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Musix GNU+Linux 3.0

The Musix Linux Live and Install build was originally built strictly for music creators of all kinds, but with the release this week of the stable version of Musix GNU+Linux 3.0 they have expanded out to include some graphics and video creation software. One of the strong points of this Distro is that everything included is completely free, with no proprietary programs or modules, so you do not need to pay any licensing or other fees for things you make with it. This live disk is Debien-based, so there is a huge world wide community constantly developing and debugging everything included.

This distribution was created primarily by the Spanish speaking computer aware musical community, headed up by Marcos Guglielmetti (or at least, he is the person doing their announcements these days, and his name is all over the disc; I have even fewer words of Spanish than I do of Japanese, so I don’t know more than that). Don’t let that put you off if Spanish is not your first language. They have done an excellent job of translating everything into English, as well as French, German, and several other European based languages. Their User Forums likewise support both English and Spanish to give you all the help, tips, and hints you could ever require with your projects.

When you boot from the DVD and the initial selection screen pops up, be sure to scroll to your two letter language indicator; it defaults to /es for Spanish, I went for /en for English, and so forth. If you have problems seeing it on your monitor, they have a VESA selection for the English selection to give you legacy hardware support, on some others it is identified as 800×600. Make sure you see “live” in the boot name so you run it directly from the DVD. Once it all finishes loading the log-in is “user” with the password “live”.

I should probably mention that this Distro used to be a geek-oriented package, requiring a Linux nerd to operate it. Things like knowing you had to launch the JACK server to give the various music programs a way to talk to the hardware meant you were doomed to failure without such an expert. They claim they have corrected that issue, and to a goodly extent they have (there are still some “gotcha’s” in the collection; us geeks have a hard time remembering which are the bits other folks don’t know about). Now, the JACK server launches on boot, and if you run something that conflicts with it, it gets shut down automatically.

The menu system launches Icons in the task bar at the top of the screen, and each time you pick one it gives you another set of icons on the screen to access a different set of programs. This visual interface structure gives you a way to access the basic core programs of this build organized by workflow, but does not give you access to the entire collection. If you prefer a smartphone this is perfect, it has that look and feel. In order to get past the icon interface and have access to the actual menu, select the calligraphy M at the left of the icon menu; it will give you the traditional drop-down Linux menu, complete with the usual organized sub-directories.

This particular build takes a unique approach to helping. They created the folder /home/user/demos/starters/ and packed it with .starter demos (yes, the dot indicates a file extension; Linux has a longer string than Windows for extension names). Use the File Browser to go to the folder, right click on the demo you want to check out, and open it with -> musixstarter. While the process may not be as mindless as doing the same kind of things in Windoze, the price tag will be a world smaller for the same capabilities, which seems like a fair trade off to me.

The last stable release for Musix came out in 2009, so the operating system it runs on and the various software packages themselves have both gone through some major improvements over the last half decade. But to me, what makes Musix special is the thought the developers have put into trying to make it the best one-stop solution for musicians/composers and recording artists/producers. While some of the included tools still require a bit more of a learning curve than some people may want to devote to the effort, the complete toolkit is a rival to anything else you will find online for these tasks, and often better at the same task for the price (did I mention it was free?).

THR Full Animator Interview

The Hollywood Reporter, usually referred to as THR, released a set of interviews at the beginning of this year covering all aspects of the film making industry, each featuring a collection of the top creators within that subset of the art. The one that had me mesmerized was the Full Animator Interview (capitols intended, as are most of the puns I often include, but I do not normally admit to them). If you have an interest in creating animation, or just appreciate amazing stuff when you see it, it would be worth a bit of your time to check this out.

Ubuntu Studio Live DVD

Another excellent collection of creative software for the artist, animator, movie maker, musician, and publisher built into a Boot-From-DVD Live distro, Ubuntu Studio is ready to help you make some amazing stuff. While they don’t have the huge range of software Open Artist contains, what they do have still covers a lot of ground, and almost all of it is very powerful, stable, intuitive, and user friendly. There is a definite advantage in having access to tools you don’t need to go through a steep learning curve to get a useful result out of, after all.

The workflows they cover are audio, graphics, video, photography and publishing, and within each workflow they include an entire suite of tools for each step of the process. And while I dearly love the large selection of utilities in Open Artist, it can get a bit confusing at times when you just want to crank out your project. It is very nice to have a toolkit available where the best (or at least most commonly used) program for each step is at your fingertips, leaving you no ambiguity about what to launch as you go through creating your masterpiece, in whatever medium.

The latest release is built on Ubuntu 13.10 (Codename: Saucy Salamander), and it has all the latest and greatest updates for all the software. But because it is that new, and not fully vetted for the long haul, it is only supported for the next 4 months. Early adapters will want to go that way, but most folks will probably find the build layered onto Ubuntu 12.04 (Codename: Precise Pangolin), which is supported through 2017, a more reasonable way to go.

Any way you approach this software package, I suspect you will find it a very valuable addition to your creative arsenal. I certainly keep booting the disc over and over and use it to create new things, so I suspect you might find it as interesting after you have seen it a few times.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 14Jan14

In Movies Riddick hits the shelves this week, both as a stand-alone and as part of the Riddick: The Complete Collection 4 film package. For those scratching their heads, this includes an animated story called Dark Fury that was released direct to DVD just after the first film came out. The remake of the cult film Carrie is also out this week.

I haven’t found any genre TV coming out this week, but Top Gear: Season 20 is being released, and they are always a lot of fun.

In western animation, Marvel Knights: Wolverine versus Sabretooth is being billed as the final battle between these two long-time foes. The Marvel Knights brand is for showcase stories that allow the best writers and illustrators to push the bounds of cannon, if not ignore them entirely, so anything is possible. I should also mention that this is a motion comic, rather than a true animation, a media style that Marvel excels at.

In Anime, Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic is your basic dungeon quest, merging and changing the stories of Alibaba and Aladdin. This set is season 1, giving you the first 13 episodes of the series. The show is also streaming on a number of services, including Crunchyroll and Hulu. The release of Naruto: Shippuden Box Set 17 brings us episodes 206 through 218 of the ongoing story of the 9 Tailed Fox. The current episode streaming on their site is 344, if you were wondering. Also beginning to catch up, One Piece Season 5 Part 5 brings the tail of Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates to episodes 313 to 324. Of course, the currently streaming episode from Tokyo is 627.

Open Artist LiveDVD

If you are an artist or creative media enthusiast of any kind, I would like to recommend the boot-from-DVD Linux build known as Open Artist. They took the kitchen sink approach, throwing in every piece of free and open source software that might be useful, and compiled them into folders organized by the type of task you were trying to accomplish. So if you feel like creating or modifying your own font, there is a subfolder under Graphics with about 5 different font editors, as an example. They have some general category icons across the top of the screen, 2D, 3D, Audio, Video, and so forth, as well as the main menu, to help you jump right into the tool suite you need to create or modify your current project. After booting it a number of times and exploring (and launching a bunch of programs to check them out), I can honestly say I have never seen a more far ranging collection of creative programs. It includes everything I would expect to be in such a tool set, and a bunch of stuff I never even knew existed. It also includes a full range of servers and other distribution tools, plus all the normal software any good operating system should have, so you can surf the web or read your email while working on your projects.

The build is based on Ubuntu 12.04 but they installed a lot of non-Ubuntu programs, configuring them to play nice in the environment, including not just other flavors of Linux but also Windows code running under Wine. One of the most impressive details is they tweaked the GNOME and NAUTILUS interfaces so the key-press shortcuts don’t interfere with most of the program shortcuts; so you wont accidentally launch an FTP program while you were trying to save a graphics image, again as an example. There was a lot of thought put into making the entire package work as a whole, and keeping the fiddly bits from biting you in the posterior while trying to use it.

If you want to make it boot and run faster, update your software packages to the latest and greatest versions, and have space to store your raw materials and project files, but don’t want to impair your computers normal operating system, the 2.5Gig live boot DVD can be installed to a 16Gig USB stick. That gives you 10Gig for the existing software to unpack and install itself to, 4Gig in a separate partition to save all your project files to, and another 2Gig of expansion space to add any other software you think might be useful. It also gives you the option of using a lot of other features only accessible from an installed version, like alternative desktops with a minimum footprint, launching a specific program or set of programs you always work in at boot, and so forth. And let’s not forget being able to set up all your software to load with your own preferences already configured, which is always a plus.

You can also do like I did, and use a 32Gig USB stick, partitioning the other 16Gig in Fat32 (or whatever your preferred Windows file system format is). Then you can use that partition as both still more storage for your project files, and a convenient way to transfer the various media between your two operating systems. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Bottom line, I like this Live DVD build a lot. Download Open Artist, burn the ISO (Image File) to DVD, and start checking it out; you might be just as impressed as I am! Be sure to grab the DVD version, which is a Live DVD, rather than the Base Distro, which needs to be installed to a hard drive before you can add the other programs yourself (WAY too much work for me!).