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larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

New install of Beowulf

Hi all

Thank you for this almost perfect distribution. I installed Beowulf because my machine needs secure boot. It was supported ;-))))). Please mention that in the release news.

The locale was asked tvise during install. And was wrong afterwards (Im Danish). Deleted the user, changed locale with "dpkg-reconfigure locales", rebooted and recreated the user. Then everything was fine. This is the most annoying part of a new install, if you are not experienced enough.

Also missing languagepacks after fresh install.

Found btrfs-progs (and xfsprogs) missing. Should have been there in case of emergency and for information.

All the above is working very well when installing debian (with ncurses frontend)

Would be nice if volumicon was installed by default (on XFCE). Then the desktop would be complete

But otherwise i am impressed with what I am seeing. The system is speedy, seems stable. And everything else works atm. Looking forward to  work on it for the coming days

Thank you and have a nice day

Lars H

Lars H

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi

I have now worked a bit more on devuan Beowulf XFCE. As I am a musician I wanted to try out the realtime audio capabilities of this. And with my onboard soundcard I am getting 8 ms. That's quite a bit of an improvement from Debian Buster (11,5 ms). So this distro is well made for working with sound.

One thing that became a problem was wicd not finding my wireless networks. I found that the good "old" way with editing /etc/network/interfaces worked. But slowing down boot. I then looked into /etc/wicd. After adding the interfaces to /etc/wicd/manager-settings.conf everythings works perfectly.

The network thing (especially if the user is on wifi) will be an unsolvable  big problem to new users.

But all in all I am very happy with the install for now ,-))

Thank you to everybody making this possible

Have a nice day
Lars H

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Xfce4 has its own volume/control icon plugin so volumeicon wont be a default consideration imo.

Network may not be an issue it depends on how you connect to the net, generally most users connect via routers but via wifi, the source is the issue really. If you are connecting via wifi from say someone elses router and you cant get access to an ethernet port then it could be problematic. If on the other hand you own a smart phone you can connect via tethering which is a fairly simple procedure. That is my understanding of basic user problems when it comes to connection, wifi is usually a secondary consideration, ethernet the main consideration.

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi

Than you for your reply. What I would like to see is an experience at least on par with Debian itself. I am a bit surprised over the difference in speed in favour of devuan ;-)))

About volumecontrols in XFCE. Fortunately devuan has not activated pulseaudio by default (that is one of the reasons for the good latency). But this means that the pauvcontrol is useless, unless you start pulseaudio. The sound quality without pulseaudio is better, and the system a bit more responsive. That's the reason for my suggestion of volumeicon as it works directly with alsa. I can see on the front page that one of the question is confusion about exactly this question.

Have a nice day

Last edited by larsH (2020-05-06 14:11:31)

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,486  

Re: New install of Beowulf

There is no more xfce4-mixer, but there is xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin. Some of the devuan derivative distros use volumeicon-alsa and don't include pulseaudio.

If you install a desktop from the tasksel screen in the installer, you get whatever task-*-desktop pulls in, which means you get pulseaudio. You can remove it, and if you're recording, you probably want to install a real sound server, like jack.

Are you getting those latencies with default kernel or realtime kernel?

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi

Thank you for your answer.

But the (for me) good thing is that pulseaudio is not running by default. And I personally prefer it to be that way ;-)

I am getting the latency with default kernel and a onboard realtek chip. So nothing fancy there :-)) The rt-kernel is to my knowledge optimized mostly for network latency. And that is a completely different matter ;-)>>

Have a nice day

James1138

Member

Registered: 2018-09-27

Posts: 45  

Re: New install of Beowulf

To larsH: If you wish to use xfce4-mixer on Beowulf... you would have to do as I did and manually install the dependencies - not easy...

gstreamer0.10-alsa    -
gstreamer0.10-audiosink    -
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base    -
libatk1.0-0            >= 1.12.4
libc6                >= 2.3.6-6~
libcairo2            >= 1.2.4
libdbus-1-3            >= 1.0.2
libdbus-glib-1-2        >= 0.78
libfontconfig1            >= 2.11
libfreetype6            >= 2.2.1
libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0        >= 2.22.0
libglib2.0-0            >= 2.37.3
libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0    >= 0.10.18
libgstreamer0.10-0        >= 0.10.0
libgtk2.0-0            >= 2.18.0
libkeybinder0            >= 0.3.0
libpango-1.0-0            >= 1.14.0
libpangocairo-1.0-0        >= 1.14.0
libpangoft2-1.0-0        >= 1.14.0
libunique-1.0-0            >= 1.0.0
libxfce4ui-1-0            >= 4.9.0
libxfce4util6            >= 4.9.0
libxfconf-0-2            >= 4.6.0
libxml2                >= 2.6.27
xfce4-panel            << 4.11
xfce4-panel            >= 4.9.2

...however some of the files that I listed may exist on your system from the initial installation. Afterwards - it works without issues.

Another option could be https://packages.debian.org/buster/volumeicon-alsa - systray volume icon for alsa

Last edited by James1138 (2020-05-06 17:59:55)

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi

Thank you for your kind answer. What i suggested used as default (and are now using myself) is what you also did as your second proposal: volumeicon-alsa

It supports alsa directly, without addditional dependencies and have the same functionality as pauvcontrol

Have a nice day
Lars H

danista

Member

Registered: 2017-10-18

Posts: 40  

Re: New install of Beowulf

qasmixer also good

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi

I am sure it is good for qt based enviroments. XFCE is gtk based and so is Volume Icon-alsa. There are many ways to do it. Commandline is obvious as well (alsamixer).

Have a nice day

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi all

Thank you for the answers. Let me summarize my experience:

1) Locale not configured after installation if locale is not english. It means that default setup (folders etc) will require some work.
2) In my second (and for the time being final) install, wicd required manual setup for wireless. Might be a big issue for non experienced users
3) Fsck programs supporting different filesystems missing
10) Volume cannot be adjusted in XFCE in default setup (nice to have, and maybe different optimal solutions for different desktops). And let just oce again repeat I like that the pulseaudio-deamon is not running by default

Other than that I like what i have been seeing the past two days.

Maybe a little wiki where the problems and best solutions could be mentioned.

Hope you are all well, and have a nice day
Lars H

hellou

Member

Registered: 2020-05-11

Posts: 2  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hello,
I tried to install beowolf beta2 netinstall, but the Installation via wpa2 failed, the wpa2 card atheros athk10 was not detected ( on installation of ascii it would).
Then I installed via lan and the installation went well. But the  boot process stuck about 2 minutes waiting for network ( the same problem i had on ascii when installed via dhcpcd, but there were no problems when i install via wpa2)  It also stuck when postinstall wicd, same on ascii and beowolf beta 2.
i think firmware atheros is not on on installation medias. What can i do?
sorry for my bad english

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi

If you have lan connection, then try as root with "apt install firmware-atheros" Then the firmware for supported atheros cards should be installed. They are not by default.

Have a nice day
Lars H

Last edited by larsH (2020-05-11 15:16:31)

hellou

Member

Registered: 2020-05-11

Posts: 2  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi Lars,
after installation i did  install firmware atheros, but whats during installation? Without eth0 and lan the installation is not possible.
When installed by lan - whether ascii or beowolf - the bootprocess is stuck for 3 to 5 minutes by ' waiting for lock on run ifstate eth0'
hellou

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Hi

I have not tried this myself (I have been lucky). And the one time I needed it, I could let the computers bios load and initiate the lan beforehand. What about tethering from a mobile-phone during install. It should work as far from what I have heard. But I am offcourse not sure when I haven't tried it myself.

Best wishes

Lars H

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: New install of Beowulf

after installation i did  install firmware atheros, but whats during installation? Without eth0 and lan the installation is not possible.

It should be possible to add any required firmware during the installation process by supplying it on a USB stick (or so) as per
https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/ … 04.en.html

When installed by lan - whether ascii or beowolf - the bootprocess is stuck for 3 to 5 minutes by ' waiting for lock on run ifstate eth0'

Edit the file at /etc/network/interfaces and remove the eth0 lines.

And you should have started your own thread instead of hi-jacking this one.

---

Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

larsH

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 184  

Re: New install of Beowulf

Comment to fsmithred

I never told you that the 8 ms latency was with jack running as soundserver and ardour as mixer/recording device. Otherwise I think that such low latency would be impossible. But even more so with pulseaudio where the hardware is not used at all (as far as I know)

Have a nice day