MONO report

[Marius]

First, i've played a bit with linux in the past (3-4 years ago), but only basic stuff. Too geeky for me.
However, someone more advanced tried to run rdj using mono? I analyzed the application using MoMa (2.0 profile) and the only issues were the app priority settings, thing that i can change if it's causing problems.

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[DJ Garybaldy]

We tried a while back with Mono and Wine  got RDJ  (An early beta) working & playing songs but couldn't get it working fully. All Song titles and text within RDJ were garbled so it was difficult to see what was happening.

[Marius]

I analyzed also the rest of the assemblies and sadly the problems are related to the bass.net which is using P/Invoke, which is unsupported in mono.

[marklevinfan]

Darn it. It would have been nice to move.

[DJ Garybaldy]

Darn it. It would have been nice to move.

Yes Mark it would be great to get RDJ working fully on Linux then i could ditch windoze forever! Just need the guys behind Wine and even Mono to get the .NET components working then everything will be fine.

[marklevinfan]

But with Microsoft, that is not always going to happen. They do not really like to put out their code for Linux peeps. That is why they sell windows.

[SnowHow]

Out of curiosity, I dug out my Ubuntu 11.04 box that I had put together as a Linux development machine, but became involved in RDJ and put it on hold. I decided to try my hand at this, and I have RDJ 1.6.2.5 running on it, but with a couple of small issues:

1) The "twinkle" of the Nero progress bar renders as a white box that runs across the top
2) The checkboxes for the encoder don't display
3) Whenever I try to open a file in the Cue Editor I get the "File doesn't exist..." error, but I think that's just a file permission issue.

It's been running for a couple of days now like a champ.

mp3 stream: demo.a-1radio.com:8000

aac stream: demo.a-1radio.com:8008

If I can get the kinks worked out, I'll post instructions. It's been a while since I put this box together, so I would have to retrace my steps on everything I did to it.....


J-



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[Marius]

Duuude 

Maybe a simpler user interface for rdj with only standard controls would work better.

[DJ Garybaldy]

So there is a Small Glimmer of hope for us Linux users then!! Will have to have another stab at getting Wine installed on this box.

[marklevinfan]

Duuude 

Maybe a simpler user interface for rdj with only standard controls would work better.

Yes getting close to what I want.

[SnowHow]

Duuude 

Maybe a simpler user interface for rdj with only standard controls would work better.

Yes it would, but before we go slicing & dicing, I want to try a few things first.... 

So there is a Small Glimmer of hope for us Linux users then!! Will have to have another stab at getting Wine installed on this box.

I've been playing with Ubuntu, and Debian in general, for years. I know my way around Ubuntu pretty good, so I can probably iron it out eventually. So YES, there is a glimmer of hope! 

I wasn't real happy with what they did to Gnome in 11.10, which is why I stuck with 11.04. However there is always Kubuntu and I have a spare blank hard drive, so I'll be looking at that one, too.

J-

[marklevinfan]

got plenty of HD's here. I want to get off Winblows soon. I am having some peeps help me with Rivendale when they can. But if we can get RDJ to run on it, lets rock this.

[ricky]

have you looked at the rrabuntu i had a play with it not as good as radiodj but not bad.

[DJ Garybaldy]

Having major headaches trying to get wine to play nicely on this box. Looks like I will have to stick with VirtualBox for the time being. 

[SnowHow]

Having major headaches trying to get wine to play nicely on this box. Looks like I will have to stick with VirtualBox for the time being. 

Sorry to hear that you had such issues, though I did have some success. Keep in mind that this is on Ubuntu 11.04.....

Basically, it runs fine in that version with a few small issues:

1) The aforementioned Nero Bar white box
2) Inability to edit/import files (I know what that is, I'll explain in a second...)
3) If left unminimized for a length of time, the VU meter and/or Nero Bar will give a drawing error in which you can click "Continue" and the program will go on, but you will have a white box with a red "X" in it (I know what that is too, which I'm about to explain).

First the file thing. It has to do with how Windows and Linux tags the files - hidden or not, read only, etc. are totally different. RDJ is running inside a Windows "bubble" that must access the outside world (Linux). Because the files (mp3's, etc.) are physical files, they are sitting in the outside world subject to the Linux file tagging system. The wine program is trying to emulate Windows with Windows rules, so that when it finds the files, RDJ can access the files, but can't do anything else because they are outside the emulated Windows "bubble". That's why you can't import, let alone edit them.

The other issue is bitmap drawing. This also has to do with the Windows "bubble". Basically, you have an emulated operating system inside of another (not to be confused with VM Ware, which is a completly different animal). RDJ has to run inside of wine, which in turn runs inside of Linux. That is an extra "layer" for CPU usage which causes lag inside the emulated bubble. If you start the SoundSolutions DSP, for example, because it uses so much CPU, you will see the entire program lag. So what is happening is that wine can't keep up with the drawing requirements of RDJ because of the extra layer of the emulator.

To bring it to simpler terms, you would have to set up RDJ exactly the way you wanted it on a Windows machine, transfer the whole thing to the Linux box ensuring the file structure is the same, start it up, minimize it, let it run without doing anything to it. If you are a small station that simply runs the auto dj, I can see it being worth the effort. But if you are a full blown station with advertisements and so on, this would not work at all.

Really, the only solution would be a native Linux app. I did run across Gambas2, which is a Linux development IDE that is almost identical to Visual Basic. I may give it a whirl in my spare time after the current beta goes final, but it would be very basic since it looks as though Gambas2 couldn't do a plugin system.

Those are my findings. If anyone else has found a workaround for the file access problem, I would love to hear it... 

J-