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Old 05-26-2023, 07:52 AM   #1
Jae.Thomas
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Default Making an older laptop for usage in live situations ... with Linux

So,

I have an extra laptop.

Its at least 6 years old, prob older.

HP Elitebook 8470p 14" HD LED Laptop 3rd Gen i5 2.6GHz 16GB 256GB SSD Win 10

I would like to use it for multitrack recording along with a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3gen,

and maybe live looping or amp sim (I use Helix Native but could be talked into another amp sim). Would be cool to set up a multitrack session that had looping capabilities, and drumbeat stuff, etc... a simple drum machine. Installing EZ Drummer or Superior would be interesting but might tax my system a bit much haha

I would love to use it with Line6 HX edit to mess with patches on my Helix as well



I could set it up to dual boot if I don't like it or I have other uses for my windows partition

(the reason I wouldn't use Linux on my Studio Pc or Studio Laptop is because it's just too restrictive for me personally on the software/driver side)

I just want to find a nice clean linux install for a winter project, and I'm also planning on seeing how I could get a nice stripped down windows install too.

I've not really cared for linux in the past because of the software limitations, but I'm seeing, finally, there are some improvements and plugins working under certain conditions, and I feel like it would be a nice and easy way just to have a remote recording setup, which a computer of this power should be able to handle with no problem whatsoever, providing there aren't un-needed services or programs having to run.
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Old 05-26-2023, 08:27 AM   #2
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Just in the last week I setup an old EEE PC 1201N with Manjaro, REAPER, and a bunch of virtual instruments to take on vacation with my M-Audio Oxygen Pro Mini keyboard.

I'm using a Behringer UCA202 audio interface that I had laying around, and only made the two tweaks setting my user login for unlimited memory access and real time priority of 95 in the limits.conf file. The other tweak I did was to install TLPUI and set my CPU for performance mode. With those two tweaks on an old under-powered laptop and a cheezy 16-bit audio interface, I am able to run REAPER at 128 samples latency, which for MIDI instruments is definitely playable.
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Old 05-26-2023, 08:32 AM   #3
Jae.Thomas
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are there resources for individual plugins, drivers, etc?

I have a feeling there are guides somewhere
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Old 05-26-2023, 08:39 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jae.Thomas View Post
are there resources for individual plugins, drivers, etc?

I have a feeling there are guides somewhere
There are no drivers like in Windows where you have to install a driver before a piece of hardware works. It's all built into the kernel in Linux, and more stuff than you might think is ready to just plug in and it works.

As for native Linux plugins, KXStudios has a great page where you can download a ton of native Linux plugins.

https://kx.studio/Repositories:Plugins

As for running Windows plugins in Linux, you'll need to install WINE, and a bridge like LinVST or Yabridge. There are several tutorials in this forum for setting up WINE and bridging Windows plugins.
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Old 05-26-2023, 08:48 AM   #5
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awesome! So are there certain distros that are better than others for people starting out with basic DAW stuff? Distros that WINE works on?
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Old 05-26-2023, 09:00 AM   #6
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AFAIK, Wine should work on any Linux distro. there are distros that are specialized for music creation. The two most used being AV Linux and Ubuntu Studio. Manjaro to some extent also. Possibly also Fedora Workstation. however, any distro will work. I use Mint 21. I have used others, but mint allows an upgrade to the next LTS version, which obviates the need to reinstall everything. Which can be a real pain if you're doing music on Linux. although still easier than reinstalling windows.
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Old 05-26-2023, 09:02 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jae.Thomas View Post
awesome! So are there certain distros that are better than others for people starting out with basic DAW stuff? Distros that WINE works on?
I use Manjaro on my DAW machine, and that's what I installed on my old EEE PC laptop last week for my vacation DAW.

Before using Manjaro, I used to run Xubuntu. There are some distros that have a lot of stuff already setup, but I haven't used them myself. You can create bootable flash drives to try out different distros and see how you like them, and verify that all your hardware is identified and working in them.

Before I switched to Manjaro, I created a bootable Manjaro flash drive, booted from it, installed REAPER, and loaded up a few of my projects to see how it would do. Of course none of my plugins except native REAPER plugins worked on a live disk, but it let me verify that my audio interface would work without any snags, and that the stock lowlatency kernel could play a bunch of audio tracks with REAPER set to 64 samples latency.

Right after trying it on a live flash drive, I installed Manjaro for real on my DAW machine, because it is updated at a more rapid cycle, and I had just bought a bleeding edge NVMe PCIe 4.0 drive.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread....hlight=manjaro

That was two years ago and I still use Manjaro today.
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Old 05-26-2023, 09:08 AM   #8
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Quote:
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I use Mint 21. I have used others, but mint allows an upgrade to the next LTS version, which obviates the need to reinstall everything.
One of the reasons I like Manjaro is that it does rolling updates, so there never is a next version to upgrade to. My wife's computer and a MythTV server I have in the house both had to be upgraded from 20.04 to 22.04, but my Manjaro DAW machine will never need to do an upgrade, because it is just updated until forever, and there are no version numbers.
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Old 05-26-2023, 10:08 AM   #9
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Quote:
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S I'm also planning on seeing how I could get a nice stripped down windows install too.
I've been using this stripped down version of windows on a few machines and it works just as it should:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjwgzMcNL_M

I recently gave away my old elitebook to a friend and he's been recording non-stop since then. Good old machine.
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Old 05-26-2023, 10:31 AM   #10
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Fedora has a 'spin' called Jam (https://labs.fedoraproject.org/en/jam/). I haven't had a chance to check it out directly, but I am daily driving regular Fedora and it is just awesome. Stable, fast, clean. So if Fedora Jam is anything close to regular Fedora Workstation, it is a great distro to use for audio work.
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