apps.for.the.FOSS.musician

It's quite a busy week for me work-wise, we've been planning on setting up a product launch for the GPS tracking solution we've been developing since last year, so its really nice for the weekend to come and allow me a day of R and R. This also means that I have time to blog about another passion of mine and that is making music.

I've practically been a music fan all my life. When I was a little kid, my sister and I sang along songs we heard on the radio. My earliest percussion instruments were my mom's collection of aluminum and steel pots, my main instrument however, was my father's comb, which I had covered with paper on one side and sang through it to generate vocal buzzes much like a kazoo. But it really wasn't until 6th grade when I signed up for our school's guitar club that I really got into making 'real' music (Thanks sir Jacinto for triggering the musician in me).

When I got introduced to computers (which came in late in my life), I wanted to incorporate computers into music, or at least make use of software to either make the whole music making concept easier or make it more interesting. My first attempts were obviously recording applications like SoundForge (which was the primary application used in the recording studio where I worked on a couple of years ago), later I got into Cakewalk and other similar applications. These apps were very good with their respective areas but now that I'm leaning more into FOSS(Free & Open Source Software) I've been scouting applications that can replace these tools.
Here's a list of a few applications that can definitely help musicians like me that are looking for FOSS alternatives to popular proprietary music applications.

1. Audacity. A free, open source software for recording and editing sounds in Linux, Mac OS X , and other operating systems. This is a good SoundForge replacement and is also being used for voice and audio analysis.
2. Hydrogen. An advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. It's main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming. Quite easy to use and given the right drum kits (which are also free!) can produce very life-like sounds. I've used it to produce the drum tracks for my demos.
3. JACK. A system for handling real-time, low latency audio (and MIDI).
   
4. JACK Control. Offers a user interface for controlling the JACK sound server daemon. At the same time it figures as a JACK patch bay and monitoring tool.
5. Ardour. A digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. You can produce your own CDs, mix video soundtracks, or just experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Its very close to ProTools and has a completely flexible "anything to anywhere" routing system, and will allow as many physical I/O ports as your system allows.
   
6. Creox. A real-time sound processor that mimics guitar effects. Its not as powerful as GuitarRig but for simple needs this is more than enough.
7. GT-6 Fx FloorBoard. A midi editor for the Boss GT-6 floor effects. A recent discovery that got me really excited. This app allows me to control the GT-6, mix and modify effect settings as well as load and save my patches. In my experience the linux version worked even better than the windows version :). Finally a software that rivals GT-Manager!
   
8. Tuxguitar. An opensource multitrack tablature editor. This is a great compositional tool and works quite the same way as Guitar Pro except that this one not only read and writes GPx files but Powertab files as well. Beat that!
9. Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS). free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.
10. Ubuntu Studio. A multimedia creation flavor of Ubuntu. Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional.

There are of course more applications for the FOSS musician than what I have listed and I will definitely post them in the future. But the list above contains most of the really good ones. Moreover, by installing Ubuntu Studio I'm pretty sure you'll encounter more applications that will fit your needs.

Before I end this blog, I'd like to show-off my Ubuntu shirt! :)
I had commissioned a friend 2 weeks ago to create the artwork for the Ubuntu shirt I'm currently wearing (unfortunately, the yellow paint partially wore-off) .
This will serve as my 'gig' shirt on my band's next gig or it can also be my shirt on the next DabaweGNU L & K session :)

workaround.for.mounted.samba.shares.io.error

Hi everyone, before blogging any further I'd like to congratulate DabaweGNU along with FOSS Nepal Community and SFD Nicaragua for bagging Software Freedom Day 2008's Best Event Award. I'm pretty sure this recognition will further encourage DabaweGNU and other organizers to do even better next time. Moreover, this will definitely boost support for FOSS and assure a bigger audience next SFD. Each of the winning organizations will also receive a pair of OLPC laptops...can't wait to take it for a spin :)

>>DabaweGNU team report

Now back to the topic at hand, I visited a client the other day and they reported a problem with saving documents in OpenOffice (Writer in particular). This client recently decided to migrate some of their windows PCs to Linux and as expected there are bumps along the way, I will be talking about specific software related issues and how it can be mitigated. This would also serve as reference for future projects where I might encounter the same issue.

When saving a document to a mounted samba share(mounted remote folders) Writer issues an I/O error, creates the file and prevents the user from further saving the document. This issue seems to be isolated in Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) because I don't recall encountering this in Hardy. You can however save the file locally and then drag (copy+paste) the file to the mounted folder, also if the folder is mounted via nautilus the bug does not occur. So naturally that was the work around, the problem was that my client wants to be able to save directly to the remote folder without having to manually mount the share via nautilus (I know what you're thinking...its only a 3 step thing but hey they want it done!). So here is how I temporarily solved the problem ( the permanent fix is to wait for the samba fix to be included in the repos).

1. Disable the samba mount definition in /etc/fstab by inserting a hashmark(#) at the start of the definition (this is specific to my client because I had setup the system to automount the samba shares)
2. Nautilus like most linux apps accepts commandline parameters so we are going to use that to our advantage simply create a script to automate that.
   
   

    sudo nano /home/<user_name>/mountshare.sh
   

   
   Type the following lines
   

   
   #/bin/sh
   nautilus smb://<ip/hostname>/<share_name>
   

   
   Save the script.
   
   
3. Make the script executable
   • chmod +x mount_share.sh


4. Add an entry to the current session so it is executed on startup. System --> Administration -->Sessions --> Add Entry. Browse and point to /home/mount_share.sh
   

Hope this snippet helps those with similar issues...at least until the bug is fixed.

linux.pimping

Hello folks, I'm once again encouraging everyone to shift or at least try Ubuntu. The recent release (Ubuntu 8.10), although not perfect, is very good and quite easy to use.

A few years back I had Mandrake installed, along with Windows, in a home PC. I forgot to set the default boot option to back to Windows so it boots with Mandrake every time its turned on. My father, a casual computer user, turned the PC on and was surprised that it didn't looked quite like Windows. He assumed that I simply changed the Windows theme to make it look different. He didn't mind that the boot screen say "Mandrake Linux", he didn't mind that the icons were totally different, he didn't care that the 'Start' button had a star on it. What he care about thought was looking for something that says "Word" because he needed to type a document. He saw KWord, launched it and typed away. When I got back he only asked if I had changed the "theme" because it looked way different. So there I was surprised that my father is a now a Linux user without him knowing it, plus he actually printed the document and shown it to me. I can never forget that incident and that's precisely why I smirk whenever I hear people say Linux is hard to use and why I believe that given the right mix (as in the case of Ubuntu) Linux can definitely be successful as a desktop OS as well (Linux has been enjoying its rule in the server OS space for years).

I've always been eager to promote the use of Linux as a desktop OS ever since Ubuntu's Dapper release (6.10). It was, in my opinion, the first distro release that made it easy (at least for me) to make an ordinary computer user actually sit down and use it. The next releases made my Linux pimping life even better. Just think of the benefits, it's advanced, it's virtually immune to viruses (yup, no need to buy an anti-virus), totally customizable, fat free (meaning none of the usual bloat-ware you get from bundled software packages), it's a good way to start a conversation unless you still prefer to talk about the weather in which case there is even a widget for that :) , and most of all it's free!

Download the latest Ubuntu release and try it for yourself. If you're around Davao City feel free to drop by (PM me first) bring a CD/DVD and I'll burn a copy for you. We can even talk about it while sipping a cup o' joe (and yes the coffee is free too).

crossover.is.free.for.today

Crossover a commercial compatibility layer for running Windows applications to Linux and Mac is being given away by Codeweavers for free...just for today!
CEO Jeremy White offered a challenge to George W. Bush. If the president achieved one of White's six "Lame Duck" goals during the twilight of his 2nd term, White would make Windows-API enabler & WINE GUI CrossOver free to customers for one day. Codeweavers' main page was temporarily replaced due to the day's unusually high traffic ;)

A day from now Ubuntu 8.10 will be officially released and two days from now will be All Souls' Day or "Undas" (as we pinoys call it) something like Dia de los Muertos only we don't have the grim fandango-like images. It's a time to remember those that touched our lives and for most pinoys, a time to bond with relatives. See you guys next week.

Can't.resist.the.urge...to.upgrade

Oh boy, I've tested Ubuntu 8.10 Beta (Intrepid Ibex) for 3 days via Wubi and I have a strong urge to drop Ubuntu 8.04 and upgrade to the beta release. Its only about 20days more but this particular release seems quite stable on two of the notebooks I've tested that I just got to do the upgrade. I have not encountered any bug that I'd consider a show stopper and the only one I saw thats annoying was the fact that the security key for wifi is not stored by the network manager (which prompts you again on the next reboot), but thats ok I'm pretty sure it will be solved on the next update. I've downloaded the alternate- installer iso yesterday, burned it on a cd and upgraded the system and what did I get? A warm fuzzy feeling that I got a new and improved version of my favorite desktop linux distro :) ...they say pulseaudio will be better in Ibex, I'll check this later. Also my Lazarus was broken but it just might be the libraries getting messed up after the initial upgrade(via cd)...I went online this morning and the update manager prompted me for a partial upgrade, which basically means there have been a considerable amount of difference between my packages as opposed to the online repositories (the iso must have been a few weeks older already). I'm still running an online upgrade while I'm writing this blog and from the looks of things (ISP slowdowns and all) It will probably take 2 hours or the rest of the day before the upgrade is done.

For the brave ones you can upgrade your system online (slower but more complete) by typing this on the commandline:

update-manager --devel-release

then click on the upgrade button.

or use the alternate installer cd:

The upgrade script is supposed to run once the cd gets loaded but there is a bug in the script (path issues I presume) that prevents it from launching and would therefore do nothing on the GUI side...so drop down to your terminal and type this instead:

./cdrom/cdromupgrade

On a totally unrelated but equally cool news, a friend of mine sent me a url to Google powered search site that uses commandline interface similar to sh and aptly called it goosh...greate use of ajax btw :)

Good luck and may the force be with you!

the.countdown.begins

It's October once again and another Ubuntu release is due (don't you just loved the predictable release cycle?) I'm currently downloading Ubuntu 8.10 beta a.k.a. Intrepid Ibex and will be testing it as soon as its finished. I'm actually very satisfied with the previous release (Hardy Heron) but I'd also like to see what the new release will put into the whole Ubuntu experience table. Aside from tons of bug fixes (and bugs to uncover, since this is beta) a slew of new features are added into Ubuntu. Some of the more notable improvements are (based on Ubuntu.com):

• X.Org 7.4. Which bring better support for hot-pluggable input devices and at the same time allow the greate majority of users to run without a /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. This ensures that users spend more time using the system rather that fixing it. A new failsafe X is introduced, to give better tools for troubleshooting X startup failures...I'd wish better support for dual screen monitor btw. Also fglrx (thats ATI folks) and two of the older nvidia binary drivers are not available for X.Org 7.4 yet, so users of these drivers will be automatically switched to the corresponding open source drivers.
  
• Linux kernel 2.6.27. Better hardware support and bug-fixes obviously
• Encrypted private directory. Support for an encrypted secret folder in your home directory. Nice!
• Guest session. The User Switcher panel applet (package fast-user-switch-applet) now provides an extra entry for starting a Guest session. This creates a temporary password-less user account with restricted privileges: the account cannot access any users' home directories, nor permanently store data. This is sufficiently safe to lend your laptop to someone else for a quick email check.
• Network Manager 0.7. Includes system wide settings (i.e., no need to log in in order to get a connection) and management of 3G connections (GSM/CDMA). I just hope it works out of the box.
• "Last successful boot" recovery entry. Ubuntu 8.10 will retain a copy of your running kernel and make it available from the boot loader as a "Last successful boot" option . This makes it possible for old kernel packages to be safely auto-removed by the package manager, instead of being kept indefinitely(and eating disk space).
• DKMS. allowing kernel drivers to be automatically rebuilt when new kernels are released. This makes it possible for kernel package updates to be made available immediately without waiting for rebuilds of driver packages, and without third-party driver packages becoming out of date when installing these kernel updates.

Software.Freedom.Day.2008.Davao.City

I'm still in General Santos City and I'm wrapping up my blog on Davao City's celebration of Software Freedom Day. I must say the whole experience was enjoyable, informative and very successful. Students from different colleges flocked together to learn more about free/open source software (FOSS).

Mark Maglana of Morphlabs started the program by talking about the Ruby language and the popular Ruby on Rails framework as well as showing everyone how easy it is to use for developing web applications. He also showcased two of Morphlabs latest services appSpace and appCloud, revolutionary web products that utilize opensource technology. Next was Nathaniel Jayme of DabaweGNU who talked about FFEHR (pronounced "effer") the free and open source Electronic Health Record project. FFEHR, according to Nathaniel, uses the Mozilla framework which includes XUL and XBL. It's interesting to note Nathaniel's passion for FOSS in fact I'm pretty sure he imprinted that passion to the students attending the celebration (I noticed a few students asking him a lot of questions after the event). Next on the list was 17-yr old Kevin Paquet of PinoyTeens.net who talked about Wordpress and why he thinks its the best blogging software ever :). Andrew Abogado wowed the crowd with his skills, showing everyone that GIMP and Inkscape is just as powerful as proprietary graphics software. Lastly we have Ragingmon aka Marlo Noval whose Blender talents never fails to amaze me, raises the bar by showing everyone how Blender with the help of Vodoo can do add 3D objects/effects into live-footages/movies (a process called camera tracking or match moving).

An animated short film made entirely with FOSS (Big Buck Bunny) was shown and signaled the end of the celebration as well. I hope next year's celebration will be bigger and better and will include more topics (w/c means that you guys wanting to contribute shouldn't shy away). See you on the next SFD!

SFD '08

Holden and I are currently conducting a private seminar on Linux administration in General Santos City. It's turning out to be quite a busy day and we're only in Day 2 :) but I do have enough time to post this link to Ragingmon's video of last saturday's Software Freedom Day '08 celebration


Software Freedom Day - Davao 2008

More on this on the next blog.

software.freedom.day.2008

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is an annual worldwide celebration of free/open-source software (FOSS). SFD is a public education effort, not only to celebrate the virtues of free/open-source software, but also to encourage its use, to the benefit of the public.

From 2006 onwards, it has been decided that the Software Freedom Day is to be held on the third Saturday of each September.

Dabawegnu is spearheading its celebration here in Davao by conducting a free seminar on FOSS at the University of Mindanao, 1:00pm -5:00pm on Sept. 20, 2008.

Additional details can be found on here.

See you there!

Delphi.2009.is.officially.released!

I just got a nice email informing me that my favorite development tool has released its newest iteration. Delphi 2009 aka Tiburon is now officially released and a trial version is available for download. This version offers new language enhancements like generics and anonymous methods as well as unicode support plus more. I only want it to be the same kick-ass IDE i've always loved :)
Here is a list of 3rd party tools and components that are Delphi 2009 compatible. Devexpress users will have to wait a bit but I'm sure we won't have to wait that long.

IBM CSC Lecture Series on Project Development and SDLC

It came at a short notice but for those interested, do attend. Seminars like this don't come often in our part of the country. Thanks to IBM volunteer Sreejith Sankarapillai and DabawenGNU for making this happen. See you there.

The.Heron.lands.on.the.eePC.900

A friend of mine is planning a trip and wants to carry along a lightweight, ultra-portable laptop for her travel. She ended up buying a black eeePC 900 and called me up to soup it up for her.She's a proud macbook pro owner by the way, and when I asked her why she preferred to bring along an eeePC instead of the MBP, she pointed out that she already broke two macs on two separate travels and would not want to suffer the same costly experience again. In her opinion the eeePC 900 is still cheaper than having to repair a MBP, I'd say just use a mobile phone instead :). Anyway, its a good opportunity for me to try out Ubuntu 8.04 on the eeePC and to test the eeePCs "viability" as a personal tool as well.
I was having lunch with wifey when the unit arrived, I had to stop eating and enthusiastically examine its physical features. All black unit with a nice 9" screen , 3 usb ports, sd/mmc slot,a gig of RAM, 1.3 integrated webcam and 20GB of solid state drive space! Its amazing how this all fits into one package that weighs barely a pound. The eeePC 900 includes a CD for installing either Windows XP or Xandros but my friend already installed Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy heron) on it (probably reading good reviews on Ubuntu as a linux desktop). It was a good choice since Xandros for eeePC tends to be minimal feature-wise (but definitely has more features vs the windows XP version).
With Ubuntu most of eeePCs features works out of the box, except for wifi and the power not being properly cut off when you shutdown (one has to remove the battery to shut it down), these however are minor problems that are easily fixed.
The wifi issue was fixed for eeePC 701 but the current kernel update seem to break it for eeePC 900. The problem is remedied by simply re-installing madwifi drivers like so

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential
wget 'http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz'
tar zxvf madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
cd madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007
make clean
make
sudo make install
sudo reboot

Should new kernel updates disable or break wifi just redo the steps.
The shutdown problem is cause by the sound module not being properly unloaded, we can tell the system to do that by editing /etc/default/halt and adding the following code:

rmmod snd-hda-intel

There are scripts available online that allow you to automate the fixes but like most things please make sure you understand how they work first before you apply them, they won't brick your eeePC but they might introduce new issues you can't solve. I personally don't use the scripts since I don't think I'd need all the tweaks but I do examine them for ideas I missed out. Here is a picture of the eeePC side by side with my MSI PR200...suddenly my 12inch notebook looked massive compared to the eeePC.







The eeePC is a cool device indeed, great features, good price, way better processing speed than other ultraportables, and lightweight too. The tiny keyboard however is a letdown for me especially when typing codes in the terminal application (Palm's foldable keyboard feels much much better). Still, its the best ultraportable I've come across...until maybe the next version comes out :)

spread.the.fire...fox!

Let's help Firefox break the record for the most software downloads in 24 hrs!
Great marketing strategy for an equally great browser.
Sign up here and spread the fire...fox :)

the.heron.has.spread.its.wings

I know its a bit late for me to declare Canonical's Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) release, but I intentionally did it for two things: 1) I'd want everyone to wait till all the other Ubuntu "flavors" are updated and 2) Let's give their servers a breather before we swamp them again with downloads!

So boys and girls get your downloaders ready, get Ubuntu 8.04 and enjoy the experience.
If anyone here in Davao City is interested to install and learn to use Ubuntu, just message me and bring a blank DVD, I'll burn the distro for free :)

Penguin convention

I'm currently attending Dabawegnu's Linux Systems Administration Training, dubbed LiSa 1.2 , and actually enjoying it. A former officemate and co-LiSa attendee asked me why I bothered to join when I probably knew a lot about the topics already. Good question, I probably knew the topics but I always believe that one should only stop learning when one is dead :)...besides I enjoy the whole idea of interacting with people of similar interests, you'll learn something new everyday and gain more friends.

Oh btw, Hardy Heron is just around the corner!

sad.goodbyes

Development of Automatix, the popular tool for automating the installation of commonly requested application in some Debian-based distribution (including Ubuntu), has now officially ceased. It's a sad day indeed for the casual Linux users as they have one tool less they can use, and a sad day for Ubuntu advocates such as me as I have one tool less that I can use for convincing people to switch. My only wish is that another similar tool would be able to replace it or better yet Canonical gives us a better tool tightly integrated with Ubuntu (you guys can always redesign your add/remove applications module right?).

Hardy.Heron.28.days.and.counting

Canonical is set to release the next version of the popular desktop Linux distro, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) next month. Being an Ubuntu fan since 5.04 this is a welcome thing for me specifically because Hardy Heron is the latest Ubuntu release that comes with LTS (Long-term support), the previous being Dapper Drake (6.04) and thats 3 releases ago (roughly a year and half). This means that we get to enjoy another release that has stability in mind, good news for those who want to switch. I have downloaded the beta release and installed in on my office desktop via wubi, I will be evaluating it for a couple of days and explore the new features and if it proves to be top notch (which I seriously think it is), I will be upgrading my notebook to use it as well. Note that this is beta release guys, so unless you're ready to solve possible annoying bugs wait till the stable version is released.

*I haven't been able to update this blog as much as I want to but I will definitely be keeping it up to date in the coming days. Too many bloggable events so little time :)