Want to make a tiny frankenstien

[smithers]

Hello everyone! If this is in the wrong forum feel free to move it.

I was wondering if you guys could help me with some advice...if anything point me in the right direction. I'm an OSX user; I have experience with ubuntu and linux in general but I'm not what you'd call a power user--I'm into linux because of the light weight and the freedom...which is why I gravitated towards linux mint. Just as an experiment i threw it on an old VAIO that I found at work and I love it. I've been doing some research for a couple days and lurking on this forum and a lot of my questions have been answered---I still need some advice though.

The Laptop I want to build has the following guidelines:
-Price- <$800
-I need at least 4GB of ram, 8 is ideal but if not stock, I can just upgrade it.
-Not super concerned with graphics...they just have to work and look relatively smooth.
-HDD space isn't super important as long as I can upgrade at some point.


I am a computer musician and I work in Ableton Live. Here's the thing, I just read that Ableton Live now functionally works in Wine. If you are a Linux user who is familiar with the struggle to use Ableton in Linux, you know how exciting that is. If that is actually not the case, then I need to be able to virtualize either mac osx or windows in order to run it (at this price range, I'm assuming I'm going to have to go AMD processor to virtualize, correct me if I'm wrong).

I don't want to dual boot...I don't like doing it and I don't need an entire partition dedicated to just running Live and some VST's. Also worth mentioning, I need to be able to run my MIDI controllers via USB (both made by Novation) and I'm assuming I'd need to run those drivers in Wine as well...anyone know for sure?

Based on my requirements, I'm leaning towards a Gateway NV51B15U. I see on the boards that results are mixed as far as the success with these but I'm wondering if there are any computer musicians (or anyone) who have some experience that could help me out?

thanks!

[xenopeek]

You can indeed run Ableton Live under Wine, at least various version have "gold level" for compatibility: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=2113

As for virtualization, you can run Windows in VirtualBox and have access to your laptop's USB ports. (You need to install "guest additions" on the Windows in VirtualBox to get direct access to USB ports.) I imagine that should work. Having at least 4GB ram will make it all much more smoother. A recent Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 will run virtualization just fine, and if you don't need 3D performance the built-in graphics make especially the i3 and i5 very competitive in price/performance with AMD's offerings (in fact, I think they beat whatever AMD can bring to the table currently--unless you need 3D performance).

[smithers]

Thanks for your reply!

So, if I am reading it right, the only issues I would have with virtualization is accessing the USB ports? Would you suggest virtualizing vs. wine? the only reason i'd like wine is because I don't want to have to acquire and install windows...if it will be smoother to do so though, I'll do it.

[xenopeek]

I'd say VirtualBox is easier to get up and running than Wine, and installing the guest additions is not that hard and so there should be no issues with USB connectivity. But because you are running another OS with VirtualBox, it will be more demanding of your machine's resources. I'd try Wine first I think, and keep VirtualBox as backup plan it this case. Ableton Live will be resource demaning enough on its own I guess

Edit: Ubuntu Studio might be interesting to you. A distro specifically targeted at multimedia production. It won't replace Ableton Live I think, but perhaps it is worth a look.

[smithers]

Thanks for your reply--
I've actually tried ubuntu studio and the DAW they use (Ardour) is not quite like ableton live. I think I'll take your advice and try wine, although i think if I upgrade the RAM to 8GB i should be fine on spare resources...the Gateway I'm looking at is under $400 so I could easily add some upgrades and still come out under $800.

By guest additions, do you mean an addition of windows that can create guest accounts? (Sorry, kind of a novice with virtualbox)

[xenopeek]

With 8GB you should be cool to run anything

The guest additions are drivers you, in this case, install on the Windows operating system running inside VirtualBox. These drivers improve the way Windows runs on VirtualBox.

To install VirtualBox, get the package virtualbox-4.0 (through search in Software Manager for example, then click install). Also install the virtualbox-guest-additions package the same way. This gives you an ISO image which you then use on Windows inside VirtualBox to install the drivers for running Windows better inside VirtualBox.

Some more info: http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html

[smithers]

Your help is very much appreciated. I'm gonna go with the gateway and report back how it goes. Hopefully this can be my machine for playing out.