If you recall from my first post, I loaded a copy of Ubuntu (Jaunty Jackalope) onto the netbook and it has been performing very well for all the usual functions like web browsing Email etc. Now Ubuntu do an interesting version of the operating system called Ubuntu Studio, which ostensibly comes complete with a number of applications related to media production like a multitrack recording app, and drum machines, Midi instruments and a server called Jack that apparently works with lots of other applications to make a comprehensive music recording studio, sounds good don’t it. It also has applications for Video but I confess I have not tried these.

If you go into the Synaptic Package manager in Administration you can find what appears to be a package called Ubuntu Studio available for download from the Ubuntu repositories. Do install it but don’t expect it to provide all of the applications that you might need, it won’t, but the new look that the eye candy it provides makes your desktop impressive. A visit to the appropriate Ubuntu site will list the applications that you might need and most of these are available through the Synaptic Package manager. But working out which application does what might be a little confusing at first. “Jack” for instance is a server which effectively takes control of your sound card and allows you to run a number of applications simultaneously and gives them all access to the sound card, they must of course be able to work with “Jack”. so it is possible to run say a drum machine (Hydrogen)  and a multi track recording application (Ardour) with perhaps a midi instrument or two.

If you are going to have a go with Ubuntu Studio I would strongly advise downloading the complete ISO from the Ubuntu Studio site which will install just about everything you need as a fresh operating system on a dedicated machine, not that it requires anything very fast, but for instance, I discovered that the SSD (Solid State Disk) in my netbook could not keep up with Ardour and tripped out about three quarters of the way through my first recording. SSDs are notoriously slow when writing data  (compared with conventional Hard Drives). I would also advise the use of   “Patchage” which is an application that shows in diagramatic form all of the connections to and from the Jack server and allows editing of these connections with simple point and click movements on the diagram itself. Patchage is much easier to understand than the patchbay in the Jack audio connection Kit. If you want to get Ubuntu Studio up and Running you will have a steep learning curve to follow and a number of sites are listed to help you do it.

Even simpler tasks can at first seem needlessly hard in Linux. I decided that it might be a good idea to be able to download some videos from YouTube and rip the Mp3 from them so that I could learn the tunes, (  it helps if I know the tune when I try to play it on the guitar ) seems simple enough, hmm. Well I searched first for an application that would do the job and found “Utube Ripper” downloaded and installed  it, and bingo it downloads the FLV video files from YouTube perfectly. I could have stopped there, but I wanted to extract the Mp3 from the video file and keep that in a much smaller space on my SSD.  I tried the Convert FLV option, and it simply didn’t work. To cut a very long story short I discovered that many people have had this problem because Utube Ripper and other applications and plugins for the Firefox  Browser  like “Download helper” which nominally do the same thing are built using a package called “ffmpeg” which carries out the encoding and decoding process. Now ffmpeg is a very fine package but what you won’t find out until you try is that the application that is distributed by Ubuntu does not contain the required Mp3 functions there are very good reasons for this. Basically Ubuntu will not distribute anything that is not “Free”  and the required mp3 function is classified as “Non-Free” again if you want to understand the difference follow the appropriate link. If  “ffmpeg ” as distributed from the Ubuntu repository does not work, what must I do? Many searches on the net suggested that I needed to compile my own (deb file) version of  ffmpeg, and by collecting all the neccessary source files from here and there and typing a very complicated succession of commands in the terminal application I would acheive the desired result.  To a seasoned linux user this is probably bread and butter but to a new (yet to be convinced) ex-windows user this is an anathema. Fortunately I finally stumbled upon a geek with the ability to talk to those of us lesser geeks who are struggling to understand this world of linux he calls himself the FakeOutDoorsMan and the text can be found at   http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1117283.html (it is in the links list) . I read it and discovered that, because I have installed the Jaunty Jackalope distribution of  Ubuntu a couple of command lines in the Terminal programme would add the required elements to my installation and ffmpeg would do just what I wanted; I did it, and yes you guessed it, it worked. I can now download and rip mp3s from YouTube videos. Of  course you wouldn’t want to do this with anything that might be construed as illegal but there are many non commercial videos on YouTube just waiting for you to download.

I feel I need to explain the “frustrated Microsoft windows user” bit. I have used Windows over the years in all its incarnations from the first versions that sat on top of MSDOS, had no native network support and ran on 286 processor based PCs, to Windows XP which needs a Pentium class processor and 256MB of memory to get off the starting blocks (it wont run it just about walks on this platform). All of the versions of windows that ran on top of MSDOS (all versions up to Windows 98 except NT), were pretty unstable, mainly due to the fact that applications could overwrite the memory area used by the operating system itself, resulting in hangups requiring a reboot of the system. Windows NT was a professional operating system upon which XP was eventually built. It was around for a long time while the public at large  were struggling with Windows 95 & 98. NT was a proper operating system, which ring fenced its memory area so that crashes and hang ups were very rare, but it was not fit for release to the public because it required a highly trained system administrator to make any and all changes to software and hardware, it was not a  Plug n Play environment. Eventually Microsoft invested some of its vast revenues into making it Plug n Play and Windows XP was released. The first half decent operating system that the average user could handle, excepting of course for Linux.

Now Linux was not always user friendly, it was based on a kernel written by one Linus Torvalds and is named after him. It started life as a command line based operating system, like Unix (a professional network operating system (OS) that was very good but expensive and difficult to administer). Linus released his work to the world at large for free, nothing, nada, it was the start of something good written by thousands of individuals who, like Linus just wanted to make a contribution.

The Internet was still not used by the general public, but enthusiasts the world over were catching on to the possibilities and seeking out the few ISPs that existed in order to get connected. Linux began to develop big time over the internet but for a long time remained a command line OS, after all it was written and used by Geeks who had no use for Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) like Windows. Fortunately some geeks thought  GUIs a good Idea and a number of different ones now exist. Linux is now packaged by commercial concerns known as distributors and it is still free. These distributors release “Distros” and keep them up to date via Repositories for free download, they will also for a small fee sell Distros on CD and for larger fees manage commercial distributions, for various companies and organisations, after all they have to live and it helps to keep the development of Linux free and moving on.

So back to my new Netbook, as I said it came with a version of Linux called Linpus, a simplified version that runs well and provides everything the average user might require to use for access to the internet and writing letters and emails etc. Who needs Windows.

Linux comes in a number of flavours known as distributions or “Distros”. I personally decided to load Ubuntu on my netbook as a full desktop system and it runs very well. It gives me a bit more flexibility than Linpus and easy access to repositories of free software, that allow me to do just about anything I want. Ubuntu can be downloaded and burnt to a CD for installation, or just as a “live distro”. Live Distros are versions of the operating system that can be run on a PC without affecting an existing Windows or other operating system. It is even possible to install a live distro to a USB pen drive and if it is big enough save data to it whilst running a session on just about any PC, assuming it will let you force it to boot from the pendrive (F12 during boot up often does it). So you can carry your own virtual pc in your pocket or on a chain round your neck if you so desire.

I am still a newbie at Linux, but I can tell you that LINUX ROCKS, and if like me you are fed up with the built in redundancy factors in Windows XP, (don’t mention Vista) like the registry which gets bigger every time you switch on and eventually slows the system down until you are screaming at it, then give Linux a try, a live distro is a good way to go. If you do you will start to wonder why you are still using Windows.