@@ -46,14 +45,6 @@ include_once("includes/header.php");
The main meta-packages are Audio, Audio-Plugins, Graphics and Video.
The Audio-Plugins meta-package is also split into plugin categories, for anyone that wants more plugins, but not actually more applications.
-
- The 'meta-restricted-extras' is simply a combination of '[k|x]ubuntu-restricted-extras', plus alsa-firmware and linux-firmware-nonfree.
- (In this case, "restricted" means that it can't be installed in Ubuntu by default, but you're safe to do it afterwards).
-
-
- The 'meta-wine' includes Wine audio stuff, useful to install if you want to use Windows plugins after installing the KXStudio ISO.
- This includes carla's Windows bridges, dssi-vst, festige, LMMS VST support and WineASIO.
-
- The KXStudio repositories support all Debian versions since Buster and Ubuntu 18.04 or above.
- They should work on all Debian-based distributions and variants.
+ The KXStudio repositories support all Debian versions since 10 (Buster) and Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic) or above.
+ They should work on all Debian-based distributions and variants.
+ A computer running intel-based 32bit or 64bit with SSE2 is required,
+ or alternatively an ARM-based system (32bit with neon-vfpv4 or 64bit).
Once you have the repos installed, you can either manually install individual packages from them or
@@ -25,6 +27,7 @@ $DEBIAN_PACKAGE_URL = "https://launchpad.net/~kxstudio-debian/+archive/kxstudio/
This section lists the applications available in the repositories.
- Click on the yellow application name to install its respective package.
- (If the links don't work, make sure you have the 'apturl-kde' or 'apturl' packages installed)
+ Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size image.
+ Individual deb files can be downloaded, requiring at least Debian 10 / Ubuntu 18.04 or superior.
+ If a "data" download is listed, it needs to be installed first before the architecture-dependent one.
+Any Debian or Ubuntu based system, running GNU/Linux.
+For Debian, version 10 (Buster) is required; on Ubuntu, 18.04 (Bionic).
+
+Intel-based and ARM-based systems are supported, 32 and 64bit for both.
+For Intel-based systems a SSE2 capable CPU is required, while for ARM systems it is a neon-vfpv4 capable CPU.
+
+
+
I found an issue with a package, where can I report it?
+
+Bug reports and package requests should be posted in the Github tracker
+ here.
+
+
+
Can I make a request for this new awesome-super-great application?
+
+You can, but likely will not be answered back. The KXStudio repositories focus on audio plugins, not general applications.
+
+
+
Why are applications not the focus for the KXStudio repos?
+
+A few reasons actually:
+
+
+
Applications can easily have flatpaks, snaps or whatever.
+ If they provide officially supported binaries, why not use them instead of duplicating efforts (of making binaries).
+
They often have very complex dependencies compared to plugins, some are actually quite difficult to build.
+
Distributions have a lot of margin to get things right, compared to plugins.
+ Plugins can be tricky for general GNU/Linux distributions, as they need to be self-contained.
+ Applications are mostly fine as long as they start.
+
Likely I will not use them, so they offer no benefit to me.
+
+
+
Why are plugins tricky for general distributions?
+
+As you likely already know, we run a lot of audio plugins at the same time, all in the same process space.
+If a single plugin misbehaves or crashes, it usually brings down the entire host or DAW.
+
+
+So it vital that we build the plugins in a way to minimize issues.
+They must be self-contained and never conflict with each other (as much as possible anyway).
+This entails, for example:
+
+
+
Building all plugin code and its dependencies with hidden symbols, so only the plugin-format-defined entry-points are visible within a shared object.
+ When this is not done, a plugin that uses a different audio library version from the host will crash.
+ This is usually not a problem if one uses only binaries from the distributions, but we cannot assume that it will always be that way...
+ Note that this is not just about building plugins in a certain, but also all of its dependencies.
+
+ For example: flatpaks, snaps, appimages and others include their own version of libraries needed by the application, which will publically expose symbols.
+ In such cases, loading a plugin that uses a library also used by the host will result in a crash if their target versions don't match.
+ Packages built in the KXStudio repositories do not have this issue.
+
SSE2 optimizations required to prevent denormals.
+ We want to avoid denormals in audio applications, as it leads to very high CPU usage.
+ Checking for denormals on each buffer cycle is not cost-free for the CPU, but we can setup things so that they don't even happen to begin with!
+ This can be achieved by activating specific build flags (-ffast-math -mfpmath=sse) and set a few CPU flags in the audio thread.
+ Some plugins include such flags as part of their build rules, but not all.
+ Packages in the KXStudio repos have all these flags active (all plugin builds, plus audio threads set the needed CPU flags),
+ so denormals become a thing of the past. :)
+
+ Something to note is that distributions like Debian, which want to keep support for old hardware, cannot enable this.
+ This is because old hardware does not always have SSE2 support, so it becomes risky to enable it.
This section lists the audio plugins available in the repositories.
- Click on the green plugin name to install its respective package.
- (If the links don't work, make sure you have the 'apturl-kde' or 'apturl' packages installed)
+ Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size image.
+ Individual deb files can be downloaded, requiring at least Debian 10 / Ubuntu 18.04 or superior.
+ If a "data" download is listed, it needs to be installed first before the architecture-dependent one.