4 ms·

Gentoo Studio – A Gentoo Linux Professional Audio Workstation

33 points by simonpure 4y ago

lwn 4y ago
This sounds/looks awesome! I wonder if Renoise also runs on it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nixgeek 4y ago
I’m surprised Gentoo hasn’t said this isn’t okay and cannot be called this for trademark infringement reasons.
- lioeters 4y ago
  From the site footer: > Gentoo Studio is not an official project of the Gentoo Foundation, of which I am a member. This site is maintained by me, Damien Moody, a.k.a. Audiodef. The Gentoo Foundation bears no responsibility for the content of this site. The Gentoo logo and Gentoo name are used according to the licensing guidelines set forth by the Gentoo Foundation.
- genewitch 4y ago
  I asked in the matrix channel, and between the "never heard of it" the common response was "why would anyone at gentoo care?"
gaze 4y ago
"An advantage of having Gentoo as the base for this distro is its package manager, Portage, which has a system of enabling/disabling compile-time options for applications. This means application binaries can be tailored to the user’s computer hardware and the user’s needs." This is less beneficial than Gentoo fans seem to think it is.
- LanternLight83 4y ago
  Maybe it was all placebo, but Gentoo's use flags are super well organized, and are one of the first things I missed when I transitioned to functional distros. You can still apply bulk transformation functions to every package (like those CPU optimizations, Guix even has a flag for this), or configure the flags in build phases by defining package variants, (some of which are provided in functional package repos, not often), but it's a lot of work. The Gentoo way of doing things pit the user in control and had a feeling of minimalism in the portage configuration files, straightforward use of directory structures to define masks and overrides, ubiquitous atom selectors. Even if it was only minutely beneficial, or caused "more trouble than it's worth", I remember it for how empowered it made me feel and how easy it was to manage. The same optimizations are much harder to preform in amy other distro, and that says something regardless of their effectiveness.
- throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
  Some people really care about milliseconds.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    In music production, milliseconds can mean the difference between being able to play perfectly (due to low-latency feedback) and making mistakes every couple of bars (due to high-latency feedback). Try playing an instrument while listening to 100ms delayed feedback - it's practically impossible to stay on the beat.
    - throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
      Yes, and Gentoo makes highly fine-tuned optimizations very manageable. For most, this is not very practical, but it may offer some millisecond-level improvements for those looking for it. Being able to strictly compile for your preferred audio stack could be beneficial. My fastest booting machine was definitely Gentoo with a custom kernel. Any audio improvements may be purely theoretical here, but maybe not. I would be curious to see benchmarks or anecdotes from anyone who's needed to do this themselves.

33 points by simonpure 4y ago

lwn 4y ago

This sounds/looks awesome! I wonder if Renoise also runs on it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nixgeek 4y ago

I’m surprised Gentoo hasn’t said this isn’t okay and cannot be called this for trademark infringement reasons.

lioeters 4y ago
From the site footer: > Gentoo Studio is not an official project of the Gentoo Foundation, of which I am a member. This site is maintained by me, Damien Moody, a.k.a. Audiodef. The Gentoo Foundation bears no responsibility for the content of this site. The Gentoo logo and Gentoo name are used according to the licensing guidelines set forth by the Gentoo Foundation.
genewitch 4y ago
I asked in the matrix channel, and between the "never heard of it" the common response was "why would anyone at gentoo care?"

gaze 4y ago

"An advantage of having Gentoo as the base for this distro is its package manager, Portage, which has a system of enabling/disabling compile-time options for applications. This means application binaries can be tailored to the user’s computer hardware and the user’s needs." This is less beneficial than Gentoo fans seem to think it is.

LanternLight83 4y ago
Maybe it was all placebo, but Gentoo's use flags are super well organized, and are one of the first things I missed when I transitioned to functional distros. You can still apply bulk transformation functions to every package (like those CPU optimizations, Guix even has a flag for this), or configure the flags in build phases by defining package variants, (some of which are provided in functional package repos, not often), but it's a lot of work. The Gentoo way of doing things pit the user in control and had a feeling of minimalism in the portage configuration files, straightforward use of directory structures to define masks and overrides, ubiquitous atom selectors. Even if it was only minutely beneficial, or caused "more trouble than it's worth", I remember it for how empowered it made me feel and how easy it was to manage. The same optimizations are much harder to preform in amy other distro, and that says something regardless of their effectiveness.
throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
Some people really care about milliseconds.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  In music production, milliseconds can mean the difference between being able to play perfectly (due to low-latency feedback) and making mistakes every couple of bars (due to high-latency feedback). Try playing an instrument while listening to 100ms delayed feedback - it's practically impossible to stay on the beat.
  - throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
    Yes, and Gentoo makes highly fine-tuned optimizations very manageable. For most, this is not very practical, but it may offer some millisecond-level improvements for those looking for it. Being able to strictly compile for your preferred audio stack could be beneficial. My fastest booting machine was definitely Gentoo with a custom kernel. Any audio improvements may be purely theoretical here, but maybe not. I would be curious to see benchmarks or anecdotes from anyone who's needed to do this themselves.