[PD] Linux - which distribution to use?

[Richard Lewis]

On Wednesday 18 April 2007 23:11, Thomas Jeppesen wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've been trying to get PD up and running on linux for a while, but so far
> I've not been lucky, prolly because I'm a linux nub. The first installation
> I tried (Fedora) didn't have a familiar interface. The second (Ubuntu) did,
> but I couldn't install PD on it for some unknow reason. I used a tar-ball
> installation, and ran the "make install"-command and it did install on the
> computer, but PD just wouldn't start up. On the third distribution I tried
> JackLab, PD worked, but I had no internet connection. I'm used to run
> normal pc's (Windows), so I'm after a distribution that has a graphic
> desktop environment to not make it too unfamiliar for starters. But most of
> all I'm after a distribution that will run PD-extended and do it good. Does
> any of you have any recommendations to which distribution to choose and
> perhaps good linux and audio-sites for nubs like me?
>
I run pd on Debian.

0.39.2 is in the current stable release, "etch", while 0.40.2 is in the 
current unstable release. Because Debian package management is absurdly easy 
installing is simply a matter of going:

# apt-get install puredata

The pd-extended binaries are available from:

http://idmi.poly.edu/pdlab/Pd-0.39.2-extended-RC1/Pd-0.39.2-extended-RC1-debian-stable-i386.tar.bz2

and to install you follow the given instructions except, when you run make, 
use /usr as the prefix, not /usr/local:

$ tar xjf Pd-0.39.2-extended-RC1-debian-stable-i386.tar.bz2
$ cd Pd-0.39.2-extended-RC1-debian-stable-i386
$ make install prefix=/usr

Debian is a very nice distribution mainly because of its excellent package 
management system and huge and very well maintained package archive. It has 
both GNOME and KDE if you like graphical environments. And its popularity 
means that there is plenty of community support available.

Downsides: it lacks a specialist graphical system configuration tool (a la 
SuSE's YaST) though you can do most sysconfig tasks using either GNOME's or 
KDE's tools; you don't get any non-free software e.g. proprietary video/audio 
codecs, binary-only drivers, though many of these are available elsewhere 
(see http://www.debian-multimedia.org/mirrors.html); you can make 
installation DVDs or CDs, but its best to install from the Internet with a 
minimal netinstall CD.

Cheers,
Richard
-- 
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Richard Lewis
http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/
JID: ironchicken at jabber.earth.li
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