Well..first of all I dont like setting up dual boot drives...you have to understand that one OS will always see the other OS and some files will be exchanged...so thus when you remove one of the OS's there is the possibility of corrupt data occurance. When I use dual OS's I have swappable drive bays..one for each OS that I want to use..you have to restart to get into the other OS anyways so shutting down and quickly swapping drives is not an issue. I would highly reccomend doing that to keep the drive intact as one solid OS.
Now..as far as applications go..Win2k is prett damn stable and allows you to manipulate any aspect of the OS pretty damn well..IMHO..If you're thinking audio apps..Linux is not the way to go..not much support if any at all. What do you need to do? What apps are you interested in? Let me know some specifics and I can give you more detailed answers
Opus

I'd like to be able to record (obviously!) and Mix to Picture. I don't need more than 8 tracks or so - as long as I can bounce, I'll be fine.

Once I'm all done and successful, I'd like to do a writeup on my exploits. Pretty much the only effects I want/need are EQ and compression. I can do without compression if need be.

Lock to SMPTE for Mix to Pix is important. Is this possible, or is it a pipe dream?

Dan Roth
Otitis Media

8 Tracks? That's it?!! Of course that can be done..Cubase...Nuendo..Logic..all can do it fine..you just need a device to read the SMPTE..such as a MidiTimePiece AV or something of that nature..my brain is pretty fried right now so remembering what hardware has SMPTE in and out is boggling me at the moment. I'll clear my head up soon!!
Again..8 tracks is nothing and every track could very easily have EQ, Compression and Reverb all at the same time
Opus

Yeah, I don't need more than 8 tracks. Hell, Sgt. Peppers was done on 8-track, so why do we really need 6 billion tracks?

I'm just not too sure what software's going to be happy running on my system. The reason why I was looking into a stripped down OS is that I'll have more processor and RAM overhead, and that'd be a good thing.

I know I can go out and build a PT system, but I want to see what can be done for little to no cash. I think I should be spending money in critical spots and not on a brand new gee-whiz computer. Here's my thoughts:

Currently, I'm running an AMD K6 233MHz processor on a Micronics Twister AT motherboard. I've got 24mb of SIMM RAM. Win98SE is installed, yet to be tweaked.

I need:
MIDI i/o (well, mainly output)
SMPTE sync, preferably without an external synchronizer
Video Black or Word/Superclock input. I'd prefer the Video Black in, sincethat wouldn't require an external box.

Duplex operation, i.e. record and play at the same time.

DSP effects I'd use most are EQ and comp/limit. They have to be GOOD and sound GOOD. DirectX may work, but I think I'm hurting for RAM.

Reverb isn't necessary, I can always bounce in from an external reverb.

I'm thinking that on the ADDA converter side, I should go with external units, so analog i/o isn't necessary, but there's that cost thing, if there's a card that has good ADDA I'd definitely consider it. The external ADDA will allow me to spend more on good converters, and change converters as budget and technology allow.

Still not a pipe dream?

Dan

Yep Opus is right about linux, its still in the making.
There are multitrack apps for it. and there is support for multichannel soundcrads like RME's. But setting them up can be a bear for new users unfamiliar with the structure of the OS.

Win2k rocks!
Sgt. Peppers was done on a 4 track!! 8 Tracks weren't around for another 3 years, I believe 1968 or so.

Cubase is hard to beat. It's rather unbelievable what it can do.
I dunno what Opus is talking about data corruption when dual booting. I used to do it all the time, but now I have a box for every OS I use (except the laptop, which is win98, and linux), except BeOS, which I put on the shelf, due to non support :(

BeOS rocks for multimedia, but no real apps, even less than linux, and it may or may not be dying. You can't beat the 64 bit file system, and it's MAC ease of use. Its like a cross of all good OS's- Mac, Win2k and linux.
Actually, the new Tascam SX-1 uses a BeOS for embedded called BeIA, man I wish I had moola for that puppy!

I say, try em all. if you have room on the drive, triple boot if you want. Just install Windows first, on the first partition. The others aren't as monopolistic about the drive. Linux, and BeOS are free for the download if you have the bandwidth. Or, you could locate a local linux users group, where I'm sure they would be glad to hand you several different versions of linux.

ljp

Just make sure your hardware is compatible with linux, and especially BeOS, if you decide to go that way.