Previously Openbox config now migrated to XFCE desktop environment for wider audience*, more comfortable work flow** and easer development. RecBox goal is not only to add easier system configuration for audio recording, mixing and mastering but merging both worlds: āStudioā distribution and operating system for daily use unleashing full potential of Linux based operating system for audio engineering.
Wider audience
Itās not about better popularity for the project, itās for wider popularity of Linux in the musicians world.
Comfortable work flow
While I was playing with the window manager Iāve noticed one thing. Combination of window manager and some parts of desktop environment have own cons, sure it can be trimmed in resources much more than in full desktop environment if youāre motivated enough, but you lose some smoothness of GUI applications, and you need to configure things in more archaic way. Itās not a biggie for CLI software or even at all, but not everyone likes āpower userā kind stuff. So there is a compromise of a few megabytes more.
Digression
For big projects, and I mean big projects youāll need more horsepower anyway, and a bare-boned window manager will not help you in this case. You can only move border a bit further which can be done with RecBox tools.
Where is the trick?
With Work Flow you have the ability to set separate system configurations for Daily and Studio work, and switch between them by one click. Needed services, autostart and audio configuration can be set in Settings via GUI. Just choose which one youāll need.
Note that your session will be as heavy as you set it. XFCE session is set to give optimal experience, but if you add more fireworks, docks, conky etc RecBox tools will not make CPU and RAM usage magically disappear.
Philosophical aspect
RecBox is made not to be the best ever made āStudioā like OS. One of the main ideas is to give opportunity for users with older hardware to create more advanced projects and help musicians to save money for better hardware for recording and/or be own music producers. Even if you prefer to leave album production for professionals there are many things you need to learn if you want to save stress for your bandmates and yourself and made the whole process faster and comfortable for everyone. There is no other way than take business in own hands and learn how things works. Spoiler: ā10 things you need to knowā videos on YT doesnāt help you much.
From last month things changed a bit, mostly visually but there are some small bug fixes and improvements as well. First what youāll notice is consistent theming and new right click menu made with jgmenu (screenshots in main post are up to date | If somehow links are reverted to old ones, fresh ones you can find here). Obmenu is still available if you donāt like new one. Description of how to change it back is in How Recbox works which is in updating process. I thought Iāll run away from writing for a good time but I didnāt run far.
Because of swapping obmenu to custom jgmenu, part of options was moved to Side Menu and it works same as in Main and Side Menus. Which is very similar to how menu applets work in GNOME. Description how to replace font icons with regular icons can be found in How RecBox worls.
Meanwhile, Iāve updated a bit Bass, Guitar and AVL Drums tutorials plus uploaded bass one on LBRY (preview is only available from browser version).
September was pretty good even if I didnāt have much time to work on RecBox. Major improvement is manipulating options in rc.xml file. Before it was pretty easy to break config file when removing or adding new stuff but I figured out how to script it in better way. Itās not perfect yet but Iāll improve it soon (description can be found in How Recbox works > Config Files).
Other stuff itās rather cosmetic and for the eye, but they change overall experience. At least for me. I guess
queue of lines in xc.xml file now is not important. Scripts which changes options in config file was improved
Calendar, RecBox Documentation and RecBox Center now use Flat Remix icons in task bar instead of generic ones
volume and brightness widget icon now donāt display in taskbar
user now can add name of screenshot (scrot) thanks to Zenity widget
Iāve added bold pango markups to all Back items.
RecBox Colors was improved (in general) and now have support for changing right-click menu color scheme. Spoiler: Iām working on global themes (with dark mode support). Matcha Aliz, Azul and Sea.
Iāve added links to the most important playlists from Produce Like A Pro. Channel name is a bit silly imo but itās a true gold mine, whatever music genre you prefer.
How RecBox works is up to date, but still requires some work because RB changed a lot from the last time I updated PDF.
Hi folks!
This month I have some good news and some bad news and maybe Iāll start from bad one. Openbox version development is now suspended. Good news is I will improve scripts from time to time, so you donāt need to migrate anywhere, I will not add new things only, which is not a big issue because the environment is pretty complete. Another thing is new versions of RecBox will be made on XFCE, you can decide if it is bad or good news. However, first tests tells that CPU and RAM usage will be very similar to Openbox and whole setup will be much simpler and less confusing. The First version based on XFCE will arrive in 2021 but I canāt tell which month exactly. I need to rewrite everything for a new setup, so it will take a while but it will be not that painful all in all because a big part of stuff will be managed differently with DE help.
New stuff from November:
global themes
Matcha Sea
Matcha Aliz
Matcha Azul
fix Network Menu display when Wi-Fi is disabled and no VPN configuration
add restart dunst to Settings Menu
Rofi screen-shot menu improved and moved to rb-screenshot.sh
add Edit Menu to Tools menu. Sub menu contains items to edit:
Carla menu
Info menu
Instrument FX
Jack Connections
Mixer
Notes
Shortcuts
Software
Tools
Window
Announcements items (stable, testing unstable) moved to sub menu Announcements in Software menu
change menu font improvement and command change
lid control script improvement, instead of typing password in terminal, policy authentication window will pop-up
fix logout in side menu
-panel menus, side menu and main menu now will follow button position without manual configuration (position_mode = ipc) and now there is only one config file for all panel menus
fix Backup and Update
other changes
All in all regular XFCE users will benefited from environment swap, because things like Dark Mode or Global Themes can be easily installed on non RexBox XFCE setups. 2021 looks to be exciting!
After a month of playing with XFCE I need to say that itās better than I thought will be. First days I was a bit like a child in a haze, but now I feel pretty comfortable using DE tools and scripting. While working on Openbox version I learned a bit, so XFCE will be much āsmarterā. For example system configuration will be fully automated and donāt require user intervention. User only need to mark options which want to use.
From visual aspect all stuff will be stored into Side Menu and Whisker Menu which take the role of Rofi menu. Spoiler alert, font icons are changing while enabling night light and dark mode, plus color scheme of side menu is changing automatically without using separate config files and manual configuration. Magic
At the moment desktop looks like this (Dark Mode On)
Hi folks!
We reached to February, so itās time for monthly spam
Pretty big chunk of January I spent on working at Work Flow script and its starting to look pretty good. List of items from autostart is generating on the fly (Session and Startup), so it will contain apps installed by user, and it doesnāt matter it is full or minimal installation. Probably (I didnāt test it yet) will be possible to use Work Flow at least on MATE and probably on GNOME. Iāve read somewhere that autostart works same on them, so there is chance that WF will be pretty versatile.
At least for now list of services is fixed and contain those which disabling donāt result with black screen. Listing all will be too confusing for new users I think, even for me. So at least at the moment weāll go with curated list. If there will be any suggestions later, it will be no problem for me to add new one Iāve almost forgotten. Except setting up CPU scalling there will be governor choice, so everything will be in one place
Audio configuration donāt exist, but I have nifty plan for it, and done some tests
From the other cool stuff, Iāve finished shortcuts list which is dynamically generated.
Desktop tweaking are on finish, and not much stuff left to do, so Iām near to final shape.
Aw, and Iām working on tutorial for voice recording, mixing and mastering. Iām in half of work and maybe will be finished to the next monthly spam.
Hi @silvabaral
I didnāt see unfaās setup, but it should be very similar or the same except pipewire (not sure if he still uses it as an audio server). All hail Arch Wiki Anyway Iām happy you like my Frankenstein and will to help. I donāt have concrete questions now, but Iāll text you todayās evening or tomorrow
This month I donāt have much to share due to lack of time, butā¦ there is a small progress, like Iāve discovered that desktop environment configuration didnāt work however it has added value, because Iāve changed a bit of behavior of desktop environment and shortcuts. For now, I only fixed the panel (I hope. I didnāt test it yet but this time I make changes in fresh XFCE installation under virtualbox.), but changes arrive soon.
In February, I mostly played with smaller things like automation of config file creation for tools, Side Menu and Panel content. In Openbox version the panel had plenty of menus, but they were pretty useless at least for me, so this time Iāve decided to make everything more compact. For most used programs there will be one menu near Side Menu which probably will be filled with Cadence and other KXStudio Applications and other software will be in Whisker menu under custom categories.
At that point workflow tool is under stagnation, I need to re-think few things and implement automatic config file creation for services and system audio tweaks. Iām not sure yet, but probably I separate workflow script to a few smaller ones.
It looks like thatās all this month, have a good day! Regards.
March wasnāt bad, but could be better. I had almost two weeks off because of health issues with maxillary sinus, but the rest of the month was pretty good.
Despite all bumps we are closer than farther. Yay!
There is not much progress as new lines of code this time, butā¦ I have cool news instead. First, I finally managed workflow tool structure, from config files to scripts and GUI. Second, translation will be available (at the moment everything is in English)! Side Menu will be the tricky one, but GUI (Zenity) and terminal outputs for tools can be translated pretty easily
( If workflow GUI looks confusing, no worries Iāll write the guide as well )
May was pretty good, Iāve start with creating icons for tools and rest of the month I was working on Workflow Settings UIs. Mostly rewriting everything, but I think Iām on a good track. Finally. Every menu with checkbox will now use loops, which will make code shorter and faster than abusing if statements all along Support for translations is added, but I need to look how it works in Manjaro Architect, because I made it in guerrilla style. However, itās working
I thought it will be easy-peasy, but itās much complexed than I thought at beginning. Maybe if I actually know what Iām doing instead of constantly improvising and learning on the fly, whole thing will be already finished
Work on Workflow tool, is slowly coming to the end. Currently, Iāve started rewriting system tweaks configuration, and finished Settings UI. Desktop and services configuration are done as well. In the meantime, Iām adding translation support to the rest of the tools, plus some improvements when I learn something new. Aww, Iāve made an Icon for Daily Mode, nothing special but at least iconās set is ready
Cross your fingers, so I donāt need to leave my basement and finish the rest of the stuff quickly
As I thought, the whole month I spent on writing system tweaks configuration and guess what, didnāt finished it yet. I guess someone didnāt keep their fingers crossed
Meanwhile, fixed some errors and improve something, but donāt remember what exactly. Probably Check for Updates script. I fell in limbo or something, everything looks the same
For everyone waiting for Work Flow, bored with waiting. Heads up, after I put everything together, Iāll push it to a separate repository, so you donāt need to wait for RecBox
Hello folks, I had nothing to share last month, so I decided to donāt post anything like āItās almost ready, blah blah blahā. At that moment I finished testing Workflow under VM, and I have some documentation draft. Not gonna lie, it was an endurance test, but I happily survived.
From cool stuff Iāve managed, autostart item list is updating while opening menu, and itās a full list same you can find in Session and Startup. Previously, it was only created from .config/autostart/ directory.
Iāll give it a try for a few days to see how itās working on real hardware because in VM I couldnāt check if setting up Bluetooth service and fetching CPU scaling status is working properly. Default settings are pretty much random for now, but setting it up will be pretty much no hassle. More time I rather spend on docs. GUI is created from Zenity widgets, so it not necessarily will be obvious to everyone what is going on.
Separate repo is already created in RecBox group, but just for sure will be better to wait until I create separate post for Workflow in Contributions/Software and link it here.
Remember to read README and Documentation first, before installation, to avoid potential issues.
As I mentioned in README, Plasma and GNOME requires some testing from users which knows those DEās better.
in Plasma, startup menu responds ok, but Iām not sure if it doesnāt mess something in Systemd services submenu etc.
I mean, Workflow will change system setup, but Plasma Settings manager (donāt remember how itās called exactly) will show something different.
in GNOME everything looks fine, but Startup menu donāt respond to Desktop setup in Workflow Settings. When you disable app from autostart, GNOME will show it anyway in the startup menu. I donāt know it is because VM, or it requires special treating. However, this app will not start after login.
I was thinking about one more item in settings where you can mark do you want to set and use all three (Desktop, SystemD services and System Tweaks) options or only two. And if there will be issues with other DEās just block configuration and system setup to the point when it will be working fine.
Plus, it can be useful for those who only want to tweak the system and donāt want to mess with autostart.
I only tested XFCE, MATE, Plasma and GNOME. Donāt know how itās working in other DEās. Budgie probably have the same issues with Startup menu as GNOME. In MATE everything works fine.
If you like to help with translation to other languages, in Documentation youāwill find description how you can do it
Iāll write about overall project progress and my romance with GTK and C in a new post after new year.
After a long and unfair battle with GTK and C in December, Iām finally on track. I thought it will be easier because I have some experience with shell scripting combined with Zenity widgets, butā¦ itās a different pair of shoes. Maybe it would be a smooth start if Iāll start from GTK3 with Glade help, but I started from GTK4, however it wasnāt waste of time because I learned something overall. For example, how to use documentation
No worries, I donāt switch to GTK completely and start to rewriting everything to GTK3 leaving tools in unfinished state.
After last year of work on project, Iāve got into conclusion that on present state, working on āStudioā spin doesnāt have much sense when Iām working on program which tweaks system back and forth and the goal is to donāt restrict to any desktop environments. So the idea of Manjaro spin is dropped, and Iāll focus only on tools. Btw, some time ago @djamayaofficial created this topic, and I like the idea of having GUI for switching pipewire settings on the fly, so itās added to my TODO. Which means after I rearrange GitLab repository, Iāll migrate from this topic to RecBox ToolKit (or something like that) in Software category which will be more appropriate.
Except programming stuff, Iāve spent some time with DrumGizmo, and oh boy, itās amazing. If youāre planing recording drums in the future, this is very close to mixing a real drum kit. Iām planing to write a guide for it soon, and one for creating keyboards for ultra beginners. Iāve played a bit on piano in the past, so it will be more like creating background for guitars than the masterpiece you can hear for example in Nightwish.
Looks like itās everything for now. I link everything when I move all tools to its own repositories and create new topic.