I’m glad that when I last bought a new SSD for my machine (in August 2021 I think) I set up that boot SSD as a triple boot system, with Win10 just for a few programs (Olympus/OM System, looking at you), my usual workhorse Debian GNU/Linux, but also Arch Linux which is a “rolling release” type Linux distribution, so you’ll always have the latest and greatest software within days or even hours – a bit like Debian “Sid”/unstable.
So yesterday I updated Arch again, and got a new kernel – and after a reboot, the sensors were all working:
That was a bit of a surprise since there was this bug concerning sensord in conjunction with some chips which are used on Asus mainboards such as mine or Mitchie’s (I’m always using Asus when building machines). So finally, after 8 or 9 years I can see the rotation speed of the CPU and case fans again, plus some other things.
Debian GNU/Linux 11 (Bullseye) with kernel 5.10.0-11-amd64
There’s a reason to run Debian stable on your desktop. While I enjoy seeing all the progress with pipewire and other programs on Arch, I’m also not afraid to break something with these updates, because I still have my trusty old Debian which serves me well since I first used it (in 2008 or even earlier? Would have to dig the internet archive for my articles about this)…
So it will take a while (I think even “Sid” is still at linux-image-5.15, and so are derivates like Ubuntu & Co), but sooner or later this kernel version will also be available in Debian. And that’s why I wanted to send a “thank you” to all the kernel developers, and of course also the Arch team. Great work, everyone. 🙂
Ten years and one day ago, Cathy, a good friend, wrote this on her blog while or after she was going out for dinner with her husband. In 2008 I had the honour to join them, and so I opened the European / German headquarters of ZaReason. Great days indeed. Building desktops and notebooks / laptops with Linux pre-installed (so you didn’t have to) was fun.
I left them again in 2009 to work for IBM, the European ZaReason branch first went to the Netherlands and then was shut down, and sadly in the end of 2020 they went out of business. And since some giant companies like Dell or even Lenovo started selling pre-installed Linux laptops, I’m not sure if they could have survived much longer.
But see – we knew that there was a point to it, and today Linux is really running everywhere. Even on the ISS, and on Mars. And still on my desktop and on our servers, and last time I asked Zuleikha (now 17), she didn’t want anything else as well. Why should we?
And since I built a new computer for my wife in the beginning of February, we gave her old one – the European ZaReason machine #1 which is still working like a charm btw – to my brother in Cologne. Looks like this (in an Antec Sonata Designer case):
As always, thanks for reading. And greetings to Cathy and to her whole family.
Today is my wife’s birthday, so we got a few presents for her. I built her a new computer…
Happy birthday… 🙂
For those who are interested: here are some links and a parts list (hint: I used slightly more)… oh, and like the c’t magazine wrote, it runs just fine with Ubuntu 21.10 (although the recent kernel 5.16 would have been even better for this new hardware). But everything like the integrated AMD graphics or the wireless runs out of the proverbial box.
P.S.: Mitchie just measured the power consumption when doing nothing on her Ubuntu 21.10 desktop (but with WiFi on) – the meter cycles between 19.3 and 20.5 Watts, so I’d say that’s an average of about 19.9W. Cool; mine takes slightly more than 31W when doing nothing (which is what computers do most of the time, they’re always waiting on us instead of vice versa…) 🙂
Paul is the founder and chief developer of Ardour and Jack, and hearing him is always interesting. So here’s a podcast interview with him which I’ve found via the Linuxmusicians’ forum. Enjoy.
Bought a Logitech C920s webcam, and I can recommend it. It has nice colours, works just “plug & play” under Linux, and here’s a “selfie” from a program called “Cheese”, in 960×720 pixel resolution (the camera is FullHD, but this is enough for me):
“Selfie” with Webcam Logitech C920s
P.S.: here’s another one from this evening, with artificial (room) light. Not the ideal lighting, but you could work with this if needed:
In regards of space I’m a bit restricted, and so my thoughts about computers and cases to put them into lead me to Mini ITX, and to a case which was introduced last year and which immediately became one of the favourites in that size and price class, the CoolerMaster NR200P. Here’s Leo from Kitguru reviewing it:
Leo analyses Cooler Master MasterBox NR200P
You can also read their/his written review here in case you want to know more.
As you could see in the review video, my current drives – one 2,5″ SSD and one 3,5″ hard disk with 4TB – the same Leo was showing – both fit nicely. Plus modern mainboards all have space for one or two M.2 SSD drives which are even faster anyway, and the case could even take two more 2,5″ SATA SSDs behind the front plate – that’s 6 drives overall, surely more than enough storage options.
Of course one should also try to save some space with choosing components wisely, so as a power supply I’d take Corsair’s smaller SFX ones, the ‘Platinum’ specced ones have a set of nicer braided cables compared to the ‘Gold’ rated ones. Without ever planning to add a graphics card, a 450W model would be more than enough, if you want to keep the possibility to add a medium- or high powered graphics card later on, there are also models with 600 or with 750W available. Remember, the high powered system Leo was building there drew some 500 Watts from the wall socket when stressing it out, both CPU and GPU alike. For me, that would rarely to almost never happen… so what about cooling?
I’d go with air cooling with a Noctua L12S low profile top blower cooler. I’d never overclock a system, so that should be just fine for a CPU with a TDP of around 65W like the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G (6 Core / 12 Thread), the Ryzen 7 5700G (8 Core / 16 Thread) or a comparable Intel Core i5-10400 (not the “K” versions which take lots more power). Learn more about such coolers from Machines & More:
Cooler Master NR200: Low Profile Air Cooler Configuration (feat. the Noctua L12S)
In case you also take low profile (or JEDEC-compatible) RAM which isn’t higher than 31,25mm, you could even let the cooler’s fan *under* the heat sink if you so desire, although these tests showed that it’s performing a bit better if you have the fan on top of the heatsink.
So for RAM a kit of 2x8GB or 2x16GB DDR4-3200 from Corsair (“Vengeance”) would be cool and wouldn’t restrict your mounting options.
For the main board, I’d go with Asus, but Gigabyte is also a good option and maybe a bit cheaper. Even MSI has a nice board, for AMD CPUs I’d take one with a B550 chipset, for 11th gen Intel chips a Z590 one.
All of the mentioned CPUs have graphics built right in, so you won’t have to overpay for graphics cards (only gamers would want these anyway, you can cut movies or “develop” photos without a dedicated graphics card just fine).
That would be cool machines, and maybe I’ll build one of these for a relative soon.
Oh, and a propos benchmarking: my own current system which is quite old already, and still has a 4th gen Intel Core i5 was behaving quite nicely when I stressed out its CPU with the Blender render “classroom” test:
Benchmarking Blender on my machine
As you can see, CPU average temperature was 41°C, max was 52°C, and the system was drawing about 72 Watts from the wall socket while doing this. Of course this took quite a while:
Blender classroom test finished
Over 31 minutes is slow, a more modern machine and chips like the ones mentioned above should do the same in about 8-10 minutes. And while they might draw a bit more power, they’d still do it in about a third to a quarter of the time, which makes them much more efficient in case you need that power…
Just found this awesome series from Robin Vincent about how to build an audio PC. It’s a bit over 2.5 years old, so when he’s talking about chipsets etc. it’s not that current anymore, but the principle is just right – and because I think that some of my friends over at Wikiloops would possibly be thankful for such explanations, here it is:
Of course I would install Linux instead – or Windows *and* Linux – or Windows and *two* instances of Linux, which is what I did with my own machine. But that’s not part of what he’s talking about here, and I found his series really interesting. So thanks to Robin, and I hope that some of you who read this might find it useful as well.
As always, thanks for reading, viewing, and/or listening.
The more I’m using my new Debian 11 “Bullseye”, the more I like it. The first – and big – change to something better is that thanks to Geoffrey Bennett, a friendly musician and developer there’s now a Linux driver for the Focusrite Scarlett 2nd and 3rd generation interfaces in the kernel versions 5.x – see his latest thread on Linuxmusicians about it. He’s even developing graphical tools to manage these audio interfaces, but hasn’t released anything public yet. Still they work great, and I can now switch inputs from line to instrument, or assign a -10dB pad with a simple mouse click for instance in qasmixer, which shows my interface like this:
qasmixer showing my Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 2nd generation interface
This is cool because now you won’t need any Windows- or Mac-only software just to change settings on your interface (only the smallest Focusrite interfaces have physical switches, and none comes with software for Linux).
I have also set up a new LADISH studio for the Sonarworks headphone correction in Cadence and Claudia, and Cadence bridges all of Alsa, Pulseaudio, and Jack nicely so that it all works together. The cabling for my self-built “systemwide” setup for Linux in Carla looks like this:
Carla showing my Sonarworks headphone correction sitting “systemwide” between the PulseAudio Jack Sink and the system
Of course, I also had to select the right inputs and outputs for Pulseaudio in their pavucontrol, which looks like this:
Pavucontrol in- and outputs set to Jack to make it all audible
And these settings also allow third party applications like SongRec to check if a song might be a cover of others – and if yes, it shows something like this:
testing some Wikiloops template on known “covers” or songs which sound alike (based on Shazam recognition)
All of this is very complex because the Linux sound systems are so many, from Alsa over Jack to Pulse, and so on. But it all works nicely now, better than ever I’d say.
On Arch Linux I have Pipewire which tries to replace all of the sound servers mentioned above, and that also works – tho I haven’t looked that deep into it, and it’s also not quite ready yet. But from what I have seen and heard so far, that one is also perfectly usable already, so no matter which system is up and running (except Windows), I could make some music.
Good times. I’m happy that my transition to newer operating systems worked so well. And so today I also wiped all partitions from my old 250GB system drive which will go and find a new home in my brother’s PC as soon as he has time to deal with that. I already made a Ventoy-based USB boot stick with these same systems on it (plus some others which he hasn’t seen yet) for him.
Ok, enough for today. And thanks for reading, as always.
Since yesterday morning I installed the new Debian 11 with codename “Bullseye” which is now officially released. And that’s my main operating system since over 16 years, I remember that I started to use that while still living in Bremen where Zuleikha was born over 16 years ago. And if you keep something that long it has to be good, doesn’t it?
Anyway, I have everything up and running nicely by now, and even Ardour runs on both Debian (with Jack) and also on Arch (with Pipewire). The next thing I did was to take the same background image – a photo of the moon I took in 2011 using my Olympus E-520 DSLR (I didn’t have a mirrorless camera yet) – for all of my devices (2) and operating systems (4). Looks like this:
Since my Conky is using a light font, a darker background like this helped. But this is cosmetics, meaning I’m done with the most important stuff already. Cool, now I can turn my attention to some other things again.
