[gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Holly Bostick]

I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.

I've been fighting with FVWM off and on for a while, and before I tried
to go toe-to-toe with the giant, I had installed FVWM-Crystal (I'm a
chicken). Which I thought was very pretty, but there was no config I
could find to edit and no help (in English), and so I tried going
toe-to-toe with the giant itself, which has never quite succeeded... ok,
it's never succeeded at all, despite years of managing Litestep .rc
files, which seem simple by comparison to fvwm2rc. And FVWM-Crystal,
while it worked, didn't really work that well, and then the site (which
had very little English help in the first place) tried to move to
Berlios but instead went totally down....

So today, I was doing the previously mentioned 'minor maintenance' and
emerge -uaDtv world wanted to reinstall python 2.3.5, which I didn't
want it to do, because I find that slotting Python only causes me grief,
and I want to just have 2.4.1 and migrate everything. So the reason was
that I needed to upgrade pyxml which I had not unmasked to unstable, and
in the course of checking what depended on pyxml that might also need to
be upgraded, I found that most of the stuff I could unmerge (gdesklets
and its desklets, which are also more trouble than they seem to be
worth, ultimately), but it was also a dependency of fvwm-crystal-- which
I didn't want to unmerge, and *had an unstable upgrade to 3.0-rc2*.

I upgraded and just now booted into it, which is why I'm sitting with my
jaw on the floor.

It works...!

It's gorgeous...!

The new site is up, and it's in English...! (no docs yet, though, as far
as I saw.)

I changed my layout to dock (which looks a lot like XFCE, but all
transparent), and when I click on one of the icons-- let's say the OO.o
icon, a menu that actually has all my word processing programs appears!
The Firefox icon menu shows all my 'interact with the web' apps, and the
thunderbird icon menu has all my 'communicate with others' programs.

OK, maybe not quite all of them, but almost. More than enough to get
along with and give me some choice (I have multiple alternatives
applications for some types of usage situations), and enough to see that
1) both KDE and GNOME menu listings are being read, and 2) applications
are being recognized and sorted reasonably appropriately. I probably
will want to customize it a bit further, but on the whole, I would say
it JustWorks-- it's certainly useable for me, as is, out of the box.
Which is unbelievable, for any variant of FVWM, imo.

This is a gigantic leap from the previous versions I've used, and I
think I've just switched WMs. Obviously there's been a huge shakeup
somewhere, but the site doesn't say anything about it, that I saw.

Does anybody happen to follow development of this and know what happened?

I'm just stunned (in a good way).

Holly
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

Hi Holly,
   I thought that if you liked it that much I thought I might as well
take a look. I've emerged it. It's running. Nice.

   It seems to start esd by default. I'd need to turn that off.

   More embedded below and at the end.

- Mark


On 9/28/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.
>
<SNIP>
>
> I upgraded and just now booted into it, which is why I'm sitting with my
> jaw on the floor.

Cover it if you're still spreading germs! ;-)
>
> It works...!
>
> It's gorgeous...!

It's now running on my AMD64 machine and it is quite pretty.

>
> The new site is up, and it's in English...! (no docs yet, though, as far
> as I saw.)
>
> I changed my layout to dock (which looks a lot like XFCE, but all
> transparent), and when I click on one of the icons-- let's say the OO.o
> icon, a menu that actually has all my word processing programs appears!
> The Firefox icon menu shows all my 'interact with the web' apps, and the
> thunderbird icon menu has all my 'communicate with others' programs.
>
> OK, maybe not quite all of them, but almost. More than enough to get
> along with and give me some choice (I have multiple alternatives
> applications for some types of usage situations), and enough to see that
> 1) both KDE and GNOME menu listings are being read, and 2) applications
> are being recognized and sorted reasonably appropriately. I probably
> will want to customize it a bit further, but on the whole, I would say
> it JustWorks-- it's certainly useable for me, as is, out of the box.
> Which is unbelievable, for any variant of FVWM, imo.

I don't quite see this part. Maybe I haven't found them yet. It's only
been runnign 10 minutes or so.

One thing I do not see is my special little application drawers I had
on my Gnome panel. Not a biggie...


>
> This is a gigantic leap from the previous versions I've used, and I
> think I've just switched WMs. Obviously there's been a huge shakeup
> somewhere, but the site doesn't say anything about it, that I saw.
>
> Does anybody happen to follow development of this and know what happened?
>
> I'm just stunned (in a good way).
>
> Holly
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

There were some setup instructions at the very end:

*
 * After installation, execute following commands:
 *  $ cp -r /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/addons/Xresources ~/.Xresources
 *  $ cp -r /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/addons/Xsession ~/.xinitrc
 *
 * Authors of fvwm-crystal recommend also installing
 * the following applications:
 *  app-admin/gkrellm
 *  app-misc/rox
 *  media-gfx/scrot
 *  x11-misc/xlockmore
 *  x11-misc/xpad
 *  x11-misc/xscreensaver
 *  x11-terms/aterm
 *

How much of this did you do? I've done none and it's running.

Quite nice.

- Mark

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Tony Davison]

On Wednesday 28 September 2005 20:33, Holly Bostick wrote:
> I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.
>
<much snippage>

> This is a gigantic leap from the previous versions I've used, and I
> think I've just switched WMs. Obviously there's been a huge shakeup
> somewhere, but the site doesn't say anything about it, that I saw.
>
> Does anybody happen to follow development of this and know what
> happened?
>
> I'm just stunned (in a good way).
>
OK I'll bite but does anyone know how to get KDE to play nicely with it.
I've b*****d about with the ksmserver bit of startkde until I thoroughly 
broke it but when it aint broke it resolutely refuses to have anything 
to do with any wm apart fron kwin or KDEWM.
Stumped, on my last cig and this wheelchair has no lights.
-- 
Tony Davison
tony.davison2@ntlworld.com
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Holly Bostick]

Mark Knecht schreef:
> Hi Holly, I thought that if you liked it that much I thought I might 
> as well take a look. I've emerged it. It's running. Nice.
> 
> It seems to start esd by default. I'd need to turn that off.
> 
> More embedded below and at the end.
> 
> - Mark
> 
> 
> On 9/28/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> 
>> I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.
>> 
> 
> <SNIP>
> 
>> I upgraded and just now booted into it, which is why I'm sitting 
>> with my jaw on the floor.
> 
> 
> Cover it if you're still spreading germs! ;-)
> 
>> It works...!
>> 
>> It's gorgeous...!
> 
> 
> It's now running on my AMD64 machine and it is quite pretty.
> 
> 
>> The new site is up, and it's in English...! (no docs yet, though, 
>> as far as I saw.)
>> 
>> I changed my layout to dock (which looks a lot like XFCE, but all 
>> transparent), and when I click on one of the icons-- let's say the 
>> OO.o icon, a menu that actually has all my word processing programs
>> appears! The Firefox icon menu shows all my 'interact with the web'
>> apps, and the thunderbird icon menu has all my 'communicate with
>> others' programs.
>> 
>> OK, maybe not quite all of them, but almost. More than enough to 
>> get along with and give me some choice (I have multiple 
>> alternatives applications for some types of usage situations), and 
>> enough to see that 1) both KDE and GNOME menu listings are being 
>> read, and 2) applications are being recognized and sorted 
>> reasonably appropriately. I probably will want to customize it a 
>> bit further, but on the whole, I would say it JustWorks-- it's 
>> certainly useable for me, as is, out of the box. Which is 
>> unbelievable, for any variant of FVWM, imo.
> 
> 
> I don't quite see this part. Maybe I haven't found them yet. It's 
> only been runnign 10 minutes or so.

Use the diamond icon in the upper right corner to get the menu, then

Preferences=>Used Recipe ("layouts" are now called "Recipes") and choose
"Dock". Avoid "Clean Vertical", as that seems to only use a pager, no
menu, no panel, no taskbar-- and I had to edit a config file to change
recipes again, since I haven't configured for "just a term" setup, and I
don't know what term-based commands I have available to control this setup.

I also changed the button layout to Windows-style-- one thing I never
liked about Crystal was that you can't click the close button and just
close the stupid program (without reconfiguring), and having to go
through that ^%$#% menu to 'Iconify Close Destroy' was making me nuts.

> 
> One thing I do not see is my special little application drawers I had
>  on my Gnome panel. Not a biggie...

I would imagine that you can create them if the provided drawers are not
sufficient-- this is, after all, still FVWM. I just don't know how to do
it yet, but the config seems like it might be more manageable than
'regular' FVWM, if the one file I've looked at is any indication.
> 
> There were some setup instructions at the very end:
> 
> * * After installation, execute following commands: *  $ cp -r 
> /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/addons/Xresources ~/.Xresources *  $ cp -r 
> /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/addons/Xsession ~/.xinitrc * * Authors of 
> fvwm-crystal recommend also installing * the following applications:
>  *  app-admin/gkrellm *  app-misc/rox *  media-gfx/scrot * 
> x11-misc/xlockmore *  x11-misc/xpad *  x11-misc/xscreensaver * 
> x11-terms/aterm *
> 
> How much of this did you do? I've done none and it's running.

I didn't do any either-- I didn't even notice it, so thanks for the
heads-up. I probably do want at least to copy .Xresources. Most of these
applications I already have installed, and the ones I don't, I don't
want. I actually don't want a couple of the ones I do have installed,
notably rox, which I cannot find it in me to like. I will have a look at
scrot, though-- don't know what it is, but media-gfx programs always
bear further examination.
> 
> Quite nice.

I went back by the site, and it looks like its the same developer, he's
just rewritten everything. His time has been well-spent. I'll have to
drop him a note.

Holly
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Holly Bostick]

Tony Davison schreef:
> On Wednesday 28 September 2005 20:33, Holly Bostick wrote:
> 
>>I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.
>>
> 
> <much snippage>
> 
>>This is a gigantic leap from the previous versions I've used, and I
>>think I've just switched WMs. Obviously there's been a huge shakeup
>>somewhere, but the site doesn't say anything about it, that I saw.
>>
>>Does anybody happen to follow development of this and know what
>>happened?
>>
>>I'm just stunned (in a good way).
>>
> 
> OK I'll bite but does anyone know how to get KDE to play nicely with it.
> I've b*****d about with the ksmserver bit of startkde until I thoroughly 
> broke it but when it aint broke it resolutely refuses to have anything 
> to do with any wm apart fron kwin or KDEWM.
> Stumped, on my last cig and this wheelchair has no lights.

Sorry-- that's one of the reasons I use GDM (even under KDE, but I use
KDE very very rarely).

What I would think is that you'd want to copy the fvwm-crystal.desktop
file from

/usr/share/xsessions

to

/usr/kde/3.4/share/apps/kdm/sessions

so that it appears as a choice in KDM.

Why you'd expect the *startkde* script to start anything other than KDE
rather eludes me, I must admit.

:)

Holly
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/28/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> Mark Knecht schreef:
> > Hi Holly, I thought that if you liked it that much I thought I might
> > as well take a look. I've emerged it. It's running. Nice.
> >
> > It seems to start esd by default. I'd need to turn that off.
> >
> > More embedded below and at the end.
> >
> > - Mark
> >
> >
> > On 9/28/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.
> >>
> >
> > <SNIP>
> >
> >> I upgraded and just now booted into it, which is why I'm sitting
> >> with my jaw on the floor.
> >
> >
> > Cover it if you're still spreading germs! ;-)
> >
> >> It works...!
> >>
> >> It's gorgeous...!
> >
> >
> > It's now running on my AMD64 machine and it is quite pretty.
> >
> >
> >> The new site is up, and it's in English...! (no docs yet, though,
> >> as far as I saw.)
> >>
> >> I changed my layout to dock (which looks a lot like XFCE, but all
> >> transparent), and when I click on one of the icons-- let's say the
> >> OO.o icon, a menu that actually has all my word processing programs
> >> appears! The Firefox icon menu shows all my 'interact with the web'
> >> apps, and the thunderbird icon menu has all my 'communicate with
> >> others' programs.
> >>
> >> OK, maybe not quite all of them, but almost. More than enough to
> >> get along with and give me some choice (I have multiple
> >> alternatives applications for some types of usage situations), and
> >> enough to see that 1) both KDE and GNOME menu listings are being
> >> read, and 2) applications are being recognized and sorted
> >> reasonably appropriately. I probably will want to customize it a
> >> bit further, but on the whole, I would say it JustWorks-- it's
> >> certainly useable for me, as is, out of the box. Which is
> >> unbelievable, for any variant of FVWM, imo.
> >
> >
> > I don't quite see this part. Maybe I haven't found them yet. It's
> > only been runnign 10 minutes or so.
>
> Use the diamond icon in the upper right corner to get the menu, then
>
> Preferences=>Used Recipe ("layouts" are now called "Recipes") and choose
> "Dock". Avoid "Clean Vertical", as that seems to only use a pager, no
> menu, no panel, no taskbar-- and I had to edit a config file to change
> recipes again, since I haven't configured for "just a term" setup, and I
> don't know what term-based commands I have available to control this setup.

OK, thanks. I selected Dock. It wants me to restart. Can I do this
within FVWM without exiting? I think I could in fluxbox. Right now I'm
running a very, very  successful audio experiment. Been running Jack
for about an hour. I have Aqualung hooked up and playing audio from a
1394 drive. At the same time I'm running xine and playing 'Panic
Room'. So far not a single xrun in Jack, at least at 11mS. This has
been a big problem for me in Gnome on AMD64. FVWM looks like it might
be a better audio environment for me on this box.

>
> I also changed the button layout to Windows-style-- one thing I never
> liked about Crystal was that you can't click the close button and just
> close the stupid program (without reconfiguring), and having to go
> through that ^%$#% menu to 'Iconify Close Destroy' was making me nuts.

I chose this also. I'm still having some trouble with raising windows
to the top. I like to click anywhere within a window and it comes to
the top. Also I like to use Alt-Tab to rotate. It seems to work most
of the time but not always, at least so far. Minor annoyance as it's
probably fixable.

>
> >
> > One thing I do not see is my special little application drawers I had
> >  on my Gnome panel. Not a biggie...
>
> I would imagine that you can create them if the provided drawers are not
> sufficient-- this is, after all, still FVWM. I just don't know how to do
> it yet, but the config seems like it might be more manageable than
> 'regular' FVWM, if the one file I've looked at is any indication.
> >
> > There were some setup instructions at the very end:
> >
> > * * After installation, execute following commands: *  $ cp -r
> > /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/addons/Xresources ~/.Xresources *  $ cp -r
> > /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/addons/Xsession ~/.xinitrc * * Authors of
> > fvwm-crystal recommend also installing * the following applications:
> >  *  app-admin/gkrellm *  app-misc/rox *  media-gfx/scrot *
> > x11-misc/xlockmore *  x11-misc/xpad *  x11-misc/xscreensaver *
> > x11-terms/aterm *
> >
> > How much of this did you do? I've done none and it's running.
>
> I didn't do any either-- I didn't even notice it, so thanks for the
> heads-up. I probably do want at least to copy .Xresources. Most of these
> applications I already have installed, and the ones I don't, I don't
> want. I actually don't want a couple of the ones I do have installed,
> notably rox, which I cannot find it in me to like. I will have a look at
> scrot, though-- don't know what it is, but media-gfx programs always
> bear further examination.

Yeah, I'll look at these later myself.

> >
> > Quite nice.
>
> I went back by the site, and it looks like its the same developer, he's
> just rewritten everything. His time has been well-spent. I'll have to
> drop him a note.
>
> Holly

Send it from both of us. I'm certainly impressed. There are some
configuration issues I'd need to conquer. I'm having a hell of a time
resizing terminals. Seems that the lower right corner is too small to
grab easily. I'd like the terminal to be transparent by default. I
need to learn how to set up all my audio apps - Aqualung, Ardour,
QJackCtl, LinuxSampler, etc., but that will come if I stick with it.

So far a nice step forward at least on my AMD64 machine currently
running ck-sources in 64-bit mode.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Holly Bostick]

Mark Knecht schreef:
> On 9/28/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> 
>> Mark Knecht schreef:
>>>> I changed my layout to dock (which looks a lot like XFCE, but
>>>> all transparent)
>>>> 
>>> I don't quite see this part. Maybe I haven't found them yet. It's
>>>  only been runnign 10 minutes or so.
>> 
>> Use the diamond icon in the upper right corner to get the menu,
>> then Preferences=>Used Recipe ("layouts" are now called "Recipes")
>> and choose "Dock". Avoid "Clean Vertical", as that seems to only
>> use a pager, no menu, no panel, no taskbar-- and I had to edit a
>> config file to change recipes again, since I haven't configured for
>> "just a term" setup, and I don't know what term-based commands I
>> have available to control this setup.
> 
> 
> OK, thanks. I selected Dock. It wants me to restart. Can I do this 
> within FVWM without exiting?

Yes, restart is an internal command that just restarts fvwm without
logging out or closing any open applications or anything like that. I
assume if you chose 'not now' that it would change the setting in the
config file, but not do anything until you logged out and back in, or
used the internal restart command in the fvwm console, which I don't
know how to access in Crystal (as opposed to 'regular' fvwm).

Holly
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/28/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> Mark Knecht schreef:
> > On 9/28/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> >
> >> Mark Knecht schreef:
> >>>> I changed my layout to dock (which looks a lot like XFCE, but
> >>>> all transparent)
> >>>>
> >>> I don't quite see this part. Maybe I haven't found them yet. It's
> >>>  only been runnign 10 minutes or so.
> >>
> >> Use the diamond icon in the upper right corner to get the menu,
> >> then Preferences=>Used Recipe ("layouts" are now called "Recipes")
> >> and choose "Dock". Avoid "Clean Vertical", as that seems to only
> >> use a pager, no menu, no panel, no taskbar-- and I had to edit a
> >> config file to change recipes again, since I haven't configured for
> >> "just a term" setup, and I don't know what term-based commands I
> >> have available to control this setup.
> >
> >
> > OK, thanks. I selected Dock. It wants me to restart. Can I do this
> > within FVWM without exiting?
>
> Yes, restart is an internal command that just restarts fvwm without
> logging out or closing any open applications or anything like that. I
> assume if you chose 'not now' that it would change the setting in the
> config file, but not do anything until you logged out and back in, or
> used the internal restart command in the fvwm console, which I don't
> know how to access in Crystal (as opposed to 'regular' fvwm).
>
> Holly

Great. Tried it. It worked fine and didn't upset Jack which means my
experiment goes on.

This is working so much better for me than Gnome on my AMD64 box. I'll
have to go back and try the standard Gentoo kernel instead of
ck-sources.

Thanks for turning me on to this WM and for your help.

cheers,
Mark

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Tony Davison]

On Wednesday 28 September 2005 23:44, Holly Bostick wrote:
> Tony Davison schreef:
> > On Wednesday 28 September 2005 20:33, Holly Bostick wrote:
> >>I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.
> >
> > <much snippage>
> >
> >>This is a gigantic leap from the previous versions I've used, and I
> >>think I've just switched WMs. Obviously there's been a huge shakeup
> >>somewhere, but the site doesn't say anything about it, that I saw.
> >>
> >>Does anybody happen to follow development of this and know what
> >>happened?
> >>
> >>I'm just stunned (in a good way).
> >
> > OK I'll bite but does anyone know how to get KDE to play nicely
> > with it. I've b*****d about with the ksmserver bit of startkde
> > until I thoroughly broke it but when it aint broke it resolutely
> > refuses to have anything to do with any wm apart fron kwin or
> > KDEWM.
> > Stumped, on my last cig and this wheelchair has no lights.
>
> Sorry-- that's one of the reasons I use GDM (even under KDE, but I
> use KDE very very rarely).
>
> What I would think is that you'd want to copy the
> fvwm-crystal.desktop file from
>
> /usr/share/xsessions
>
> to
>
> /usr/kde/3.4/share/apps/kdm/sessions
>
> so that it appears as a choice in KDM.
>
> Why you'd expect the *startkde* script to start anything other than
> KDE rather eludes me, I must admit.
>
> :)
Its OK I got it working impressive it is.
With the last gasp of my grey cells last night I emerged GDM (I only had 
XDM on this system) and lo there it was.

As for startkde, I was guilty of reading the FVWM FAQ :-)
-- 
Tony Davison
tony.davison2@ntlworld.com
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/28/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> Great. Tried it. It worked fine and didn't upset Jack which means my
> experiment goes on.
>
> This is working so much better for me than Gnome on my AMD64 box. I'll
> have to go back and try the standard Gentoo kernel instead of
> ck-sources.
>
> Thanks for turning me on to this WM and for your help.
>
> cheers,
> Mark
>
In the end the xruns came back so FVWM-Crystal didn't magically solve
my problems. (unfortunately...)

My quest goes on. Now running 2.6.14-rc2-mm1, looking for 2.6.14-rc2-mm1-rt6

- Mark

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Holly Bostick]

Mark Knecht schreef:
> On 9/28/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Great. Tried it. It worked fine and didn't upset Jack which means 
>> my experiment goes on.
>> 
>> This is working so much better for me than Gnome on my AMD64 box. 
>> I'll have to go back and try the standard Gentoo kernel instead of
>>  ck-sources.
>> 
>> <snip>
>> 
> In the end the xruns came back so FVWM-Crystal didn't magically solve
>  my problems. (unfortunately...)
> 
> My quest goes on. Now running 2.6.14-rc2-mm1, looking for 
> 2.6.14-rc2-mm1-rt6
> 

Am I the only one who doesn't know what are 'xruns'? Whatever they are,
it would seem that the problem can be minimized, but not eliminated by
choice of WM, but obviously we couldn't go any further in actually
eliminating them without knowing what they are (or at least I couldn't,
since I don't actually know what you're referring to).

Holly
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/29/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> Mark Knecht schreef:
> > On 9/28/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Great. Tried it. It worked fine and didn't upset Jack which means
> >> my experiment goes on.
> >>
> >> This is working so much better for me than Gnome on my AMD64 box.
> >> I'll have to go back and try the standard Gentoo kernel instead of
> >>  ck-sources.
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >>
> > In the end the xruns came back so FVWM-Crystal didn't magically solve
> >  my problems. (unfortunately...)
> >
> > My quest goes on. Now running 2.6.14-rc2-mm1, looking for
> > 2.6.14-rc2-mm1-rt6
> >
>
> Am I the only one who doesn't know what are 'xruns'? Whatever they are,
> it would seem that the problem can be minimized, but not eliminated by
> choice of WM, but obviously we couldn't go any further in actually
> eliminating them without knowing what they are (or at least I couldn't,
> since I don't actually know what you're referring to).
>
> Holly

Holly,
    I'm so very sorry. Of course you would have no reason to know
about xruns if you are not part of the Linux audio community. My
apologies.

   One of the Linux 'methods', if you will, for moving audio between
sound cards and applications is a server called Jack (jackd) which is
supplied by emerging jack-audio-connection-kit. Jack provides for the
movement of digital audio between a sound card and essentially an
unlimited number of apps (really 'ports') with a known latency. It's
the latency that's really important to those of us doing live
recording. If I'm listening to a piano and recording my guitar then I
need the two to sound like they are in time or it is virtually
impossible to play a part correctly.

   An 'xrun', standing I think for overrun - go figure - is when
something in the system has not taken or delivered digital audio at
the agreed upon time. This leads to clicks and pops. If you were to
look at the waveform in an oscilloscope there would be some sort of
discontinuity.

   With my 32-bit machines I have been blessed. I have been able, for
at least the last year, to run the standard Gentoo kernel at <3mS
latency with no xruns. I've been writing and recording music on Gentoo
and had no problems while others running on other distros have had to
build specialized kernels utilizing patches from Andrew Morton and
Ingo Molnar to get equivalent results. On guy in Australia didn't
really beleive me so I helped him build a Gentoo box over the net.
When that machien came up it worked so well, with the standard kernel,
that he converted all the machines in his studio to Gentoo and no
brags about how stable his environment is.

   I looked forward to such an experience with my new AMD64 machine.
It did not come to be true.

   Every 64-bit kernel I've tried so far either has terrible xrun
problems or will not build. This includes:

gentoo-sources - xruns
ck-sources - xruns
kernel.org - 2.6.13.3 & 2.6.14-rc2 - xruns
2.6.14-rc2-rt6 - Ingo's patches - won't build

   I'm currently running 2.6.14-rc2-mm1 - with Andrew Morton's
patches. I have not yet tested it but at least it built.

   The major change to the kernel to get better real time results is
(apparently) to make pretty much everything preemptable. When Ingo's
patches are added then a new preemption model shows up in make
menuconfig. Unfortunately for me it won't build on 64-bit yet, at
least for me.

   The window manager choice is just one choice those of us playing
with low latency audio make. KDE has never worked well for me. Gnome
has been fine for the last year until this new AMD64 experience. In
the old days we used fluxbox over KDE and Gnome and got good, but not
great, results.

   Anyway, I hope that helps explain my xrun comments.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Holly Bostick]

Mark Knecht schreef:
> On 9/29/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> 
>> Mark Knecht schreef:
>> 
>>> On 9/28/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Great. Tried it. It worked fine and didn't upset Jack which
>>>> means my experiment goes on.
>>>> 
>>>> This is working so much better for me than Gnome on my AMD64
>>>> box. I'll have to go back and try the standard Gentoo kernel
>>>> instead of ck-sources.
>>>> 
>>>> <snip>
>>>> 
>>> In the end the xruns came back so FVWM-Crystal didn't magically
>>> solve my problems. (unfortunately...)
>>> 
>>> My quest goes on. Now running 2.6.14-rc2-mm1, looking for 
>>> 2.6.14-rc2-mm1-rt6
>>> 
>> 
>> Am I the only one who doesn't know what are 'xruns'? Whatever they
>> are, it would seem that the problem can be minimized, but not
>> eliminated by choice of WM, but obviously we couldn't go any
>> further in actually eliminating them without knowing what they are
>> (or at least I couldn't, since I don't actually know what you're
>> referring to).
>> 
>> Holly
> 
> 
> Holly, I'm so very sorry. Of course you would have no reason to know 
> about xruns if you are not part of the Linux audio community. My 
> apologies.
> 
> One of the Linux 'methods', if you will, for moving audio between 
> sound cards and applications is a server called Jack (jackd) which is
>  supplied by emerging jack-audio-connection-kit. Jack provides for
> the movement of digital audio between a sound card and essentially an
>  unlimited number of apps (really 'ports') with a known latency. It's
>  the latency that's really important to those of us doing live 
> recording. If I'm listening to a piano and recording my guitar then I
>  need the two to sound like they are in time or it is virtually 
> impossible to play a part correctly.
> 
> An 'xrun', standing I think for overrun - go figure - is when 
> something in the system has not taken or delivered digital audio at 
> the agreed upon time. This leads to clicks and pops. If you were to 
> look at the waveform in an oscilloscope there would be some sort of 
> discontinuity.
> 
> With my 32-bit machines I have been blessed. I have been able, for at
> least the last year, to run the standard Gentoo kernel at <3mS 
> latency with no xruns. I've been writing and recording music on
> Gentoo and had no problems while others running on other distros have
> had to build specialized kernels utilizing patches from Andrew Morton
> and Ingo Molnar to get equivalent results. On guy in Australia didn't
>  really beleive me so I helped him build a Gentoo box over the net. 
> When that machien came up it worked so well, with the standard
> kernel, that he converted all the machines in his studio to Gentoo
> and no brags about how stable his environment is.
> 
> I looked forward to such an experience with my new AMD64 machine. It
> did not come to be true.
> 
> Every 64-bit kernel I've tried so far either has terrible xrun 
> problems or will not build. This includes:
> 
> gentoo-sources - xruns ck-sources - xruns kernel.org - 2.6.13.3 &
> 2.6.14-rc2 - xruns 2.6.14-rc2-rt6 - Ingo's patches - won't build
> 
> I'm currently running 2.6.14-rc2-mm1 - with Andrew Morton's patches.
> I have not yet tested it but at least it built.
> 
> The major change to the kernel to get better real time results is 
> (apparently) to make pretty much everything preemptable. When Ingo's 
> patches are added then a new preemption model shows up in make 
> menuconfig. Unfortunately for me it won't build on 64-bit yet, at 
> least for me.
> 
> The window manager choice is just one choice those of us playing with
> low latency audio make. KDE has never worked well for me. Gnome has
> been fine for the last year until this new AMD64 experience. In the
> old days we used fluxbox over KDE and Gnome and got good, but not 
> great, results.
> 
> Anyway, I hope that helps explain my xrun comments.
> 

OK, sorry not to snip, but your post is a continuous
thought/explanation, and it doesn't seem right-- and I don't top-post
(99% of the time).

I have several questions mostly leading to the same ultimate end. But
only one is important to express:

1) do you actually need X? i.e., is it possible to record audio in the
manner that you do without it?

What occurs to me, looking in from outside, is that while your issues
are clearly known to be kernel-based, and 64-bit based, the fact that
you are using programs that interfere with latency/real-time issues is
obfuscating the entire problem. Certainly if the choice of window
managers has an effect on the severity of the problem.

So clear the waters if you can, because you can't solve a problem that
you can't clearly see the outlines of.

Can you record audio from the command line? Or do the X-based programs
you use run under DirectFB? What I'm getting at is getting rid of all
the obstructions that could possibly interfere with the kernel and
introduce even more latency issues than what it already has, so that you
(or any devs) can see what problems it already has distinctly enough to
solve them-- or to eliminate them sufficiently so that you can get on
with doing what you do until the kernel stabilizes so you can use it
normally.

I mean, X is a horrible hog, heaven only knows what effect your nVidia
or ATI kernel modules may be having on the ability of the kernel to
behave properly, since they also make demands on the kernel that
'distract' it, as it were. And if Jack is a daemon (which I know it is),
it's not like it needs X for itself.

It's of course quite possible that I'm talking out of my butt, since I
am not a member of the Linux audio community, but I do know that the
first step in troubleshooting is to simplify the environment as much as
possible, and then slowly increase the complexity to see when and where
things break down.

Were I you, I would consider:

 - If keeping X, switching to the absolute most minimal wm possible
(twm, ratpoison, ion), to see what effect that had.
 - If downstepping from X, investigating what programs run under
DirectFB  and seeing what effect that had.
 - If going cold-turkey off X, seeing how far you get with the
command-line and ncurses programs.

Am I, in fact, talking out of my butt (since it seems that the 'real'
audio community would have tried at least some of this)? Or are there
reasons that this simplification process is not possible for
professional audio recording?

Holly


-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

RE: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Dave Nebinger]

> Were I you, I would consider:
> 
>  - If keeping X, switching to the absolute most minimal wm possible
> (twm, ratpoison, ion), to see what effect that had.
>  - If downstepping from X, investigating what programs run under
> DirectFB  and seeing what effect that had.
>  - If going cold-turkey off X, seeing how far you get with the
> command-line and ncurses programs.

I would also add the following: remoting X.  X is a hog, as Holly said, but
there's no reason the X server would need to run on the same box as the
ongoing recording session.

Running two systems, one running X and handling the gui operations, and one
running your audio apps, might provide enough of the separation to reduce
the latency on the audio box.  Of course the two cards should probably be
connected with at least a 100mb Ethernet connection (to eliminate the
overhead of dealing with the network conversations for X).

Another possibility might be your choice of filesystems (assuming the
recordings are going to disk).  Different filesystems have inherent latency
based upon their design - journaling adds overhead, btree maintenance in
reiser adds overhead, etc.  Just using a simple ext2 filesystem for the
initial recording followed by backups to a modern filesystem may have a
measurable impact.

Going back to X, it is a hog both in cpu cycles and in memory; you mention
having an amd64 but no quotes on memory.  My assumption is that such a
system has a big chunk of memory, but I've learned what happens when one
assumes.  Obviously a lack of sufficient memory can cause you some swapping
issues whether you were aware of it or not.


-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/29/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
<SNIP>
> >
> > Anyway, I hope that helps explain my xrun comments.
> >
>
> OK, sorry not to snip, but your post is a continuous
> thought/explanation, and it doesn't seem right-- and I don't top-post
> (99% of the time).
>
> I have several questions mostly leading to the same ultimate end. But
> only one is important to express:
>
> 1) do you actually need X? i.e., is it possible to record audio in the
> manner that you do without it?

I need X. I run Ardour as well as a number of other audio gui apps.

http://www.ardour.org/

>
> What occurs to me, looking in from outside, is that while your issues
> are clearly known to be kernel-based, and 64-bit based, the fact that
> you are using programs that interfere with latency/real-time issues is
> obfuscating the entire problem. Certainly if the choice of window
> managers has an effect on the severity of the problem.

Certainly. And this is not the first time I've been through this
having now been using Linux audio for 4 years. Belive me, I've had
many machines that didn't work for a while. This experience is not an
exception - it's pretty much the rule.

Clearly though, in my mind, this current problem is one of two things:

1) The recent kernel's are known to produce good results on 32-bit
machines while running X. Unfortunately the current patch sets are not
building for me as a 64-bit kernel. This could be because of
configuration chices I'm making or somethign else. The kernel patch
developers will eventually catch up to my issues and things will
improve.

2) There is a specific hardware or driver problem with the NForce4
motherboard. Possibly the motherboard doesn't work well, or possibly
the drivers have some problems. The former is not desired. The later
will get attention eventually.

>
> So clear the waters if you can, because you can't solve a problem that
> you can't clearly see the outlines of.
>
> Can you record audio from the command line? Or do the X-based programs
> you use run under DirectFB? What I'm getting at is getting rid of all
> the obstructions that could possibly interfere with the kernel and
> introduce even more latency issues than what it already has, so that you
> (or any devs) can see what problems it already has distinctly enough to
> solve them-- or to eliminate them sufficiently so that you can get on
> with doing what you do until the kernel stabilizes so you can use it
> normally.

Good questions. I didn't say this earlier. I probably should have. If
I boot this machine into a console mode (i.e. - no xdm/gdm) and run
Jack in one console I can log in as root in another console, do
emerges all day long and I get no xruns, at least with the small
amount of testing I've done so far. This is using 2.6.14-rc2-mm1 so it
has some new code but not all of Ingo's stuff.

>
> I mean, X is a horrible hog, heaven only knows what effect your nVidia
> or ATI kernel modules may be having on the ability of the kernel to
> behave properly, since they also make demands on the kernel that
> 'distract' it, as it were. And if Jack is a daemon (which I know it is),
> it's not like it needs X for itself.

Right, but as I say, much slower PCs are able to use the standard
Gentoo kernel and run Gnome with no xruns. It's only this 3GHz 64-bit
machine that has the problem. The sound card has been used in an
Athlon XP 1600+ machine and it works fine so I trust its drivers at
least in 32-bit mode.
>
> It's of course quite possible that I'm talking out of my butt,

Not the least bit possible. Your thought are clear and very coorect IMO.

> since I
> am not a member of the Linux audio community, but I do know that the
> first step in troubleshooting is to simplify the environment as much as
> possible, and then slowly increase the complexity to see when and where
> things break down.

Absolutely. Hopefully with the additional info above you'll see that
is what I've been doing, within my limited abilities to patch kernels,
etc.

>
> Were I you, I would consider:
>
>  - If keeping X, switching to the absolute most minimal wm possible
> (twm, ratpoison, ion), to see what effect that had.

Right. FVWM, fluxbox, etc. These can just be tested.

>  - If downstepping from X, investigating what programs run under
> DirectFB  and seeing what effect that had.
>  - If going cold-turkey off X, seeing how far you get with the
> command-line and ncurses programs.

Neither are really acceptable as far as I know today.

>
> Am I, in fact, talking out of my butt (since it seems that the 'real'
> audio community would have tried at least some of this)? Or are there
> reasons that this simplification process is not possible for
> professional audio recording?

As above - see Ardour, Jamin, Muse, Rosegarden, etc.

Thanks for your thoughts. They are helpful.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/29/05, Dave Nebinger <dnebinger@joat.com> wrote:
> > Were I you, I would consider:
> >
> >  - If keeping X, switching to the absolute most minimal wm possible
> > (twm, ratpoison, ion), to see what effect that had.
> >  - If downstepping from X, investigating what programs run under
> > DirectFB  and seeing what effect that had.
> >  - If going cold-turkey off X, seeing how far you get with the
> > command-line and ncurses programs.
>
> I would also add the following: remoting X.  X is a hog, as Holly said, but
> there's no reason the X server would need to run on the same box as the
> ongoing recording session.
>
> Running two systems, one running X and handling the gui operations, and one
> running your audio apps, might provide enough of the separation to reduce
> the latency on the audio box.  Of course the two cards should probably be
> connected with at least a 100mb Ethernet connection (to eliminate the
> overhead of dealing with the network conversations for X).

This is an interesting idea actually. I currently run two boxes
anyway. All audio is connected between them using ADAT optical (i.e. -
red laser) or spdif so I've got 26 digital audio channels going
across. Maybe running remotely could solve some of this. Thanks.

>
> Another possibility might be your choice of filesystems (assuming the
> recordings are going to disk).  Different filesystems have inherent latency
> based upon their design - journaling adds overhead, btree maintenance in
> reiser adds overhead, etc.  Just using a simple ext2 filesystem for the
> initial recording followed by backups to a modern filesystem may have a
> measurable impact.

In fact it does. I wrote a short online paper about that a few years
ago. I use ext3.

>
> Going back to X, it is a hog both in cpu cycles and in memory; you mention
> having an amd64 but no quotes on memory.  My assumption is that such a
> system has a big chunk of memory, but I've learned what happens when one
> assumes.  Obviously a lack of sufficient memory can cause you some swapping
> issues whether you were aware of it or not.

Thisis a good point also. The machine has 512MB. This has been more
than enough on my previous 32-bit machines, but on this AMD64 running
the Gentoo 64-bit kernel it seems that memory usage is significantly
higher. On the 32-bit machine I seem to use about 300-350MB by the
time I have Gnome up and maybe Firefox open. I alomost have never seen
swapping.

On the AMD64 I'm seeing 450-500MB and a small amount of swapping every day.

I'm unclear about the 64-bit environment anyway. OK, it's 64-bit, but
I also have a pile of emulation libraries emerged to take care of
dependencies. I don't know when they are getting used, except for the
32-bit Firefox I'm running so that I get more multimedia stuff.

Anyway, more memory may well be a good thing to do.

Thanks for the ideas.

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Philip Webb]

050928 Holly Bostick wrote:
> I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor.

-- snip -- 

> I had installed FVWM-Crystal which I thought was very pretty
> I upgraded and just now booted into it
> It works...!
> It's gorgeous...!
> I'm just stunned (in a good way).

Finding software which really suits you is a lot like finding a lover/church.
Aristotle describes the phenomenon in detail in books 9-10 of his Ethics.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,  Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|  Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'  University of Toronto
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/29/05, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/05, Dave Nebinger <dnebinger@joat.com> wrote:
> > > Were I you, I would consider:
> > >
> > >  - If keeping X, switching to the absolute most minimal wm possible
> > > (twm, ratpoison, ion), to see what effect that had.
> > >  - If downstepping from X, investigating what programs run under
> > > DirectFB  and seeing what effect that had.
> > >  - If going cold-turkey off X, seeing how far you get with the
> > > command-line and ncurses programs.
> >
> > I would also add the following: remoting X.  X is a hog, as Holly said, but
> > there's no reason the X server would need to run on the same box as the
> > ongoing recording session.
> >
> > Running two systems, one running X and handling the gui operations, and one
> > running your audio apps, might provide enough of the separation to reduce
> > the latency on the audio box.  Of course the two cards should probably be
> > connected with at least a 100mb Ethernet connection (to eliminate the
> > overhead of dealing with the network conversations for X).
>
> This is an interesting idea actually. I currently run two boxes
> anyway. All audio is connected between them using ADAT optical (i.e. -
> red laser) or spdif so I've got 26 digital audio channels going
> across. Maybe running remotely could solve some of this. Thanks.

Well, interesting, but not the solution. I'm logged into Lightning,
the AMD64 machine, remotely in two terminals. One terminal is running
QJackCtl, a small X app that allows me to start and stop the Jack
server, along with make connections, etc.

In a second terminal I log in as root and start an emerge of a couple
of things that don't get built - a new kernel tree and firefox-bin. I
don't immediately get xruns, but when heavy disk operations start I
do. Some of the xruns are over 100mS - absolutely huge when you're
trying to run at 3mS!

What's interesting to me is that I Can stream a movie from the EIDE
DVD drive on this machine and never create an xrun, but as soon as I
start using the SATA drive I do. That seems to be a pretty good clue I
think.

It's a good idea though. I'll keep looking into it.

Cheers,
Mark

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Holly Bostick]

Mark Knecht schreef:

>> Can you record audio from the command line? Or do the X-based 
>> programs you use run under DirectFB? What I'm getting at is getting
>>  rid of all the obstructions that could possibly interfere with the
>>  kernel and introduce even more latency issues than what it already
>>  has
> <snip>
> 
> Good questions. I didn't say this earlier. I probably should have. If
>  I boot this machine into a console mode (i.e. - no xdm/gdm) and run
>  Jack in one console I can log in as root in another console, do 
> emerges all day long and I get no xruns, at least with the small 
> amount of testing I've done so far. This is using 2.6.14-rc2-mm1 so 
> it has some new code but not all of Ingo's stuff.

OK, so X really is a problem, then. Now I really want to find a way to
get you rid of it.

> 
> 
>> I mean, X is a horrible hog, heaven only knows what effect your 
>> nVidia or ATI kernel modules may be having on the ability of the 
>> kernel to behave properly, since they also make demands on the 
>> kernel that 'distract' it, as it were. And if Jack is a daemon 
>> (which I know it is), it's not like it needs X for itself.
> 
> 
> Right, but as I say, much slower PCs are able to use the standard 
> Gentoo kernel and run Gnome with no xruns. It's only this 3GHz 64-bit
>  machine that has the problem. The sound card has been used in an 
> Athlon XP 1600+ machine and it works fine so I trust its drivers at 
> least in 32-bit mode.

Honestly, we don't care what much slower PCs can do, because this isn't
one of them, and we don't think there's something wrong with the sound
card. The issue is that this particular machine is a 64 bit one that
apparently needs special handling in order to minimize the pre-existing
latency issues with 64-bit kernels/drivers/environments so that you can
use it for what you intend to use it for. Other conditions are
irrelevant, imo.

> 
>> It's of course quite possible that I'm talking out of my butt,
> 
> 
> Not the least bit possible. Your thought are clear and very coorect 
> IMO.

:-)


> 
>> since I am not a member of the Linux audio community, but I do know
>>  that the first step in troubleshooting is to simplify the 
>> environment as much as possible, and then slowly increase the 
>> complexity to see when and where things break down.
> 
> 
> Absolutely. Hopefully with the additional info above you'll see that
>  is what I've been doing, within my limited abilities to patch 
> kernels, etc.

Patching the kernel isn't simplifying the environment if you're piling
possibly unnecessary additional demands on the kernel. The X server runs
on top of the kernel. The window manager runs on top of the X server,
which runs on top of the kernel. The whole thing is rather like a head
wound (the premise being that even non-serious head wounds tend to heavy
bleeding, obscuring the nature and severity of the wound itself). The
use of the X server, and anything but the lightest possible WM puts
additional stress on the system, which may be the straw that breaks the
camel's back in this case.
> 
> 
>> Were I you, I would consider:
>> 
>> - If keeping X, switching to the absolute most minimal wm possible
>>  (twm, ratpoison, ion), to see what effect that had.
> 
> 
> Right. FVWM, fluxbox, etc. These can just be tested.

No, I really mean twm, ratpoison, ion and the like. FVWM can be
configured to be absolutely minimal, but learning to do that is an
unreasonable distraction. Fluxbox uses too much X (has to draw toolbars
and tabs and decorative windows). Even openbox might, and I don't know
enough about pekwm or kahakai to know if they would be appropriate.

If you must use X (which I will accept for the moment) for the GUI
applications, well, fine, but what I'm suggesting is a window manager
that uses the absolute minimum of X resources possible.

> 
> 
>> - If downstepping from X, investigating what programs run under 
>> DirectFB  and seeing what effect that had. - If going cold-turkey 
>> off X, seeing how far you get with the command-line and ncurses 
>> programs.
> 
> 
> Neither are really acceptable as far as I know today.
> 
> 
>> Am I, in fact, talking out of my butt (since it seems that the 
>> 'real' audio community would have tried at least some of this)? Or 
>> are there reasons that this simplification process is not possible 
>> for professional audio recording?
> 
> 
> As above - see Ardour, Jamin, Muse, Rosegarden, etc.

I'm not completely convinced that Ardour, Jamin, Muse and Rosegarden
won't run under DirectFB, but I'm not so experienced with DirectFB that
I can say definitively one way or the other.

I see that at least Muse does have an ncurses interface (or at least an
ncurses USE flag which would suggest that it has an ncurses interface).

And looking at the DirectFB site, it seems possible that there could be
a place for it to help work around the issue:

FusionSound
Audio sub system for multiple applications
 FusionSound is a very powerful audio sub system in the manner of
DirectFB and a technical demonstration of Fusion.
 FusionSound supports multiple applications using Fusion IPC. It
provides streams, static sound buffers and control over any number of
concurrent playbacks. Sample data is always stored in shared memory,
starting a playback simply adds an entry to the playlist of the mixer
thread in the master application.
 FusionSound currently is a module of DirectFB. The current API is fully
implemented and the complete code is smaller than just the header file
of DirectFB! There's a complete API Reference to learn more about
FusionSound.
 FusionSound future plans include interfaces for hardware/software
codecs, hardware gain control, device configuration and different device
backends (currently OSS only).

XDirectFB
Rootless X Server based on DirectFB
 XDirectFB Screenshot
 XDirectFB is a rootless X Server using DirectFB windows for X11
toplevel windows. This way you can adjust the opacity of every
application with your mouse wheel (while holding Meta down over a
window). More details about these shortcuts can be found in the DirectFB
README.
 Window movements are initiated by the applications or the window
manager. The graphical movement is done by DirectFB using available
hardware acceleration.
 Overlapping toplevel windows do not cause expose events, i.e. redrawing
of the window contents, as they are DirectFB windows and therefore have
an own surface, a.k.a. backing store.
 You should use the CVS version, because the last release is too old.

Qt on DirectFB
qt-directfb is a GPLed DirectFB port of Qt based on Qt-X11 3.2.

Qingy  (I've used this, it's nice enough. I mean, it's just a DM, after
all, so not much to say)
Qingy is a replacement of getty. Written in C, it uses DirectFB to
provide a fast, nice GUI without the overhead of the X Windows System.
It allows the user to log in and start the session of his choice (text
console, gnome, kde, wmaker, ...).

wyoDesktop
wyoDesktop is an effort to create a graphical desktop environment where
an ordinary user immediately feels comfortable through the use of a well
designed and consistent look and feel.

I know I'm very hardheaded (I have even been so evaluated by
professionals in vocational assessment testing, so it's really true),
but the upside is that I tend to believe that there is a solution or
workaround to most problems, and I tend to go a long way towards
twisting myself into a pretzel to find it (and the upside of that is
that if I tie myself into a pretzel and find nothing, then there's
really likely nothing to find).

I understand that serious audio recording has serious problems under
Linux, but I also know that many people are very interested in finding
solutions. I just wonder if many of those solutions may not lie 'outside
the box' at this time. It's within the realm of possibility that this
could all work effectively (if not elegantly), if radical changes were
made to the PC's setup, with the sole purpose of getting it working.

Oh and by the way-- I noticed that both directfb and ardour (I think it
was) seem to prefer Matrox cards. I've got two in the house (though only
one is mine), neither in use-- a G400 and a G400Max (but the fan on the
Max keeps falling off :) as I'm missing a screw I think, otherwise it's
fine).

Wanna discuss a trade for any old nVidia card you might have laying
around? Seriously.

Holly
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Re: [gentoo-user] [Completely and totally OT] FVWM-Crystal...!!!

[Mark Knecht]

On 9/29/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> Mark Knecht schreef:
>
> >> Can you record audio from the command line? Or do the X-based
> >> programs you use run under DirectFB? What I'm getting at is getting
> >>  rid of all the obstructions that could possibly interfere with the
> >>  kernel and introduce even more latency issues than what it already
> >>  has
> > <snip>
> >
> > Good questions. I didn't say this earlier. I probably should have. If
> >  I boot this machine into a console mode (i.e. - no xdm/gdm) and run
> >  Jack in one console I can log in as root in another console, do
> > emerges all day long and I get no xruns, at least with the small
> > amount of testing I've done so far. This is using 2.6.14-rc2-mm1 so
> > it has some new code but not all of Ingo's stuff.
>
> OK, so X really is a problem, then. Now I really want to find a way to
> get you rid of it.

In the meantime, following along on Dave's idea about running remotely
I now have Ardour running at 64/2. (sub 3mS) No xruns yet.

1) On Lightning I boot without X and start Jack in a console.

2) On my remote machine some audio apps are failing with lots of
'BadAtom messages, but if I log into Lightning using

ssh -Y lightning ardour

then ardour comes up remotely and seems to be working fine. I've run a
couple of sessions, and at least in playback no xruns yet. I'm also
playing oggs from a 1394 drive and have hdspmixer running. My issue
right now is this is a lot of network traffic and this room only has a
hub so I'm off to pick up a cheap switch at lunch.

I still see a lot of memory usage. That concerns me a bit.

You make some very good points below. I'll come back later today and
spend some time thinking and answering them. For now let me say that I
have <1% of the experience you do with FB solutions (I've NEVER used
it) so that's a whole new area for me to look at, but it could be
interesting.

More later, and thanks very much to you and Dave. I'm not done here.

Cheers,
Mark

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