SCaLE and LFNW

[Jeff Sandys]

Brian,
Are you paradoxguitarist on the ambassadors chat?

I like your proposal for SCaLE on the Fedora Music List. What I was
thinking is put Fedora Jam on USB sticks, boot the stick, do the session
with the guest, save it to the stick and give it to them.  Unlike passing
out disks or USB drives, you are pretty sure the guest will boot the drive
to show off their creation to someone.

Would you be interested in working the Fedora booth at LinuxFest NorthWest
with me?  The reason I ask is that I am not a "live" musician and do most
of my work in PD and other music programming environments.  I like what you
are planning at SCaLE but feel that I would fail if I tried to implement
the same thing.  I have all the equipment we would need, guitars, bass,
mikes, speakers, keyboards.  And I could put you up in the Seattle area
before and after the event.

If you could attend I would get the 10 foot table, actually like a 10x10
booth space in the center of the exhibit hall.  Otherwise I'll get one of
the 5 foot tables that line the walls.  If you are interested add a travel
and hotel expense to the budget.  I would enjoy the time with you to
discuss the possibilities of making Fedora the premier Linux distribution
for music.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxFest_Northwest_%28LFNW%29_2015

Thanks,
Jeff Sandys

[Brian Monroe]

I am ParadoxGuitarist! I'm interested in going to LFNW, but I'll need to
check with the wife before I can commit.

I really like your idea about the USB drives, here are some challenges that
might pop up:

- I haven't had a lot of luck with persistent storage option when
   creating usb drives. SoaS I've heard works well, but I'm not sure how well
   it works with Jam.
   - I also don't know if they decide to install from that USB if their
   music will transfer with them.... Though, hopefully they're savvy enough to
   know how to find it on the disk and copy it over, but if not it could give
   them negative impression of Fedora or Linux.
   - Jack sample settings could also give a bad impression if they're not
   the same either when they reboot.
   - If possible it might be good to shoot for running the session on their
   actual laptop. There's been a few times where I've given disks to someone,
   and due to a kernel issue, that version/kernel of Fedora caused major
   issues. If the sticks are persistent, we could help them fix it, or at
   least be aware that there's a current bug, so it's not a disappointment
   when they try to boot it later. Of course there are few things more risky
   than doing a demo like this and having it fail with someone, so there's a
   downside too.
   - I don't have a ton of USB drives, but maybe we'll have ordered more by
   then, or can get some from one of the other peeps like award or nb.

I don't think these are insurmountable, I just wanted to try to think all
the possibilities, the end-user experience, and help with planning. All in
all, *I think it's a great idea*.

Looking on Google it looks like I could potentially fly into Bellingham
directly for abut $30 more, I don't know if that would be easier or not. I
have the event box, so I could bring that with me too. Let me know what
you're thinking would be good time-frame wise, what days to fly in/out, so
I can look at my schedule and give you a definite answer.

On Thu Jan 29 2015 at 12:40:44 PM Jeff Sandys  wrote:
> Brian,
> Are you paradoxguitarist on the ambassadors chat?
>
> I like your proposal for SCaLE on the Fedora Music List. What I was
> thinking is put Fedora Jam on USB sticks, boot the stick, do the session
> with the guest, save it to the stick and give it to them.  Unlike passing
> out disks or USB drives, you are pretty sure the guest will boot the drive
> to show off their creation to someone.
>
> Would you be interested in working the Fedora booth at LinuxFest NorthWest
> with me?  The reason I ask is that I am not a "live" musician and do most
> of my work in PD and other music programming environments.  I like what you
> are planning at SCaLE but feel that I would fail if I tried to implement
> the same thing.  I have all the equipment we would need, guitars, bass,
> mikes, speakers, keyboards.  And I could put you up in the Seattle area
> before and after the event.
>
> If you could attend I would get the 10 foot table, actually like a 10x10
> booth space in the center of the exhibit hall.  Otherwise I'll get one of
> the 5 foot tables that line the walls.  If you are interested add a travel
> and hotel expense to the budget.  I would enjoy the time with you to
> discuss the possibilities of making Fedora the premier Linux distribution
> for music.
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxFest_Northwest_%28LFNW%29_2015
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff Sandys
>
> music mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/music

[Ian Malone]

On 29 January 2015 at 21:55, Brian Monroe  wrote:
> I am ParadoxGuitarist! I'm interested in going to LFNW, but I'll need to
> check with the wife before I can commit.
>
> I really like your idea about the USB drives, here are some challenges that
> might pop up:
>
> I haven't had a lot of luck with persistent storage option when creating usb
> drives. SoaS I've heard works well, but I'm not sure how well it works with
> Jam.
> I also don't know if they decide to install from that USB if their music
> will transfer with them.... Though, hopefully they're savvy enough to know
> how to find it on the disk and copy it over, but if not it could give them
> negative impression of Fedora or Linux.

I don't think it will. I've used the overlay persistent storage, that
has a problem that once you run out of overlay it tends to freeze (or
did in the past). It's possible to create the image with home on an
actual filesystem on the USB, can't remember if this shows up as a
partition or is an image file, if a partition then it would be simple
enough for someone to find and copy a project off the attached USB
after an install.
> Jack sample settings could also give a bad impression if they're not the
> same either when they reboot.

plughw could work here, but it's really the installed system setup
that would need to be tweaked.

[Be]

I've been working on a Fedora Remix for something like this but
specifically for DJing with Mixxx. I am making this with DJs and
potential DJs in mind, who may or may not be tech savvy or know how to
use GNU/Linux. I am keeping it under 700 MB to fit on CDs. It will be
easy to modify the Kickstart to add whatever music packages you want to
demonstrate for your project. A lot of the work has been writing a shell
script to automatically partition USB drives in such a way as to be able
to boot a live image in BIOS or EFI mode (because Macs' BIOS emulation
mode does not have a USB driver) as well as have a normal storage
partition that is writable from the live system, Windows, and OS X. I am
nearly ready to publish it. I just need to read through the manual and
check things over before I'm ready to publish it. Hopefully I can do
that this weekend or next week.

After a bunch of research, thinking, and testing, I have settled on the
following partition scheme:
GPT table:
35 MB EFI System Partition with GRUB and a grub.cfg
2 MB GRUB BIOS Partition
~700 MB live ISO image contents copied to vfat filesystem
100 MB ext4 unjournaled (to avoid wearing out flash drives) /home
rest of drive vfat storage partition, mounted at /home/liveuser/music by
a boot script

Plus a hybrid MBR with the vfat storage partition first in the MBR table
so Windows sees only that partition on drives with the removable bit set
(this should also make it visible to CDJs, but I have not tested that).
The hybrid MBR also has an extra GPT protective partition so OS X sees
it as an MBR disk. Without the extra GPT protective partition, OS X will
see it as a GPT drive. I don't know why, but it won't read any of the
partitions when it sees it as a GPT drive. That doesn't really matter
though for my purpose and it's probably better to hide all but the music
partition from Windows and OS X users who would be prompted by their OS
to format the other partitions that those OSs do not read.

On 01/29/2015 04:46 PM, Ian Malone wrote:
> On 29 January 2015 at 21:55, Brian Monroe  wrote:
> > I am ParadoxGuitarist! I'm interested in going to LFNW, but I'll need to
> > check with the wife before I can commit.
> >
> > I really like your idea about the USB drives, here are some challenges that
> > might pop up:
> >
> > I haven't had a lot of luck with persistent storage option when creating usb
> > drives. SoaS I've heard works well, but I'm not sure how well it works with
> > Jam.
> > I also don't know if they decide to install from that USB if their music
> > will transfer with them.... Though, hopefully they're savvy enough to know
> > how to find it on the disk and copy it over, but if not it could give them
> > negative impression of Fedora or Linux.
>
> I don't think it will. I've used the overlay persistent storage, that
> has a problem that once you run out of overlay it tends to freeze (or
> did in the past). It's possible to create the image with home on an
> actual filesystem on the USB, can't remember if this shows up as a
> partition or is an image file, if a partition then it would be simple
> enough for someone to find and copy a project off the attached USB
> after an install.
> > Jack sample settings could also give a bad impression if they're not the
> > same either when they reboot.
>
> plughw could work here, but it's really the installed system setup
> that would need to be tweaked.