Hi
following some kind and enlightened advice here recently, I have decided to try a Linux distro other than Fedora. I have 3 .iso's on my hard drive. My machine is an ASUS N55s Intel i5, with 500gb HD, 6gb RAM and 2gb dedicated GPU memory. It's no slouch, but it's old. I'm looking for a lightweight desktop environment that will let me tweak layouts, themes, shortcuts etc, and an OS that will provide painless and n00b-friendly package installation, running PD, Supercollider, Processing, Arduino, Audacity and Ardour mainly.. I've chosen Mint Cinnamon, Xfce and Ubuntu Studio, and I'd appreciate your insights and experiences. I do recall trying out Ubuntu Studio a few years ago. My machine ground to a halt, was very sluggish and felt 'bloated', without allowing much leeway to tinker and tweak. With the little research I've done, I'm leaning towards Xfce. I'll be spending tmoro afternoon doing the install.

Looking forward to your advice
Brendan

@brendan XFCE should be pretty lightweight.

I kid you not: my machine is now at least 50% cooler. Literally and physically. The fan is quiet, my lap is no longer on fire, and I can't fry eggs and bacon on my trackpad. Don't care what Mint looks like, this is a revelation. Thx

@brendanmac Are you going from Fedora with Gnome3 to Mint with XFCE?

Yes @jancsika. It was quite a change, as I'd got used to GNOME desktop and shell. I have encountered an issue with PurrData: I followed the explicit instructions here https://github.com/agraef/purr-data, and the last statement says "there should now be a .deb file in your current directory", well there isn't. There was only one 'error' in the terminal, something about not finding libjpeg or something. The app appears to have installed itself in /home, all the folders are there, but no 'launcher' or .deb file. So I DL the precompiled .deb from here https://github.com/jonwwilkes/purr-data/releases (the 64bit stretch version), and when I extract and try to run it, the 'install package' option is greyed out and states that "Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libfftw3-double3 (>= 3.3.5)" I presumed this meant that a dependency was missing, but I checked back in the terminal, and this is already installed.

Sorry to continue to pound you here, but I am starting to get frustrated. If the above issue is too idiosyncratic to solve, would you be so kind as to direct me to a simpler method to install pd-vanilla, and I'l just install the externals I need (comport, mrpeach, cyclone and zexy).

Thanks again.

for vanilla
you might just be able to do so using

sudo apt-get install puredata

https://puredata.info/docs/faq/debian

then you can add the externals you need using deken from the Help menu select Find Externals and search for the ones you need.

@brendanmac Hm, what happens when you try sudo apt-get install libjpeg62-turbo?

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?

. . . it's the reliance on endless dependencies that's doing my head in. I just installed Supercollider, without a hitch, found a small problem and SC told me how to fix it . . .

@brendanmac Oh, I see.

If you don't want to fool around with any dependencies you can just navigate to the repo directory (usually /home/purr-data if you used the defaults) and type make light in that directory.

Keep in mind you'll only get the core Pd objects plus a few helper externals.

You can also do make light libname1 libname2 etc. to build the core plus specific libraries you want. (There's also a way to build everything except Gem if you want to go that route.)

Thanks buddy. I think I'll just rewind, and install vanilla plus externals on this machine. I have an old OSX machine with PurrData running fine on it, and a crappy Win10 thing running MaxMSP. Option anxiety. But I do love tinkering

@brendanmac Please do try the make light route and let me know if it works. Unlike compiling all externals, it should take about 5 minutes to complete.

Edit: fixed typo

gimme a sec. . .

. . . there was a bit of activity, then this:
/bin/sh: 2: aclocal: not found
Makefile:147: recipe for target '/home/bmccloskey/purr-data/pd/src/configure' failed
make[2]: *** [/home/bmccloskey/purr-data/pd/src/configure] Error 127
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/bmccloskey/purr-data/packages'
Makefile:61: recipe for target 'install' failed
make[1]: *** [install] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/bmccloskey/purr-data/packages/linux_make'
./tar_em_up.sh: 331: command failed with exit code 2, exiting now.
./tar_em_up.sh: 331: make install prefix=$inst_dir
Makefile:97: recipe for target 'light' failed
make: *** [light] Error 2

@brendanmac It looks like you didn't install any of the build dependencies. You need to at least do sudo apt-get install automake.

Okay, thanks. Let's retrace. I have removed all of the packages/folders. Install automake first. Then try again?

@youaresound Using Synaptic or apt-get only gets me version 0.46.x, I need >0.47 for Deken, any advice?

@brendanmac Yes.

I can't remember if Mint comes with the basic compiler toolchain pre-installed or not. If not you'll get a very quick failure.

make light is new-- I've only every built the full Purr Data with all the externals.

Guys, you have been superhuman in your patience, but this has got me quite angry (with myself, and with Linux) and frustrated. I'm going to delete/purge what I can (I installed automake, as advised), then just do a vanilla install. If only it was that simple; how can I get hold of pd >0.47? Tried twice today and failed. Sob.

for vanilla i still recommend this method

https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/11335/purr-data-and-fedora-26-again/10

http://msp.ucsd.edu/software.html
Pd version 0.48-1 source (6 Megabytes)

Thanks. I have become very very frustrated today with this, and thank you for your support. I had good luck - in Fedora - with your method that you linked to, so maybe it'll work for Mint too. FWIW, the persistent issue seems to be lib-fftw-double3, whatever the hell that is.