subnotebook/netbook w/ linux 4 electronic music?

[Jay Vaughan]

> what would you go for ? I'm writing a new framework for "modular" synth and would like to port it to a low latency/fast boot distribution. Something like under a second to boot.
> 

<1sec bootup is only doable only if you really choose your hardware very explicitly, pre-configure everything for fastboot, and make all sorts of un-godly alterations to the base system that makes part of the OS.  Its possible, but I want to alert you to the fact that about 7 or 12 seconds to boot is more realistic.

> Huge bonus if it doesn't take a year to scratch my head on "how do I do
> that" ? ^^



The issue for a Linux-based OS designed for embedded use as a synthesizer platform is really, mostly, all about hardware features.  If you have a particular ideology in mind - Linux as the controller for a DSP or something - then you can design the whole Linux kit especially for your hardware architecture.

But if you want it to be general-purpose, doing something like making a real distro is a lot of effort.

You could maybe do something very interesting like build a Linux base OS that is only designed to run one thing, and run that one thing very, very well: gstreamer.  Then the rest of your modular synth environment could consist of gstreamer plugins and directed pipelines would be what you create (from some nice outer panel/user interface) that simply sets up the gstreamer pipeline as you've determined it should work.

That could be quite interesting .. another option is to go the fully ALSA route.

But the best thing for you right now, I imagine, is to simply get the Caanoo OS ready for synthesis/music-making by adding proper ALSA support, all the USB-MIDI/-Audio drivers, and so on .. 

;
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Jay Vaughan