CentOS - Oct 2012 - Multimedia Workstation using Centos 6.3

Greetings,

[sheepish query]

Are there repositories which will help a centos die-hard nerd to run
64 studio like workstation (of course bomus will be to pointers to HPC
with desktops for rendering and the such)?

[/sheepish query]

-- 
Regards,

Rajagopal
A hardcore centos addict. who does not contribute but just tries to consume....

On 10/14/2012 10:26 AM, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> [sheepish query]
>
> Are there repositories which will help a centos die-hard nerd to run
> 64 studio like workstation (of course bomus will be to pointers to HPC
> with desktops for rendering and the such)?
>
> [/sheepish query]
>
Have you checked repositories listed at 
http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories?


-- 

Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

Google is the Mother, Google is the Father, and traceroute is your
trusty Spiderman...
StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant

On Sunday, October 14, 2012 04:26:14 AM Rajagopal Swaminathan
wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> [sheepish query]
> 
> Are there repositories which will help a centos die-hard nerd to run
> 64 studio like workstation (of course bomus will be to pointers to HPC
> with desktops for rendering and the such)?
> 
> [/sheepish query]
I personally would find a CentOS-equivalent to AV/Linux ( 
www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html ) to be nice.  It doesn't really take that
long
to get used to LXDE (which AV/Linux uses as the only desktop) and it's
already
tuned for multimedia.  It is, however, like the defunct 64studio, Debian-
based.  And the version 6 release is the last one, according to its developer.  
But AV/Linux is fast, light, and fully supports the sort of setup you need for 
a non-annoying multimedia-creating experience.  I'm using in in a few
places,
and it has been solid.  But it is different.

The biggest problem I've had with EL6 for multimedia is summed up in two 
words: PulseAudio (counting that as two words).  Good PA/JACK integration, and 
preferrably an RT kernel, are pretty much required for any pro audio tools 
(such as the commercial Ardour++ known as Harrison Mixbus).

Now, I am running Harrison Mixbus on a C6.3 laptop, but it wasn't the
easiest
thing in the world to get running.  Not the hardest, mind you, but not the 
easiest, either.  And I'm not using it for really high track counts with
lots
of overdubs; to do that, I go to the Mac and use it with Mixbus.  Low-latency 
audio and support of pro audio interfaces is required, and some of that 
support is sorely lacking in EL6.  I use the laptop when I have a project in 
the state for final mixdown and I want to work on the mixdown on the road.... 
but even then I miss some of the things I have on the Mac, like iZotope's 
Ozone and Alloy.  Or Celemony Melodyne.   But I really need the studio monitor 
setup to hear well enough to do the work when I get to needing the tools in 
those programs, so the lack of them on the laptop isn't that big of a deal.

Other things necessary for multimedia would be Kdenlive and/or Cinelerra.  
Both are 'unique' in their build requirements.

Now, John Stanley knows a thing or two about this, being that he's active
with
the Rivendell radio station automation software, and his advice (the list of 
packages for one) is good for these things.

The LinuxTech repo has some of the things you need; what would be, IMO, ideal 
would be something akin to the Fedora 'Jam' spin, but backported to EL6.

I've run PlanetCCRMA stuff before, and Fernando does a great job, but
they're
not EL6 as yet.  It may be that the Fedora *12* or *13* CCRMA packages (and 
there are things only CCRMA packages) will install cleanly; or perhaps the 
source RPM might rebuild cleanly enough to work on EL6.

The biggest issue with an EL6 for multimedia is simply keeping up with the 
dependencies, since many of the really good multimedia tools have really 
specific requirements (look at Ardour3 for something of that nature) that may 
be too new to build easily on EL6.

On Monday, October 15, 2012 05:11:39 PM Nux! wrote:
> I have a lot of multimedia stuff in my repo
> http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/ 
Ah, yes, forgot about Stella and your repos....
> and I'm willing to put some effort
> into backporting from Fedora or create new packages with a multimedia
> focus, time and other resources permit.
> Btw, Ardour3 seems doable.
> If you can come up with a proper list of what's missing, I can look
> into it.
Paul (author of Ardour) doesn't want packaged Ardour3 until it's out of
beta,
but once it's out of beta it would be interesting and doable.  I highly
doubt
any successfully built packages would meet the Fedora packaging guidelines 
(Ardour3 has quite specific requirements, and Paul prefers the in-package 
versions of certain libraries be used instead off the distribution's
versions),
and thus would be a candidate for a third-party repo.  And, of course, this 
isn't Fedora, but packages in the CentOS core do follow the guidelines
(pretty
much, there are exceptions, obviously) that were in effect for the 
corresponding Fedora version (F12/13 in the case of EL6, of course).

Kdenlive similarly has very specific requirements, and they change very 
frequently.

I am in a position to be able to test such packaging, too.