Re: looping with a netbook

[michael noble <looplog@gmail.com>]

hi all,

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Mech <mech@m3ch.net> wrote:

However, there was a previous question that asked about running Live in Wine under Linux.  While Linux should be more robust overall, I believe the Wine libraries essentially load a virtual Windows machine.  So you're kind of running a computer inside a computer. Not very efficient, I don't believe, and I wouldn't recommend it, since Wine would probably eat up any performance gains you'd get from Linux.  However, take that with a grain of salt, since I haven't actually played with Wine since its alpha releases.

This is not really accurate to my knowledge, and certainly does not reflect my experience. Wine is no way a virtual machine. It is really nothing more than a compatibility layer to translate windows api calls into something the base system understands - it doesn't emulate software or hardware in any way. This will add a small processing overhead, but it really is very insignificant. Chances are, with a well configured linux system, performance can be comparable to a windows system with the benefit of also being able to use native linux audio apps. 

In the past I've run audiomulch under linux in this way, and in fact was easily able to run eight simultaneous instances of audiomulch (preferring parallel processes for performance and redundancy), passing their audio into jack to be shared with linux apps and each other. With things like the wineasio audio output and the realtime wine patches, wine audio apps can be made to run very efficiently and at low latencies. This was an older core2duo though, so a netbook would be a little more limited. Also, it's not an out-of-the-box experience, so if system configuration and optimization is not your thing, then maybe consider the hackintosh route. (that being said there are some audio-centric linux audio distros optimized for low power machines like puredyne, and you can also buy a preconfigured msi-wind netbook with the Tranmission OS for not much more than a standard netbook price).

So to answer the OPs question, windows audio apps can be made to run very efficiently under linux and with very low latencies. That being said, I really couldn't say about running later versions of ableton live. I don't have nor need it so I haven't tested it. It is rated gold over at WineHQ, so it has certainly been tested and run by at least some people, and that's without the tweaks I mentioned above.

-michael