netbook, I could only fit the installation onto the two internal SSDs if I had /usr on its own partition. I posted this problem, others confirmed similar issues, and the Arch devs created some "hooks" that could be added to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf to completely fix everything. Awesome!

More recently, with the ubiquity of 64-bit CPUs and software, Arch decided to drop support for 32-bit machines. This means that developers can concentrate their efforts to supporting modern hardware, but again, my 10-year-old netbook has a 32-bit processor, and is far too slow to run even Windows XP. Fortunately others had this issue and the Arch32 project was created to provide ongoing support for old 32-bit machines. I was able to migrate my existing (no longer supported) multi-bit Arch installation to the 32-bit fork without having to reinstall anything. Too easy! :smile:

https://archlinux32.org/

Arch is very-much led by the community. If you want something sensible, then there's a good chance other people will want it. And it shall come to pass in the Arch utopia!

It's recommended to install pkgstats. It's up to you (and I can understand the privacy concerns), but it sends back a list of all the packages you have installed to the Arch developers. They focus their time on making sure that all the most popular packages get the most attention, and that they are aware of the kind of obscure set-ups that might be used by specialists -- such as audio producers.

TheCaptain said:
I want my media organized in a more logical way as well as include a "projects" folder as opposed to only a "music, pictures, videos, documents" directory...

Er... Can't you do that in any OS? The silly virtual Windows directories like "My Music", etc. are just extra features that you can ignore.

TheCaptain said:
Well, you get the point, I always end up tweaking my environment to my liking, with Arch, that cuts out the middleman. I don't tweak the environment to my liking, I create an environment to my liking . So ya, control, knowing what's going on, and only having relevant processes take place sounds nice lol

Yep yep yep! Oh, boy! From what you've said, you are going to love Arch!

TheCaptain said:
I think I gotch ya, GNU is what helped Unix evolve into the "Linux" we know and love today (except it's GNU/Linux).

Well... Unix is the multi-tasking, multi-user proprietary OS developed in the 1970s. It was beautiful and elegant... but expensive, restrictive, and controlled by a single corporation. In 1980s, Richard Stallman started working on a project to create a free OS based on the Unix philosophy. He called it GNU (GNU's Not Unix). Lots of people got involved, and GNU was almost a complete operating system; it just needed a kernel... eventually after some time and a few attempts by others, Linus Torvalds came up with the Linux kernel.

Everyone involved knew GNU, and that GNU was incomplete. When Linux was added, people would refer to the new OS as "GNU/Linux", emphasising the fact that this was the new complete OS with the Linux kernel. Linux became a bit of a buzz-word, to the point that the masses heard about this new thing called "Linux", and... suddenly everyone was referring to the complete OS as "Linux" instead of "GNU"!

Many people (wrongly) say that Android is a Linux-based OS! But it isn't; it's based on GNU. Google wrote their own Android kernel, so perhaps it should be called GNU/Android, but Linux has nothing to do with it.

Sorry -- I'm such a pedant! I just feel sorry for GNU who did almost all of the work in creating an OS, only to be forgotten and to have their creation called "Linux". :frown:

TheCaptain said:
All I know, is that I have tons of programs installed on both my PC and Apple computer. If we're including plugins, we're talking upwards of around 1000 or more. I think that's one of things causing my PC to be less stable and having "a lot of programs" installed is no excuse IMO, the OS should be designed for that after all. My OS X system works wonderfully despite having many of the same programs installed, and when the programs are running they run more efficiently. For example, I get significantly less CPU usage and pops, clicks, and drop outs when running audio unit plugins within a DAW on my Mac vs running VSTs on my PC. And my PC has similar specs, an i7 (albeit an older generation one), SSD, 16gb or RAM.

Oh, I feel your pain! This is what drives me to insanity with Windows. I feel like I'm wrestling against that talking paperclip with artificial intelligence, instead of telling my computer to jump and watch it do so! Just what is it trying to do in the background without asking me?! Grrr!

Windows has always been a rushed-out compromise. MS developers prefer to hack code to maintain backward-compatibility rather than writing an OS with a coherent philosophy from scratch. It's an absolute mess of spaghetti code with security as a very low priority after-thought.

But at least my non-techie friends can install and use it without having to wear a "systems administrator" hat. :-/

TheCaptain said:
This sounds pretty spot on. I wanna customize the heck out of it, but I don't wanna reinvent the wheel...yet lol. Besides, bash is the only CLI I've got experience with and it more or less makes sense, not to mention it's friggin everywhere. I do wanna take a crack at zsh at some point, but for now I use and like bash and think of all the CLI's that are out there, it's probably the best one to understand imo

Yeah -- I used bash at uni in the mid-90s, and it's still the go-to shell. It's dead easy to have multiple shells installed and run scripts in whichever shell you fancy, or switch to that shell in the command line.

A lot of shell scripts use the bourne shell (sh). Having the command "sh" at the top of the script means that the rest of it will use sh instead of bash. Simples!

TheCaptain said:
So when you install X and a desktop manager, do you pretty much select a default directory for the desktop and navigate from there? Of all the things involved, implementing a GUI seems the most foreign to me.

GNU/Linux uses a fairly standardised directory hierarchy. You don't choose where to install programs or where the configuration files go -- the OS takes care of that. I think binaries go in /usr/bin, global config files go in /etc, and there's sometimes a . (dot) hidden file in your /home/username directory with user-specific program settings. In theory you could install stuff wherever you like, but... just... don't! Keep it simple! It's this way for a reason!

Anyway, the first thing you'd need to do is install a graphics driver. Then install Xorg. Then install xfce and (probably) xfce-goodies (assuming you want to use XFCE).

The wiki goes into a lot of detail in setting up a GUI, but you probably don't want (or need) to customise anything much yet. You don't want to do anything with any xorg.conf file -- systemd and udev (?) take care of everything. Just "keep it simple" and test it to see if it works before trying to tweak it.

Personally, I use xinit to manually start X. (This is all covered in the wiki.) This means my PC boots to a bash shell, where I login and run "startx" to load the GUI. I like it this way because it makes it easy to boot my PC and fix problems if there is a problem with X or the graphics driver.

It's easier than it sounds, honestly! But (as you probably figured out) I'm always happy to answer any questions you might have. :biggrin:

Oh -- you might see a few benign error messages after you install XFCE. Bear in mind that not all "error" messages actually indicate an error! If I remember correctly, once you've gone through the general recommendations and tweaked the basic installation, all of these "errors" will be resolved.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/General_recommendations

TheCaptain said:
I don't know why, but this surprised the heck out of me. Sudo was just always "that thing that worked that way" lol, but I guess that can be applied to every digital function till you break it down to the machine code or ¿microcode? heheh. Conceptually, I've hard time picturing the abstraction of how sudo would be implemented (unless it's just a privilege sort of thing), but I'm not too worried about it. Once I start really cracking into the Arch wiki and piecing everything together it'll workout or can be made to work out.

Arch is great because you do everything step-by-step... a bit like Lego! But, yes -- sudo configuration is just a matter of priviledges. When I started using GNU/Linux, I don't think most distros contained sudo. I only started using it regularly with Arch.

Sudo is configured by the file /etc/sudoers, but for security/stability reasons, you can't edit that file directly -- you need to run visudo (which opens the file in the vi text editor by default, and performs sanity checks when you save the file). If you're a Linux geek, you probably know vi inside out... otherwise its arcane key-combinations make it impossible to use, and you'll probably want to use nano instead (all linked to from the wiki installation guide).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/nano

The wiki entry for nano looks complicated, but you don't need to do anything other than install it with pacman. You don't need things like syntax highlighting unless you want to use it to write code. But the "tips and tricks" section shows you how to use (the very simple) nano instead of (the very complicated) vi by default (with visudoers, for example) by setting the EDITOR and VISUAL environment variables.

The only modifications to /etc/sudoers that I made (using visudo) was to the "User privilege specification" section:

Code:
##
## User privilege specification
##
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
tiny ALL=(ALL) ALL

That simply allows user tiny to use sudo by entering their own password to run a command with root priviledges. All the other settings are fine left as they are, and this is a fairly standard set-up.

TheCaptain said:
Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I think the fact the package manager is called pacman is probably gonna be my favorite part of the entire system lol.

Ha ha! I know! It makes me chuckle every time I think about it! I actually use yaourt now (which is just a front-end for pacman. It additionally allows you to install packages from the AUR (Arch User Resource) repository without having to manually compile anything and "getting your hands dirty" (but don't worry about that for now!).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers

Oh, and packages are signed using PGP keys to prevent tampering and man-in-the-middle attacks (regardless of whether you use pacman or yaourt), which is pretty cool.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Package_signing

TheCaptain said:
And thanks for the heads up about updating and the quick command references. I haven't gotten my system to install it on yet, but now I really can't wait. I wanna start getting my hands dirty asap!

Ha ha! No problem! I'm so excited for you! From everything you've said, I think you're going to love it. It's weird booting into a system where there's nothing to tweak because everything works exactly as you want it to! :-D

Expect a few baffling moments where you have to patiently read the wiki and look up things you don't understand. Make sure you have a second working computer to search the internet during installation! Don't rush things. And don't overcomplicate things. Just get all the basics working before trying to tweak stuff.

TheCaptain said:
I'll look it up more, but it sounds like ext4 will be it then. The stability issues are extremely important (none to surprisingly) and while I certainly love performance, there's gotta be a balance between stability and performance. Besides, I feel most modern software on most modern hardware won't cause any performance issues in 99% of circumstances.

Yeah, with an SSD and 16GB RAM... I don't think your choice of filesystem is going to have any impact on performance as far as the OS is concerned. But if you're dealing with very large media files on mechanical drives, it would be well worth looking into the alternatives to ext3/4.

Oh, and if you're dual-booting you'll need to "incorrectly" set the boot flag on your Windows partition. GNU/Linux doesn't care about the flag, but Windows Updates requiring installation after a reboot won't complete, resulting in failed updates. Stupid Windows.

It's worth considering how many partitions you want to have for Arch. I always have /home on a separate partition so all personal files are in one place for easy-backup, and to make a reinstallation/migration easier.

If your SSD space is limited, it's worth considering whether to locate directories on a mechanical drive or SSD (/home, /usr, /var, swap, etc...).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Partitioning

I'm really not an expert on the optimal partitioning set-up stuff, but I wonder whether, for your audio production uses, you might want to think about the "best" swap set-up. In the old days, you'd need a swap file/partition to deal with large memory requirements on systems with limited RAM.

With 16GB RAM and an SSD, I'm not sure that a swap partition is necessarily useful. If you want to suspend/hibernate your PC, you will need a swap partition at least as large as your RAM size. Otherwise... I'm not sure... I've been running my old desktop Core i7 12GB system without any swap for several months without issues (possibly even a slight improvement in performance), but your needs are different to mine, so... I dunno!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Swap

TheCaptain said:
I've been on vacation but I've been going over what you shared, I really appreciate all the info and links, thank you very much

No worries -- I've been away too. I hope the info and links have given you a bit of an insight/overview of how things work in Arch, without scaring you off! It really does sound more complicated than it is!

I've always found it hard to learn GNU/Linux from a book. But with Arch, you learn how it works by building it up, block-by-block yourself, always with a simple goal in mind. It's fun, and such a breath of fresh air compared to over-complicated OSes that slow you down trying to do things for you that you don't want or need.

One of the rookie mistakes I made was in how I read the wiki. If you look at the table-of-contents (the hierarchical hyperlinks at the top of each wiki page), it's easy to see which sections you can skip over because they aren't relevant. When you then scroll through the whole page, it's less clear and it's tempting to follow all the steps on the wiki page, when in fact you may be going into another sub-section that isn't relevant for your needs. (Does that make sense?)

Anyway, I hope I've whetted your appetite for creating the (almost) "perfect" OS without bombarding you with information or being too evangelical about the whole thing!

Have fun! :smile1:
 
TheCaptain said:
So I'm about to convert an old Microsoft Surface Pro to a Linux machine...

:poke:

How's it going? Did you get Arch running? Or take one look at the wiki and say, "OMG! This looks harder than I thought!"...?

If it helps, I only just found out that a Surface Pro is some kind of tablet-like thingy. There's a page on the Arch wiki about installation on the Surface Pro 3, and (at a quick glance) it looks like there might be a few hardware-specific issues. So you might want to have a look here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microsoft_Surface_Pro_3

Sorry to bug you, just being nosy! :biggrin:
 
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