I just acquire a computer system and installed Knoppix on it. Everything seems to run fine except for one thing.
When I try to play a MIDI file, I click on the file and it loads XMMS, it then goes to the open dialog.
The KDE Control Center ‘Sound System - hardware’ section shows the External MIDI Port and there seems to be no internal MIDI to choose. How do you enable the internal midi or softsynth?
Hi!
First, what version of Knoppix are you running 3.8?
Second, have you checked if your soundcard is supported by ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)? Just log into their website and check
http://www.alsa-project.org
the command “playmidi filename.mid” (= clicking on it) will only work if the midi table of your soundcard is supported. My guess is that it’s not or at least not setup correct.
Fastest (and best) way around it is to use a midi sampler like “timidity” that samples the midi sequence to a wave file, and as almost any soundcard can play wave files, you will be ok 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/timidity
The Linux Audio Users Guide have some good information and howto’s that can be handy to set up timidity as well as other things.
http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/index.php
Fastest solution - EscLinux
If you or anyone else want to set up a linuxsystem for working with audio, midi and abc notation in 5 minutes, take a look at EscapeLinux. It is a free Knoppix clone that comes with a complete operating system and a work environment for midi and abc files.
http://anamnese.online.fr/esclinux/esclinux.html
If you can spend a few bucks “Studio to Go” is a definite option.
http://www.ferventsoftware.com/
Take the tour, this CD is amazing!
Cheers!
/MarcusR
hello,
about esclinux, I wanted to have a system which can fit on a small size cd, and due to the problem for setting the wavetables for a given midi card, I’ve used Timidity for playing midi with it, so we can be sure it will work on most computer. I hope the desktop is not too hard to use, and the main problem with it is there is no support for printing (for the same reason as for the wavetables), the packages for printers were too big. But it’s possible to export partitions to pdf for printing elsewhere. With ssh or vnc it’s even possible to run esclinux from an other computer and print the result on the “full” computer. But it requires some basic knowledge with network for doing it.
The short URL is : http://esclinux.tk/
"Studio to Go " looks very interesting and promising.
Agnula too (and it’s free), though I haven’t tried it yet :
http://www.agnula.org
I want to test it soon
Hi farvardin!
Welcome to Chiff & Fipple!
I take it you are the one behind EscLinux?
If so, congratulations it really is a nice little Knoppix clone. I have used i a few times when I needed a good txt editor, use gcc or working with abc files on someone elses computer.
It would be fun to do a “ChiffLinux” remaster of Knoppix with some good audio/studio tools, soundtrackers, midi and abc software. Like a simple and free version of “studio to go” aimed at us amateurs and trad musicians. I can picture a “Dale desktop environment” … hmm ???
I should mention that if anyone is interested in writing of interactive fiction games, EscLinux got some handy tools for that as well.
Good luck with EscLinux farvardin, and thanks for dropping in.
/MarcusR
hello,
if it still fits on a tiny cd, I plan to add scite as a text editor because nedit is sometimes buggy with copy and paste (especially for pasting in other applications, it hangs the computer for a few time). The gcc compiler is probably quite limited, I was even not aware it was still there (but most libraries are certainly missing).
I switch to 3.8 and was able to install TiMidity correctly. The previous versions had issues.
I would like to set up the XMS to route MIDI to TiMidity, but at least I can now play my Midi files.
Chiff Linux for whistle players, that would be nice. I’ll have to write a linux version of TWCalc (Tin Whistle Calculator for Toneholes).