AV Linux MX-21 Edition RC1 for Testing uploaded

[AVLinux]

Hi MX and AVL-MXE Users!

Screenshot: http://bandshed.net/images/screenshots/ ... 21-RC1.png
Reference Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg9tiKFsrBo

Just wanted to post the upload of a limited first Release Candidate for AV Linux MX-21 Edition, This is a huge step as this ISO is not a 'Respin' but created with the same amazing build script tools that antiX and MX Linux are built with and I am hugely indebted to @Adrian @dolphin_oracle @anticapitalista @BitJam for their abundant patience, guidance and expertise, to @SwampRabbit for an absolutely Herculean amount of new multimedia Packaging and to @Stevo for various Packages and also for getting Liquorix 5.15 into the Stable Repo. Special thanks to @timkb4cq for moving a lot of new Packages into Stable where I could access them with the build system. Thanks also goes out to falkTX of KXStudio for his fix of WineASIO for newer versions of Wine-Staging.

AV Linux is still an arms-length project from MX however great strides have been made in developing this release to significantly increase the common ground of the base OS between MX and AVL. This new version based on MX-21 still contains some of my AVL Custom Packages that are created for the ISO (not in a Repo) and some of the Custom AVL Packages will never be eligible for Repos because of their licensing, status as Software Demos and limited distribution agreements with the upstream developers/vendors. This is what makes AVL a unique and specialized product however for the most part now the important 'chassis and wheels' stuff is now ALL derived from the MX and MX 'ahs' Repos. The KXStudio, Cinelerra, WineHQ, Liquorix and Docker Repositories are no longer included and will remain that way. Adding outside Repos will be at the discretion of the User with the understanding that problems caused by outside Repos and Packaging will also be the responsibility of the User. This should greatly streamline tech support queries as the main Operating System base Packaging now all originates from MX.

DISCLAIMER:

This ISO is for Testing and will differ from the final Release, issues found on it may or may not be fixable with MX Repo updates so for this reason do not expect to install at this point and ride this release into the Final version, it is very likely the Final release ISO will need to be re-installed so understand this before testing, for the same reason I don't suggest installing this on a Production Machine. In addition testing this in Virtualized environments is of very limited use since all of the performance benefits and latency tuning are targeted and intended for bare metal installs and boots, Virtual Machines by their very nature completely neuter all of the performance benefits of all Multimedia Content Creation Distros. I am not really looking for grocery lists of Packages to add or include, that is up to you after installing, I'm looking for: Does it Boot? Does it Install? Do the primary Multimedia Applications work as expected? Is the new AVL-Assistant working correctly? Are there typos in the User Manual? etc etc.

Feedback is valuable, needed and appreciated... Just like all of you I'm heading into the holiday season to spend time with my family so I don't expect your feedback to be instantaneous and my replies won't be either so let's take our time find out what's hiding in the dark corners and flush out any bugs before the Final Release.

My sincere thanks and best wishes for health, safety and happiness to all throughout the holiday season!
Glen MacArthur - AV Linux MX Edition Maintainer

ISO and MD5, SHA256 files are here: http://download.linuxaudio.org/avlinux/AVL-MXE/RC/

STUFF TO KNOW:

An RC2 ISO has replaced RC1, RC2 has automount of drives disabled and increased window borders for better 'grabbing'.. I strongly suggest moving testing to RC2
Q-stuff, Yoshimi, Guitarix, LSP Plugins, Avidemux, Vidcutter and many more apps are all now in the MX Repos!!
LinVST is replaced with Yabridge (thanks Robbert van der Helm) now with YADbridge as a GUI.
The updated default 'Diehard' theme features all 4K Wallpapers and higher resolution Openbox assets but I don't have a 4K Display to test on, feedback needed!
Slim Login Manager stretches across Dual Head Setups... annoying but not deadly..
As an experiment the AppImages of the latest Musescore 3.6.0 and Kdenlive 21.12.0 are included on this RC, they are wrapped in Debian Packaging, this will likely change in Final..
Cinelerra-GG is only available as an AppImage now and is presented as such because AV Linux is a long-standing Demo OS for Cinelerra-GG.
Ardour 6.9 is the fully-enabled version and is fully supported by the Ardour developers, it's bundle is wrapped in a Debian Package.. (thanks to Paul Davis)
GDebi seems to not work any more, to install outside Debian Packages use the right-click Deb Installer found in the Thunar Custom Actions
Openbox/Nitrogen doesn't support Desktop Icons and I'm not doing kludgy workarounds to make it do so... embrace the beauty of Openbox!!
Converting the 'Dock' look of the XFCE4 Panel to a regular Panel is absurdly simple.. Use the Panel Preferences and simply decrease the row size and increase the length %..
Some Audio plugins will be missing because of the lack of KXStudio Repos, if you really need them you can choose to enable the KX Repos from the KXStudio website (at your own risk).

More issues to be documented here as time goes on I'm sure!

[SwampRabbit]

@AVLinux you were able to squeeze in those updated packages you PM'd me about the other day? They were getting moved for you. Sorry having a hard time keeping especially with PMs right now. But so excited you got this RC1 out!

[AVLinux]

@AVLinux you were able to squeeze in those updated packages you PM'd me about the other day? They were getting moved for you. Sorry having a hard time keeping especially with PMs right now. But so excited you got this RC1 out!

Indeed I was my good sir! Many thanks!

[sunrat]

Seems you and the MX team have been putting in a sterling effort on this @AVLinux !
Quick question - there's no chance the AVL 'mountallpartitions' script will change permissions or ownership permanently? I recall getting bitten by something like this somewhere in the past. I'd probably actually prefer to select which partitions to mount and save that config for future boots rather than have it happen automatically. I've got something like 16 partitions in my desktop PC, many of them boot other OSs so pointless to mount those..

[Steve]

Took it out for a short test drive…pretty artwork… tried out ardor,guitarix,and reaper. So far they all worked.
Question- did ardour work wine into its code or does it still need wine for win vst. Unclear on that.
My computer is a 8th gen i7 not a 9 will this cause a issue as it’s a ahs release.
Nice clean and polished.

[davidy]

Pretty Cool. I'm going to test it as a live iso first.

[SwampRabbit]

My computer is a 8th gen i7 not a 9 will this cause a issue as it’s a ahs release.

It "should" not, although every system is different, and "may" have issues with versions of packages in AHS.
In these circumstances, things need tested, troubleshot, and worked out on a case by case basis.

That being said, MX KDE is also based on AHS, and we have lots of people using MX KDE on hardware much older than yours.

[AVLinux]

Seems you and the MX team have been putting in a sterling effort on this @AVLinux !
Quick question - there's no chance the AVL 'mountallpartitions' script will change permissions or ownership permanently? I recall getting bitten by something like this somewhere in the past. I'd probably actually prefer to select which partitions to mount and save that config for future boots rather than have it happen automatically. I've got something like 16 partitions in my desktop PC, many of them boot other OSs so pointless to mount those..

Hello my friend!

For transparency here is the contents of the 'mountalldrives' script, to clarify it does mount with 777 'rw' (read and write) permissions but it uses the 'nosuid' switch so it doesn't change ownership, it simply ignores existing set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits or file capabilities on the mounted drives. I'm not sure how this differs from the mechanism of the MX Tweak option to mount drives/partitions as non-root..

Here is the script (credit to Tony Brijeski of the Remastersys project) it is executed in rc.local:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          mountalldrives
# Required-Start:    checkfs
# Required-Stop: 
# Default-Start:     S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Mount all filesystems.
# Description:
### END INIT INFO

for disk in `cat /proc/partitions | awk '{print $4}' | grep "[0-9]" | grep -v "sr0"`; do

SIZE="`cat /proc/partitions | grep $disk | awk '{print $3}' | grep "[0-9]"`"

if [ "$SIZE" != "1" ]; then

testmount=`mount | grep $disk`
if [ "$testmount" = "" ]; then
BLKID=`blkid /dev/$disk`
export `echo $BLKID | sed -e "s~/dev/$disk: ~~g" | sed -e 's/"//g' `

if [ "$LABEL" = "" ]; then
LABEL="$disk"
fi

if [ "$TYPE" = "ntfs" ]; then
TYPE="ntfs-3g"
fi

if [ "$TYPE" = "swap" ]; then
echo
else
echo "Mounting $TYPE partition $LABEL on /media/$LABEL" 
if [ ! -d /media/$LABEL ]; then
mkdir -p /media/$LABEL
chmod 777 /media/$LABEL
fi
if [ "$TYPE" = "vfat" ]; then
mount /dev/$disk /media/$LABEL -t $TYPE -o rw,nosuid,umask=0
chmod 777 /media/$LABEL
else
mount /dev/$disk /media/$LABEL -t $TYPE -o rw,nosuid
chmod 777 /media/$LABEL
fi
fi
fi
LABEL=""
TYPE=""
fi

done 

[AVLinux]

Took it out for a short test drive…pretty artwork… tried out ardor,guitarix,and reaper. So far they all worked.
Question- did ardour work wine into its code or does it still need wine for win vst. Unclear on that.
My computer is a 8th gen i7 not a 9 will this cause a issue as it’s a ahs release.
Nice clean and polished.

Hi, thanks!

No Ardour only supports WinVST with the help of Wine-Staging and Yabridge. For a visual example have a look at this Video at the 10 minute and then 18 minute mark for an explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg9tiKFsrBo

[pianokeyjoe]

@AVLinux great to see this is finally taking off and we have a RC1 to play with! I wanted to know on that mount all drives script, is that script contents that you posted here, IN rc.local in /etc/rc.local? Or is it POINTED to, by rc.local somehow? I wanted to use the script for my embedded versions of MX and AVL-MXE so that when I boot into the live embedded sessions, ALL partitions mount automatically without me having to point,click,mount or type a password. Most of my embedded projects would only have a touchscreen as the input device for playing mp3 and mp4 files in VLC.Audacious,etc. For AVL-MXE it is especially important since the working or record drive has to be mounted automatically for the daws to find it where it last recorded when I start them up. I ask this because I am still using the previous version of AVL-MXE and MX19.3 for my projects and want to adapt that mount all drives script at boot. For the MX21AHS build of AVL-MXE, will I still be able to remove packages and themes at will and respin with MX-SNAPSHOT as needed? Or has that feature been removed?