Windows is Hell ! Linux ?

Hi,

Just a little rant here. I figured it was time to put into use the pc I built myself a bit more than two years ago for hauptwerk, to finally replace an aging 2008 mac pro. Although I have not used windows a lot (that is very little of it since... 1994 when I switched to linux, and to macos in 2006), I am quite knowledgeable as regards computers and I was confident I could easily configure this pc to run hauptwerk 7, with a clean install of windows 10 pro.

Boy was I wrong !

My first blunder was to install windows 10 on a nvme ssd while still having a hard drive connected... The stupid windows installer put the EFI partition on the hard drive, while correctly installing the system itself on the ssd. Quite ignorant of that, I installed hauptwerk and quite a few samplesets, and when moving the computer to the organ console, I removed the hard drive, as it became useless in that configuration... As you can guess, the computer wouldn't find a bootable drive or partition...

Luckily, I could google myself out of the misery of a complete reinstall, but that was close...

Then came the surprise of the cpu surges in red in hauptwerk, and frequent cuts in sound while playing, a thing I never experienced on macos. I followed the guides here and there, and adjusted a lot of settings, often having to look for help in google because the guides gave steps that were impossible to follow (often the settings I had to change were greyed out, and I had to use obscure commands in the terminal instead).

I suppose it took me quite a few days, weeks even, until, hopefully, all the glitches were resolved.

One reason it took me a long time is that I followed to the letter (I think) the guide by cantabile that is sticky in the Technical support section of the forum, but it was not enough... I found the missing piece in a post by Martin Dyde, I still needed to disable Superfetch/sysmain and I think it was not mentioned anywhere in this document...

So in short, macos is much easier than windows, and actually, I would have been better served by hackintoshing my pc and then installing hauptwerk on macos, but it is not really convenient either.

In order to use hauptwerk, one has the choice of overpaying for an apple computer (if one wants to have enough RAM for samplesets) for which there is right now no native implementation of hauptwerk (but it still works through rosetta)

or pay much less for a pc with a lot of cheap ram and storage, but probably require the help of a technician to fine-tune the pc, hoping that a system update won't break it in the near future...

Then I wonder : wouldn't linux be a much better operating system for hauptwerk ? I know, the subject has been discussed here and there, and I quite understand that trying to support every linux distribution would be a nightmare. But would it be necessary ? Most of hauptwerk users will have a dedicated computer for hauptwerk, so if ONE distribution of linux only was supported by hauptwerk (for example : linux mint that I always found to be very easy to install and very stable), maybe (of course I can't try it, so I can only guess) installing Hauptwerk and getting it to perform well would be much, much easier...

(ok, I know, there is a small issue... iLok, but maybe pace could be convinced to develop a driver for linux, I don't know...)

The problem is also audio interface drivers. It's hard enough to convince them to support the operating systems they already do! Sometimes it takes a year after new OS releases to get audio interface driver support (depending on your audio interface and what changes in the OS).

Personally I would love Hauptwerk on a Linux distro. I'd probably do that if I could get my audio interface to work on it.

[mdyde]

Hello phjo,

Very sorry to hear you had difficulties with your new PC.

Perhaps we might make a Linux port one day, but there are no plans for that in the near future. (It's a lot of work, and the iLok system isn't currently available for Linux, and relatively few people use Linux, and there aren't many audio/MIDI interfaces that support it, for example, but we do appreciate that it has benefits, especially for dedicated/headless/embedded installations.) See also: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=19787

One reason it took me a long time is that I followed to the letter (I think) the guide by cantabile that is sticky in the Technical support section of the forum, but it was not enough... I found the missing piece in a post by Martin Dyde, I still needed to disable Superfetch/sysmain and I think it was not mentioned anywhere in this document...

Just for reference, Windows' Superfetch/sysmain is a common cause of audio glitches on PCs, and that one is covered in the our PC performance troubleshooting steps in the Hauptwerk user guide ("Performance tuning | Other operating system and computer optimizations and diagnostics", which starts on page 308 in the current v7.0 version).

Very sorry to hear you had difficulties with your new PC.

Not really a big problem for me, just a slight annoyance, as I knew that sooner or later I would fix it.

Just for reference, Windows' Superfetch/sysmain is a common cause of audio glitches on PCs, and that one is covered in the our PC performance troubleshooting steps in the Hauptwerk user guide ("Performance tuning | Other operating system and computer optimizations and diagnostics", which starts on page 308 in the current v7.0 version).

I wasn't saying the information was nowhere to be found, and as I wrote you pointed me in the right direction, but it was not so easy to find...

The thing is, I tried to find the user guide, but I couldn't find anywhere to download it on hauptwerk's website, which is weird to say the least. Yes, I realized (a bit too late !) it came along the hauptwerk install, but being on the dedicated computer to hauptwerk only is inconvenient at best.

I think this documentation should be easily found and downloadable on the website (I tend to remember it was, once...)

That would be an easy fix...

[mdyde]

Thanks, phjo.

The documentation is usually available on the main Hauptwerk website, but MDA is in the process of moving the site to a new server, and some parts of it are temporarily unavailable there (including the documentation). Hopefully it will be back soon.

The documentation has been there for download almost continuously over the years, except for the recent disruptions to the web site, so this is just an unfortunate bit of timing.

I would also strongly prefer to use Linux, but it doesn't seem practical in the near future. There are a couple of Linux-compatible VPOs, but nothing remotely approaching Hauptwerk's capabilities, quality, support, documentation, community, and range of samplesets.

The problem is also audio interface drivers. It's hard enough to convince them to support the operating systems they already do! Sometimes it takes a year after new OS releases to get audio interface driver support (depending on your audio interface and what changes in the OS).

You're quite right. I would have thought things would have changed by now, as I have not used linux much in the past 15 years (but had a good experience every time I installed it on legacy hardware, or raspberrys...), but it seems indeed the sound card I dedicated to hauptwerk, a roland octacapture, is not very linux friendly, to say the least...