I took a break today from playing with Linux on my Eee PC to play with Linux on my Toshiba A135-4527 laptop. I don't know if it was a recent Windows update or what, but for the past few days I've been getting horrible glitches whenever I try to play or record audio. At first I though Skype was the problem, so I downgraded Skype. But it turns out the errors are just as bad when I'm using my favorite audio editing software like Cool Edit or Reaper.

When I reinstalled Vista the other day, I made sure to set aside a partition for Linux, and so I went and reloaded Ubuntu. It's amazing how responsive and zippy it is compared to Vista. If I didn't need certain Windows-only programs I'd seriously consider switching.

Anyway, I had a lot of audio recording and editing to do today and yesterday. And while I really hate using Audacity for complicated editing tasks, the open source audio editor works as well as anything for recording tracks. So I loaded up Audacity, hit record, and went into my voice booth (err, closet). Everything worked perfectly, and I did some basic editing, saved my files to my Windows partition, rebooted, and did my editing in Windows while fighting with playback glitches.

And then I started to wonder. I know that Cool Edit and WINE don't play nice together. But what about Reaper? So after I finished my editing tasks, I booted Ubuntu again, installed WINE, and downloaded Reaper. And wouldn't you know it? It works like a charm.

I know Ardour is probably a better long term solution, because it's a digital audio workstation built for Linux. But I've had a pretty hard time in the past getting Jack configured. And Ubuntu just barely recognizes the sound drivers on my PC. So the fact that Reaper and WINE recognize my USB mixer makes me pretty giddy. And it also makes me one step closer to dropping Windows altogether. If I can just figure out how to synchronize my Windows Mobile 2003SE PDA with Sunbird, I think I'd be pretty much set.

Of course, if another Windows update make my audio drivers start working again I'll probably forget all about this.

Oh yeah, I tried loading Reaper on my Eee PC using WINE, and it didn't take quite as well. The application installed, and even seemed like it was going to run. But it froze on startup.

Update: I spoke too soon. It turns out Reaper does run on my Eee PC. It's a bit slow and glitchy when making recordings, but it seems up to basic editing tasks. The program is obviously meant for a larger screen, because there's no way to resize the mixer window, meaning you can only view one track at a time unless you just hide the mixer, which is what I've done below.

I was so excited to get Audacity installed on my Eee PC the other day, that I didn't notice at first that I'd installed Audacity 1.2.6. What I really wanted was Audacity 1.3.3 beta or at the very least 1.3 beta.

What's the difference? Well, there are a bunch of improvements in the 1.3 line, but the single most important change for me is in the way Audacity handles WAV splitting. In Audacity 1.2 the only way to grab a portion of the audio track and move it to the left or right is to create a new audio track. What I frequently need to do is chop an audio file up into lots of little itty pieces and place them on a timeline, which you can do with Audacity 1.3. If that didn't make any sense at all to you, just take a look at the image above.

As you can tell, I finally managed to install Audacity 1.3.3 beta on my Eee PC. But it wasn't easy. Or rather it was, but it took a little while to figure out the process.

The thing is, Xandros is a pretty stable Linux distribution. One of the reasons Asus picked Xandros for the Eee PC is because of that stability and because there are integrated solutions for handling proprietary codecs like Windows Media formats. That all means that non Linux-savvy users should have no problem with the Eee PC from the moment they unpack the box.

But here's one of the reasons Xandros is so stable. The developers test the heck out of all new applications before adding them to the Xandros repositories. In other words, while Audacity 1.3 beta has been out for over a year, as long as it wears the beta tag, odds are you won't be able to download it from a Xandros repository. And while The GIMP 2.4 came out recently, the newest version you'll be able to install with apt-get is 2.2.

You could just add some unstable, unsupported repositories to your package manager. But when I tried doing that, I was informed that Synaptic would uninstall almost every application on my Eee PC in order to install Audacity 1.3.3. I decided to find another solution instead.

And then it occurred to me that I have a portable version of Audacity on a USB flash drive. I'd loaded it up about a year ago, so I didn't remember exactly how the process went. At first I checked out Portable Apps, a great site for all things portable. But they're still offering up Audacity 1.2.6. But it turns out that the Audacity team has added a portable feature to the main program. All versions from Audacity 1.3.1 and up are capable of running from a flash drive.

All you have to do is download the zipped version of Audacity for Windows, unpack it to a folder on your flash card and create a subfolder titled "Portable Settings." Now all your settings will be written to that folder instead of a Windows directory.

Great, so now I have a version of Audacity 1.3.3 beta that I can run on any Windows machine. But what about Linux?

Although I haven't had the best of luck with WINE in the past, I figured it was worth a try. If you add "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main" to your repository list, you should be able to install WINE by typing "sudo apt-get install wine" into a terminal window. You can also use the Synaptic Package Manager if you'd prefer. WINE will take up about 38MB of disk space.

Now you can navigate to your flash drive, right click on Audacity.exe and select "open with" and type "wine" into the search box that pops up. Audacity 1.3.3 beta should run now!

I installed my Audacity folder on an SD card that I plan to keep in my Eee PC all the time. But if you prefer, you could create the Audacity folder on your PC's main memory. It's portable, which means it runs just as well from a flash drive, SD card, or main memory.

You can also add a shortcut to your start menu:

1. Go to Applications\System\Menu Editor.
   
2. Select your category (I went with Multimedia)
   
3. Right click on the category and select New Item
4. Fill out the name and description boxes any way you like
5. Type "wine Audacity" in the command box
6. Under Work Path, navigate to your Audacity Directory

I wasn't quite sure how to find an icon for Audacity, but since I had previously installed Audacity 1.2.6, I copied audacity16.xpm from /usr/share/audacity to my new Audacity folder before removing Audacity 1.2.6

Sure, I was able to install Audacity on my Eee PC, but what good is an audio editor without an audio input devices? I figured if worse came to worse, I could always pop the SD card out of my Zoom H4 audio recorder, throw it in the Eee PC's SD card slot and edit audio that way.

But it turns out the Eee PC has some pretty excellent hardware support for a Linux machine. When you plug the H4 into a PC, you can either use it as an external SD card reader or as an audio I/O device. That means you can speak into the H4's microphone and record audio on the PC, or plug devices into the XLR/quarter inch jacks. I didn't really expect this feature to work on my new Xandros-based laptop, but it does!

Here's a picture of my Eee PC running Audacity and recording audio from the Zoom H4 mic. The Eee PC also has a built in webcam with a microphone, so if you're not looking for professional audio quality, you don't really need an extra device. But as a radio journalist, I can fit the Zoom H4, the Eee PC, and a couple of cables and mics in a bag that's barely large enough to carry a full sized laptop.

Related posts:

• Installing Audacity on the Eee PC
• Zoom H4 review
• Zoom H2 review roundup

OK, it turns out there's an easy way to install Audacity, and there's an easy way. I showed you the hard way already. Now let's take a look at the easy way.

1. Go ahead and open a terminal by starting the file manager (located under the Work tab) and selecting "Open Console Window" from the Tools menu.
2. Now type "konqueror" to bring up the KDE file manager/web browser. If you want to avoid entering your password down the line, try typing "sudo konqueror."
3. Select Applications
4. Select System
5. Select Synaptic Package Manager
6. Under Settings, select Repositories
7. Click add and enter "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main"
8. Click the Search button and enter Audacity, GIMP, or any other program you're looking for.
9. Click on the check box next to the program you want to install and select Mark for installation
10. Click Apply and you're all set.

Related Posts:

• Installing Audacity on the Eee PC
• Unboxing the Eee PC
• Photos of the Eee PC next to other stuff

My primary plan for my Eee PC is to use it a mobile blogging tool. But I just had to see if I could install some audio editing software. It turns out the answer is yes. Yes I could.

Color me a little bit shocked that I managed to do this on my first day with my new toy. I had kind of sworn to myself that I wouldn't install any new software until I had played with everything the Eee PC had to offer out of the box. But where's the fun in that?

When you first power up the Eee PC, there are about 40 programs installed. One is a sound recorder, but that won't get you very far if you're editing podcasts or radio stories. Ardour might be pushing it a bit, so I figured I would try to install Audacity. There's a simple add/remove programs dialog included, but right now there are only a handful of programs that you can download and most of them are actually just updated versions of the applications that ship with the Eee PC.

While working to connect the Eee PC to my home network so I could play some music off of a shared drive (it comes with Amarok, and does a pretty decent job of playing music through headphones or the built-in speakers), I noticed that there was an option to "Open Console Window" in the File Manager. Ah hah! For some reason this option is grayed out when you're in some directories. But when you're browsing attached storage devices or shared network drives, it shows up.

So I fired up the console and typed "apt-get install audacity." Nothing happened. Actually I got some error message or other. I forget what it was. I wasn't surprised. I figured I'd have to add some repositories. To make a long story short, here is how to install Audacity, and presumably a bunch of other programs on an Eee PC:

1. Open that console window by going to File Manager and clicking Tools/Open Console Window
2. Navigate to //etc/apt
1. You do this by first typing "cd //"
2. Then type "cd etc"
3. And finally "cd apt"
3. Now it's time to edit your source list using the vi text editor
   
1. Type "sudo vi sources.list"
2. User the arrow keys to put your cursor just below "deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main
3. Hit the "i" key to enter insert mode
4. Type "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main"
5. Hit the "esc" key to exit insert mode
6. Press "ZZ" in order to exit and save
4. Now you should be back at the console
5. Type "sudo apt-get update" to get an updated list of available packages
6. Type "sudo apt-get install audacity" to install audacity.
   
7. Select yes when it asks if you want to continue
8. When Audacity is done installing, type "audacity" to launch the program.

And you're all set. Don't expect Audacity to be a speed demon on a 900MHz processor. And by default, sound files are larger than your screen so you'll need to do some resizing of your windows to make everything fit. This is a common problem on the Eee PC, but it's not insurmountable. Usually.

Also, there doesn't appear to be an easy way to create a desktop shortcut for launching Audacity. That means you'll need to fire up the terminal every time you want to run this or any other unsupported program you install. If you can live without audio editing for the time being, you might want to wait and see whether Asus offers Audacity or other programs you may be looking for in future updates.

If you're not familiar with Linux, this procedure can be a bit dangerous. Here's a complete list of instructions for using the vi text editor. It could save your life if you wind up hitting the wrong buttons and deleting the Eee PC official sourc list. And here's a list of safe repositories to try if the Debian repository I mentioned above doesn't work.

If you do accidentally wind up deleting your Eee PC repositories, just open up sources.list agan and make sure you enter these two lines:

• deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701 p701 main
• deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main

Update: Notebook Review points out an easier text editor than vi. Novice that I am, I used the first text editor I could think of. But instead of typing "sudo vi sources.list" try "sudo nano sources.list." The nano text editor is much easier to use. And more importantly, it includes instructions at the bottom of the screen.

Update 2: And for an even easier method, try using the hidden Synaptics Package Manager.

Related Posts:

• Unboxing the Eee PC