[PlanetCCRMA] PlanetCCRMA on the cheap: red hat 8 questions (long post)

[I. Read]

In the past week I've got an install of PlanetCCRMA
working on a really cheap box from Fry's ($199).
Needless to say I am completely stoked! The quality
and diversity of software is astounding and I'm
looking forward to doing almost all my experimental
composing on PlanetCCRMA. I'm still hammering out the
bugs, however and would be grateful for any
assistance. My experience level with Linux is not that
of a seasoned user, and though it isn't my first
install ever, it will be the first computer I've
completely dedicated in some time. my limited previous
experience was with debian.

because all the hardware in the computer, audio,
video, ethernet, modem, etc. is integrated to the
motherboard, I don't have any grand delusions that I
am going to get some extreme low latency performance
from it. regardless, I think I can tweak it more than
I have to improve the latency.

one thing I haven't done yet is 'tuned the system' as
described in the CCRMA docs, I'm curious to see how
well it works with such a completely integrated
motherboard as my own, _especially_ because of it's
cheapness. I like the idea that I may be able to
squeeze to semi-low latency performance out of a
computer with such generic, non-audio, non-pro
oriented hardware. ultimately, I'd like to do live
gigs with it though I suspect that might be pushing
it. btw, the motherboard is a SiS K7SEM if anyone has
some experience with them.

I haven't been able to get the "extra" low latency
kernel provided with CCRMA to work on my system, but I
have been able to get the "lower" latency alsa patched
red hat kernel. I'm really curious, were I to patch
and/or recompile the kernel myself by hand, what the
ingredients of the preferred CCRMA kernel are so I go
one at a time and see what works and what doesn't.

I'm wondering what people's experiences with ardour
have been like on more capable machines. I can get it
to work and I love it, but I have been having frequent
unexpected crashes of various degrees. I really want
to believe this is something I can fix by patching and
upgrading the kernel and libraries/software on my
system and not something with ardour itself. I'm
really taken with this program! 

ecamegapedal crashes almost immediately as I start to
use it, but I think the command line ecasound does
work ok though I haven't played with it. jackrack,
soundtracker, hydrogen and freqtweak work _GREAT_. I
haven't tried pd with Jack yet though I would be
surprised if it doesn't work.

the main problem that I'm having right now, I that I
would really like to use the non-CCRMA application
Jacynth (
HTTP://www.reduz.com.ar/cheesetronic/index.php?section=4
). I have been able to compile an application by the
same author called Cheestracker after installed the
gtkmm toolkit. After two days of trying everything I
think of, Legasynth will not compile. I get the same
error as this guy -
http://www.music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2003-June/005032.html

at least I'm pretty sure. no one responded to him in
the alsa list archives :( ahh, maybe off list. 

another question: since I've installed the apt-enabled
cds from the CCRMA website, can I use synaptic to
apt-get .debs as well as rpms or will the differences
between rh and debian be problematic? I guess that's
what alien is for.

more questions: I really killed my gnome desktop
pretty bad. the taskbar kept on crashing when it
started so I deleted all the .gnome* files in my home
directory. kde works fine, but now the graphical login
doesn't come up anymore which is also how I'd been
shutting down. the command line shutdown doesn't seem
installed, how do I do this? similarly unmount doesn't
seem to be installed, how do I unmount from the
terminal? 

sorry about the long long post, I guess I should have
joined the list sooner so that these questions could
have arrived in chronological order.

thanks much!

-e

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