Feedback for AV Linux 25?

[AVLinux]

Hi AVL and MX friends!

I see our brethren and sistas on the MX side are making use of the Northern hemisphere dark winter months to plan ahead so perhaps I will take their hint...

If you aren't aware the most recent AV Linux ISO ("Greatest Hits") had some significant refinements and also a MUCH lighter package and Application payload making it more of a "Base" Distribution than a desert-island-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink affair.. So, is this a better direction to go? Offer a solid base with all of the usual performance tweaks, Wine Plugin support and extra PipeWire utilities but little else?

What isn't on the table:

* Another Desktop Environment, I'm sticking with Enlightenment as default (Moksha may actually be a possibility, I really like it's development team and they would welcome and collaborate with an MX/Moksha variant). Note it is easier now to install XFCE4 and others if you want on your own. If you hate Enlightenment that's fine but I don't want to hear about it anymore...

Some of my thoughts about currently included stuff:

An awful lot of things in AV Linux are 'convenience packaging' for example Ardour, Reaper demo, Blender, Mixbus demo, Cinelerra-GG, Kdenlive, MuseScore, Avidemux, Audacity, Hydrogen and various Plugins. Yes, a couple of these may be in the MX Repos from time to time but since AV Linux is built from the regular MX AHS Repo and not MX Test Repo quite often I have to rely on AppImages, Vendor's bundles and other ways of getting this stuff onto an ISO in the most current versions at release time. All of it has to be custom wrapped in a Debian Package format to be built into the ISO and this takes an incredible amount of time to keep on top of... In particular Blender, MuseScore and Harrison Mixbus are massive and add at least a whole Gb of ISO space on their own!! ALL of these things are readily available from their own developers and Vendors so I have to wonder am I just running myself silly only to annoy people who only want one of those Applications to use? Is it unreasonable to expect a User to go to the Blender site or the Reaper site like everyone else does?

As is evident on AVL "Greatest Hits" I think a multimedia Distro should at least present some of the top options and since I have permission from the Ardour developer to distribute and share a fully functional version I would always want to keep the official Ardour bundle.. I think GIMP and Kdenlive are also essential at the very least as well, beyond that we get on to a slippery slope very quickly... And before you ask Davinci Resolve is not even a remote possibility and simply typing it's name has raised my blood pressure to an unsafe level. Suffice it to say if err... uhm...'DR' worked perfectly on Linux (which it does not on most stock Debian systems) it's proprietary license would prohibit redistribution and it explodes out to about 6Gb in size once fully installed and extracted so that's a non-starter..

OK, so with all that preamble off my chest what do the small cadre of AV Linux Users think? Is a smaller and tighter 'Base' the way to go? What do you uninstall first? (don't say Enlightenment!!). What couldn't you live without?

[blast0id]

the fact that the deep system level audio tweaks are present, I would literally be happy with this "BASE" in pretty much any form you presented it, 23.5 was an absolute dream to install and get set up, not one tiny hiccup once I figured out I had an HDMI cable that was bad... this one feels like something worth paying for, full stop. I have no further input other than Thank you for your service and thanks to the MX team for making such a great starting point for you to work your magic on!

_blast0id

[Aceediq]

well, 23.5 was very well done, ngl

concerning demo apps, I only keep reaper, pending when ardour is a full fledged DAW in all ramifications, on linux, reaper will remain my go to option, not that I compose a lot...

if GIMP and Kdenlive are essential before it gets slippery slopey, I believe Inkscape is essential too, GIMP has become something to bother about since 3.0 RC1 & RC2, before that Inkscape + Krita/Photopea is a better combination

now concerning other alternative apps not in the 23.5 ISO, for example, cinlerragg, I believe they should be done with, they can be hosted on your server but should be no longer in the ISO moving forward...

don't be mad over my dislike of cinlerra, I have tested it out to see what it can do better than kdenlive or if there is something it does that kdenlive doesn't...

as for moving to moksha, if you are going to put in the work to better the aesthetics of moksha themes, fine, if not, I am okay with the very limited but well done themes on AVL 23.5...I understand that moksha might offer some ease to what you do, all I ask is that don't leave us with the very not pleasing options of moksha themes...

bugs:
- when typing the passcode to a wifi network, once you click on show password, you cannot edit in any way what you have been typing in the dialog box, this is an old plague

- black screen, sometimes when resuming from suspend/sleep or hibernate, AVL 23.5, how do I get out of it? by forcefully shutting down or using ctrl+f1 to reboot the system

how I enabled hibernate https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/20 ... 21-10/amp/

[AVLinux]

Thanks @blast0id I appreciate the input.

@Aceediq Thanks for the suggestions! Yeah, if I had a dollar for every bug report about hibernate and suspend on Linux in general I'd be a very wealthy man. These functions are so dodgy and so commonly broken across Linux kernels I never use suspend or hibernate, I never test it or pay any attention to it. Most modern SSD computers boot within 30 seconds so I'm afraid I have no expertise about that at all.

To be fair Moksha is not terribly likely because it has no Wayland support at all and that seemingly will be increasingly important in the future. Moksha has a lot of familiarity involved because it is an E fork but I'd need to spend a lot of time evaluating it as production OS. As far as GIMP I would imagine next AVL would be into GIMP 3..

[Aceediq]

Thanks @blast0id I appreciate the input.

@Aceediq Thanks for the suggestions! Yeah, if I had a dollar for every bug report about hibernate and suspend on Linux in general I'd be a very wealthy man. These functions are so dodgy and so commonly broken across Linux kernels I never use suspend or hibernate, I never test it or pay any attention to it. Most modern SSD computers boot within 30 seconds so I'm afraid I have no expertise about that at all.

To be fair Moksha is not terribly likely because it has no Wayland support at all and that seemingly will be increasingly important in the future. Moksha has a lot of familiarity involved because it is an E fork but I'd need to spend a lot of time evaluating it as production OS. As far as GIMP I would imagine next AVL would be into GIMP 3..

yeah, it didn't cross my mind before to consider changing the kernel, truly, most of my issues with suspend and hibernate largely stems from the kernel...but I don't welcome tinkering with kernel on linux

considering that I hibernated more than I shutdown/sleep when I still used windows, I'll have to find a workaround for this, over here electricity is not even as stable as rainfall in rainy season, so hibernation is a huge dealbreaker for me...I don't have the luxury of any time scheduling or procrastination when it comes to things being done with electricity

I'll have to install the stable linux kernel version in mx repo and see if it works for me, I hope changing kernels wouldn't mess up your tweaks? the last time hibernate worked properly for me was when AVL shipped two kernels back then, a stable linux version and your selected liquorix version...




and as for moksha, this is one of the reasons for linux low home user adaptation and market share, a lot of projects swim against the tide of the linux ecosystem, I came across news that support for x11 has been dropped for gtk5, why would people be so headstrong in putting in significant efforts in a project that is not future proof?

did you check out the wifi issue I talked about?

[nudiecrudi]

base is fine. wine yabridge combo is great.
i would drop blender and the like and concentrate more on the audio side of things.
i think if the base works as it should, then anyone could install the programs they like most.
a pack a la ubuntu studio installer would be top

[m_pav]

I disagree in part with nudiecrudi on only focusing on the audio side of things. Muso's nowadays, and especially the up and coming ones need to be connected in a way that gives them a great head start which include more than just straight music production. There's no point in having a computer setup that only focuses on great audio pre and post production capabilities when the same machine can assist with other common tasks associated with the greater multimedia needs of this modern age.

With the likes of Social Media becoming the path forward for budding musicians who wish to make a name for themselves. Even the simplest of packages that facilitate graphics and video pre/post production will find their place in light of musos promoting their works.

[RedGreen925]

You mention AppImages used in it you may want to consider this lovely little idea I found just the other day for installing and keeping them up to date if they are in the creators repository of packages he does called AM or AppImage Package Manager. It works fantastically in two methods the am and appman, the first being a system wide tool that can do installs in the user home or any directory you want for only a single user to use. The appman is for a user to do their home directory install for the method, I choose this. Such a simple thing to setup create a ~/.local/bin make sure it is sourced in your .bashrc to have it in the path. Copy the appman script into it make it executable and run it telling it where you want the AppImages and all of its/there configuration data installed to and go on your merry way of searching for and installing the AppImages you want. You can also use it to create and mange your own repository of packages to be installed by the users of your system. Something for you to consider


https://github.com/ivan-hc/AM
https://portable-linux-apps.github.io/apps

[nudiecrudi]

I disagree in part with nudiecrudi on only focusing on the audio side of things. Muso's nowadays, and especially the up and coming ones need to be connected in a way that gives them a great head start which include more than just straight music production. There's no point in having a computer setup that only focuses on great audio pre and post production capabilities when the same machine can assist with other common tasks associated with the greater multimedia needs of this modern age.

With the likes of Social Media becoming the path forward for budding musicians who wish to make a name for themselves. Even the simplest of packages that facilitate graphics and video pre/post production will find their place in light of musos promoting their works.

perhaps i didn t explain well my thought. as one of the goals is to keep the distribution light, i meant i would like the audio settings working at best as a base, but of course we need video edit also. but maybe one could leave out heavy weights like blender, gimp and other programs and if one wants, he can insttall them after on their own.
i have been using kdenlive and obs alright lately.
of course anyone can have their own opinion. i won't mention e....

[nudiecrudi]

alright. i do not want to open a new post.
i come from not being able to install e 23. i got rid ow windows, made a single partition and installed e 23 and i am using as it is now working without many error messages i can tell you that i am starting to like it.
i am been very resistant so far, but it gave me grudges the many times i have tried to test it.
now it seems fluid.
you know glen i said many times i appreciate your creations, but this one was hard to like.
i am doing it now . better late than never.
i had a spell with ubuntu studio, but i come back to papa..