Posts by Scott Petersen
Priority: Wallpaper
I hereby confess that the “niceties” of a functional lab image have never been my priority. Part of a unified look-and-feel for any computer are the login-screen background, the default user wallpaper, and the lock screen background. In KDE Plasma 6 specifically, these are, eh, cartoonish. Regardless what one thinks of them, they certainly don’t…
Read MoreNew Article: Pro Audio on Linux
Like many of you, I keep an eye on r/linuxaudio for announcements, software updates, and generally to try to help people new to Linux audio when I can. To that end, I took a few hours and put together an introduction to pro audio on Linux here. I decided to host it on GitHub rather…
Read MoreBad Pipewire! Bad KDE Linux!
It’s the end of May, Spring is slowly giving way to Summer as the bees buzz around flowering trees and Pipewire is broken on KDE Linux again. It’s a poetic tale as old as time, well, at least as old as Pipewire. Or KDE Neon. Or both. (or maybe it’s just my janky old system…
Read MoreMultichannel Audio Devices and Linux (not a love story)
Something has been bothering me for some time since moving to PipeWire on my Linux boxes, and that is the way multichannel audio devices are handled. As we all know (and loath), Linux audio is complicated and terrible, but the upshot is that it gives us a lot of control and the possibility of extremely low latency — critical to realtime audio recording, processing, programming, etc.
Read MoreTwo SuperCollider FM Synthesis Projects
I just posted my second SuperCollider FM Synthesis project to GitHub, a pedagogical extension of a great DX7 “clone” for the SuperCollider language. The project allows users to enter DX7 presets, by number, and generate usable SynthDefs (SuperCollider synthesis instrument definitions) and analysis that provides insight into the nature of the instrument configuration. My previous…
Read MoreRunning A University Linux-based Audio Lab: Part 5 — Nightmares and Light
Imaging a University lab is fun and profitable! Learn how!
Read MoreA Flawless Linux Audio Experience…
I’m not just an emissary for Linux Audio, like everyone else who relies on it and extols its (few) virtues, I’m also its biggest detractor. So when you read “a flawless linux audio experience” you might think I’m trolling you, and in the distant past (say several months ago) you would definitely be correct. But…
Read MorePipewire and JACK on Arch Linux
This is a quick post to talk about my recent experience configuring Pipewire and JACK on Arch Linux. Now, I’m not an Arch adherent and maybe you aren’t either. That’s fine because I’ll talk about the minimal install and the packages that are required to get Pipewire and JACK working. This will not cover moving…
Read MoreIt’s Worth Learning to do it Yourself
In this post I will attempt to convince you, dear friend, to take the hard way and learn to do whatever new/onerous thing you need to learn in order to facilitate your work, rather than relying on someone else to do it for you.
Read MoreRunning A University Linux-based Audio Lab: Part 4 — Updates and Brokenness
Part 1: Hosing Down your Computers In an earlier post about setting up and maintaining a Linux audio lab I wrote: Above I mentioned that cron-apt is used to check package status (daily) and use the email packages to email package status to the system admin (me). This, however, is not configured to auto update…
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