Michael Harper’s Tech & Art Blog

Lately I’ve been interested in seeing what some of the other flavors of Ubuntu might be available and I stumbled across this “official” variant of Ubuntu known as Ubuntu Studio. Very interesting - seems that it has a real-time kernel that cuts latency down tremendously in a lot of applications, espcially audio apps. I found this interesting due to the fact that I had attempted to use my M-Audio Keystation 49e keyboard with Vista and I was let down to see a full second or two delay in MIDI processing. I haven’t had a chance to test latency yet but I do know that Ubuntu readily recognizes my keyboard in many applications. Though this probably isn’t completely accurate, I equate this real-time kernel to the high-priority settings found in Windows Task Manager. I believe that in Windows, it is a per-application basis whereas Ubuntu Studio has real-time access for all apps.

I also lately increased my Skype usage so I wanted to see if my Plantronics USB headset would be recognized with all the audio additions put into uStudio. I’m in the process of downloading apps right now but I wanted to highlight an issue that wasn’t completed solved on most of the forums I visited. My wifi did not work out-of-the-box as was the case with my first install of Ubuntu 8.04. However this time I ran into a problem I hadn’t yet experienced. It seems that when I would go to compile my wifi module against the kernel (you know, sudo make, make install, etc…), I received this message:

cd: 1: can’t cd to /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-rt/build
Makefile.inc:66: *** /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-rt/build is missing, please set KERNELPATH. Stop.

I Googled and found threads related to creating symbolic links and after multiple attempts, was unable to correct any issues. It seems that Ubuntu Studio lacks what I believe is the Linux kernel headers that would be used by wifi modules to assemble itself (pardon the lack of specific - and accurate - terminology as I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about - Linux n00bs will rule the world!). After obtaining my madwifi drivers for my Atheros chipset, extracting the TAR and moving into that directory via terminal while still connected to a hard-wire, I did the following:

1. Typed uname -r to reveal the kernel release number.
2. I then typed sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.24-19-rt where “2.6.24-19-rt” was the result of “uname -r”.
3. From this point, I believe it downloaded a good bit of data, finished, then I typed sudo make.
4. Then I typed make install. Restart and then download all of your updates.

As 8.04 was released sometime ago (yet I’m using it because I can’t get ATI support in 9.04), you’ll have to download updates and new kernels. When the 260 megs or so of packages finishes downloading, it will tell you it needs to restart. When you restart you will boot into a new kernel. Repeat this process for that kernel and you should be good to go.

I’m going to post onto the Ubuntu Studio forum and see what information I can leech out of them. I hope to have to more in-depth reviews of this variant to come.