Audio Production

t-u-t marshc187 at gmail.com
Sat Oct 11 14:50:10 UTC 2008


On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Da Rock <rock_on_the_web at comcen.com.au>wrote:

>
> On Mon, 2008-09-22 at 11:50 +0200, marshc wrote:
> > >
>
>
> My only advice on this point is to subscribe to the multimedia list and
> ask your questions there (I'll be watching this list too, have been for
> some time now due to my htpc issues- I desperately want to use FreeBSD
> for a/v, and I suffer the same issues you do in terms of multitasking in
> the cpu level, but the main problem with BSD for me is the driver
> problems).
>
>

> >From my experience (and I use FreeBSD for many different needs), FreeBSD
> can run a/v and multimedia programs, write to multiple components
> simultaneously, serve a small amount services, run X, and still respond
> happily to your hammering at the CPU while it serves you coffee! It is
> mainly dependent on your hardware capabilities (dma, bus bandwidth,
> buffers, etc), and obviously the quality of the programs you run. If you
> run a shitty program that is poorly written then it won't go as well,
> but still perform admirably. But most of the programs ported wouldn't
> have been added if they were like that, so you're mostly safe.
>
> So for a/v I find it performs far better than linux. Linux I still have
> trouble with, but it performs better than window$. Linux is a happy
> medium in between, and I'll explain why;
>
> Driver support for the more advanced hardware is not always forthcoming
> with FreeBSD, but it is for linux. Most manufacturers aren't very
> supportive of open source, and if they do they usually gravitate toward
> a linux base because of user popularity. On the upside, there is a
> brilliant coder who is extending the linux compat base for hardware side
> as well, but you do need to be nearly expert. It is controversial, but
> you should be able to use the hardware until native drivers are written.
>
> Just to clarify, in the development side of FreeBSD there is some
> mention of Hats (correct me of I'm wrong here guys), and so any side
> projects are kept under a particular hat, the mailing list that relates
> to your interest in FreeBSD will be monitored by those working under
> these hats will be better able to guide you. This list is just a general
> discussion and help list for newbies, but when you get in to more depth
> like this you'll want to get to the experts on the subject who monitor a
> particular list more closely.
>
> Have fun and good luck.
>

thanks, i subscribed to multimedia and move queries there in future and not
bother folks here.
i have been trying to reply to this but have been busy, and just like to
recap briefly.

in a nutshell, i am very new to bsd, not even a teenager in dog years, and
have tried ever flavour these past months - (fbsd/pcbsd - i386/amd64 -- 6/7)
and finally settled on 7.1 amd64.
i still have some settings to go through/figure out, and have the occasional
system freeze, but i don't have the sluggish/bad
installs i had trouble with earlier.

before you sent this post i had given up and moved to ubuntu studio, decided
to give it another go, and got the best performance ever
by installing pcbsd 1.5.1 amd64 (based on 6.3) and enabling ULE. so i got an
idea of what fbsd was capable of on my machine with the right setup.
(graphics driver aside, it even felt *smoother* than studio64).

anyway. will be working on this from now on and my project over the next
year, so we'll see what happens on multimedia mailing list.
i was just putting together a list of packages and might port there sometime
soon and close this from this list.

thanks for this post


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