DLN Xtend 15: Helping New Users, JACK Audio/Reaper, PinePhone, Proprietary Software, & Dual Booting

Welcome to DLN Xtend Episode 15. This time, some acquaintances of Nate have asked him for help getting started with Linux and helping his son with an electronics engineering course. Eric goes deeper into Linux audio with JACK and Reaper.

We thank DigitalOcean for sponsoring DLN Xtend. DigitalOcean offers the simplest, most developer-friendly cloud platform. It’s optimized to make managing and scaling apps easy with an intuitive API, multiple storage options, integrated firewalls, load balancers and so much more. You can get all this plus access to their world-class customer support for as low as $5 per month. DigitalOcean also has 2,000 cloud-agnostic tutorials to help you stay up to date with the latest open source software, languages, and frameworks. Get started on Digital Ocean for 2 Months FREE with a $100 credit by going to do.co/dln.

Dalton Durst from the UBports project was a guest host on Destination Linux. They discussed the PinePhone Braveheart edition and how UBports was progressing on the device. We, of course, couldn’t be happier about the prospect of a Linux smartphone.

On the Ask Noah show, Noah doesn’t see a place for rolling release distros. We disagree and think they serve a need just as fixed release distributions do.

Jason Evangehlo of Linux for Everyone covers the negativity surrounding proprietary software and dual booting. It’s an attitude that bothers us as well.

That’s all for this week. Be sure to stop by DLN’s Discourse, Telegram, Mumble and Discord servers to continue the discussion. More information about this show and other Destination Linux Network shows and creators (like Eric and Nate for example) is available at destinationlinux.network.

Until next time, see yas!

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@EricAdams Great show. I wonder, do you guys have any recommendations for the physical layout of your recording space? I’ve noticed a lot of ambient noise on my recordings, and I can’t afford a proper sound-proofed room to do them in. I’ve considered using my car…but that feels a little janky. Do you or anyone else in the community have a good, relatively inexpensive DIY solution?

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Thanks for the kind words Friar. The type of microphone made a huge difference for me. A dynamic mic will cut out much more background noise than a condenser mic. Next step would be a gate of some kind to cut background noise when you aren’t speaking. You could use something like PulseEffects for this or try going the JACK route like I have.

For the room itself, I haven’t done anything but I’ve considered using a closet as a sound booth. It wouldn’t be convenient but it’s probably the best I can do in my space. From what I understand, unless you are completely covering the walls to deaden sound, things like those foam squares do almost nothing to help. Hopefully others can give you some DIY ideas.

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I really enjoyed this episode and I am a fellow podcaster who is just starting to learn JACK to revamp my audio setup. Would you be able to share more about your particular setup and how you got your audio devices working? I’m starting to use the Ubuntu Studio controls app and I’m getting a little lost in the setup.

I do want to get something out for this because it can be a little confusing. Honestly, it’s not too bad once you get the hang of the concepts and tools and how they work together. The hard part is that it’s more info than I can stuff into a forum thread, so I need to write an article for Front Page Linux or make a video. Hopefully I can do that soon. In the meantime, if you have any specific questions I can try to answer them here or you can hit me up on Telegram or something.