Indamixx has been putting out custom netbooks designed for creating and editing music for a year or two now. Basically, Indamixx offers an off-the-shelf netbook like an MSI Wind U100 that’s been tweaked with extra RAM and loaded up with a custom Linux distribution and tons of open source audio production software as well as commercial apps including Renoise. Now the company is offering Indamixx Portable Studio USB Stick Version for netbooks and laptops.

The $149 2GB USB stick comes preloaded with same OS and all the same software you would get if you purchased an Indamixx netbook. But you can use your existing netbook, which should save you some money (if you already have a netbook). For $69, you can also download the Indamixx software as an ISO file.

Theoretically you could install Ubuntu or another Linux distribution yourself and load much of the same software that’s available from Indamixx. But the Indamixx solution does offer a few features that would be hard to come by elsewhere, including the ArdourXchange, which is a commercial Pro Tools compatible protocol for the open source Ardour digital audio workstation. The OS also uses a zero-latency kernel.

via TMCnet

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13 replies on “Turn your netbook into a portable music studio with Indamixx USB stick”

  1. and a huge rip off….. are you paying the people who WROTE the software your selling? or even read the terms of service of there “open scorce freeware” as you are using out of its intended perpous. by selling it your blatently making money off other peoples hard work, and your only excuse is sitting there putting it all together in a package? get bent

  2. Would this be good for recording songs and editing and polishing them on your netbook? I am basically trying to find something I can record/make my own music with.

  3. “The OS also uses a zero-latency kernel.”

    LOL.

    Care to explain what you mean by zero-latency kernel, and what your source was for that?

    1. zero-latency kernel is optimized to give priory to audio applications. It’s easy to build one it’s a couple of compile time flags for a standard kernel.

      Check Planet CCRMA. You can load a standard copy of Fedora and then install their packages and you will have zero-latency kernel plus almost any audio app ever made for Linux. Including a lot developed by Planet CCRMA. It’s all free and open source.

      Also If you need a media server/NAS check out the VortexBox linux distro mentioned above. It can auto rip CDs and stream them to any player. Plus its a standard NAS. Free and open source as well.

          1. There’s no such thing as zero latency, period. At least not yet, because it would require instant processing, as in, breaking the laws of physics as we know them. There is, however, such a thing as a low latency kernel, preemptive kernel, realtime preemptive kernel, etc…..

  4. they charge $150 for “Linux distribution and tons of open source audio production software”- so why is the jump drive worth $150?

  5. From Distrowatch:

    1. 64 Studio
    64 Studio is a collection of software for digital content creation on x86_64 hardware (that’s AMD’s 64-bit CPUs and Intel’s EM64T chips). It’s based on the pure 64 port of Debian GNU/Linux, but with a specialised package selection and lots of other customisations. It will be marketed to hardware OEMs in the creative workstation and laptop markets as an alternative to the 64-bit version of Windows XP, or OS X on Apple hardware.

    2. AGNULA GNU/Linux Audio Distribution
    AGNULA (acronym for A GNU/Linux Audio distribution, pronounced with a strong g) is the name of a project funded by the European Commission. The project is coordinated by the Centro Tempo Reale in Firenze and involves important research centers and institutions. AGNULA’s main task will be the development of two reference distributions for the GNU/Linux operating system completely based on Free Software (i.e. under a FSF approved Free Software license) and completely devoted to professional and consumer audio applications and multimedia development. One distribution will be Debian-based (DeMuDi) and the other will be Red Hat-based (ReHMuDi). Both will be available on the network for download and on CD. The project started on the 1st April 2002 and will last for two years. In the second year the project will also extend to hardware platforms other than PCs (e.g. PowerPCs, 64-bit architectures).

    3. APODIO
    APODIO is a Linux live and installation DVD with a large collection of open source audio and video software, as well as graphical utilities for making system administration as simple and intuitive as possible. It is based on Ubuntu.

    4. ArtistX
    ArtistX is a Ubuntu-based bootable DVD containing many free multimedia software packages for audio, 2D and 3D graphics, and video production. The goal of this project is to showcase the variety of multimedia software available on the GNU/Linux platform and to enable creative individuals to accomplish their tasks with the help of Free Software.

    5. dyne:bolic
    dyne:bolic is a GNU/Linux distribution running from a CD and able to recognise most of your devices and peripherals: sound, video, TV, network cards, firewire, USB devices and more. It is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creative individuals, a practical tool for multimedia production. You can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, all using free software!

    6. eAR OS
    eAR OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution featuring the advanced, yet simple-to-operate eAR Media Centre. Tune in to TV programs, rip CDs to hard disk in lossless FLAC quality, watch digital TV and DVDs, listen to Internet radio, view photos, or listen to music – all from within an intuitive user interface. The distribution is available in two flavours – either as a freely downloadable “Free” edition, or as a commercial “Enterprise” edition with extra features and performance enhancements.

    7. Element
    Element is an Ubuntu-based distribution for home theatre or media-centre personal computers featuring a ten-foot user interface and designed to be connected to a HDTV for a digital media and Internet experience within the comforts of a living room or entertainment area. Element comes pre-loaded with dozens of applications that will allow listening to, viewing, and managing music, videos, photos, and Internet media.

    8. Freepia
    Freepia is small GNU/Linux distribution designed to run on VIA EPIA-M mainboards. It currently only runs on the M-9000 and M-10000 (ezra and nehemia CPU) but with some modifications like kernel and X11 modules it should run on others too. The main goal of this project is to build a full-featured, low-noise media box to play movies, MP3s, images, etc. It uses freevo as its media viewer, but in the future there may be support for others, like mythtv or vdr.

    9. GeeXboX
    GeeXboX is a full operating system, running under Linux and based on the excellent MPlayer. No need of hard drive, you just have to put the GeeXboX bootable CD into the CD-Drive of any pentium-class computer to boot it. Moreover, GeeXboX is a free software, created thanks to many open-source software. This means that everyone can modify it and build his own release of the GeeXboX. You may wonder why you could have to boot on another operating system to play your media files, but just think about the Mini-ITX plateforms like VIA Epia/Eden or Shuttle barebones. It’s now affordable to bring DivX to your home cinema, plugging this kind of computers directly to your TV. At the time of the first development release (December 2002), it was only able to play DivX movies, but for now, nearly every kind of media files can be played from GeeXboX.

    10. Grafpup Linux
    Grafpup Linux is a desktop Linux operating system based closely on Puppy Linux. Its goal is to be as useful to graphic designers and other imaging professionals as possible while still remaining extremely small and fast. Grafpup is a live CD of only 75MB with current versions of GIMP, Cinepaint, Inkscape, and Scribus. Grafpup is also very user-friendly, with wizards for doing most system tasks like connecting to the internet and installing to hard disk or USB drive. There is also a powerful package management system, “pupget”, with a very extensive and ever increasing list of additional packages available for easy installation.

    11. JackLab Audio Distribution
    JackLab Audio Distribution is an openSUSE-based Linux distribution designed for musicians, producers and media creators. It is based on a low-latency, real-time Linux kernel and features the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for professional audio/midi controlling interface. The distribution uses Enlightenment 17 as its default desktop.

    12. JUSIX
    JUSIX is a smal Linux distribution bootable from CD. JUSIX supports many video and audio formats including the most popular mp3, vob, DivX, DVD, mpeg, mpg, avi. You can connect your old PC to TV, amplifier and create a home media center to watch movies or listen to music.

    13. MoviX, MoviX², eMoviX
    MoviX is a package that allows you to create bootable CDs able to boot & autoplay your multimedia files. It is intended mainly to play video files but if you want it can be used to play also audio files. I plan to release eventually a distro similar to MoviX but aimed at audio only, so stay tuned! The philosophy behind MoviX is to make possible to generate video/audio CDs that are self-sufficient, i.e. that you can play on every PC regardless of what is installed on it: just insert the MoviX CD inside a CD/DVD-ROM and boot the PC from there!
    MoviX2 is a small Linux distro on CD aimed at playing multimedia: when you boot your PC with the MoviX2 CD the distro should be able to start X-Window and launch gmplayer, the GUI interface to mplayer, so that you are left with a nice user-friendly interface you can control by your mouse. At that point you can safely remove the MoviX2 CD and play all multimedia files you want: DVD [no zone constraint], VCD, DivX, avi, mpg, mp3, ogg etc.

    14. Musix GNU/Linux
    Musix GNU+Linux is a Debian-based distribution featuring a collection of free software for audio production, graphic design and video editing.

    15. StartCom Linux
    StartCom Enterprise Linux, which is based on the Red Hat AS source code, is the ultimate solution for middle-size servers to large data centres. The current version supports the largest commodity-architecture servers with up to 16 CPUs and 64GB (on x86 systems) of main memory, Global File System – for highly scalable, high performance data sharing in multi-system configurations. Included in this distribution is a comprehensive collection of open source server applications like mail, file (SMB/NFS), DNS, web, FTP, and a complete desktop environment.

    16. Turbolinux
    Turbolinux distributions are designed from the ground-up specifically for enterprise computing. Turbolinux 7 Server was the first-ever to conform to Internationalization standards to help simplify development of applications that require multiple language support – a critical requirement for software distributed globally. Turbolinux 7 Server also supports the Large File Support (LFS) standard for working with applications that manage or handle up to four terabytes of data – a common requirement for infrastructures serving Fortune 500 and larger companies. Such industrial-strength environments provide the basis upon which PowerCockpit and other Turbolinux innovations were created.

    17. Ubuntu Studio
    Ubuntu Studio is a variant of Ubuntu aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional. The distribution provides a collection of open-source applications available for multimedia creation.

    18. VideoLinux
    VideoLinux is a PCLinuxOS-based distribution with focus on DVD backups, video encoding and transcoding, DVD authoring, format conversion and pretty much anything else you want to do with video.

    19. VortexBox
    VortexBox is a Fedora-based Linux distribution that turns an unused computer into an easy-to-use music server or jukebox. Once VortexBox has been loaded it will automatically rip CDs to FLAC and MP3 files, ID3-tag the files, and download the cover art. VortexBox will then serve the files to network media player. The file can also be streamed to a Windows or Mac OS X system.

    20. WOMP!
    WOMP! is a micro Linux distribution focused on multimedia. It takes only 13 to 30MB depending on the selected options on a bootable CD, and allows playing a wide range of multimedia files (video/audio/image) without installing any software on the computer’s hard drive. Additionally, WOMP! can also be installed on the hard drive – either to run in memory just like a bootable CD, or to run from a read-only loopback file which is interesting for machines with low memory. It can then be booted either by a floppy boot disk or by a bootable CD. WOMP! uses FrameBuffer for playing videos and X for interacting with the user. Hardware acceleration is provided by vidix. Cards that support vidix include nearly all ATI and Matrox cards, and more recent NVIDIA cards.

    1. Hi I’m a musician from France for 23 years, with atari at the beginning then with PC and now of course with a Mac and Protools.

      Using linux is so interesting because it’s more stable than a PC (and I hate viruses lol). I’ve been searching a solution for fun and even if you gave many distribution, your selection is long but not good. Now there is only one distribution so complete which can be used to make some professionnal under linux : AVLINUX.

      The link is : https://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html

      In this distribution you have in standard many pilots to use audiocards of the market plug and play.

      If you want to be totally good join REAPER sequencer in it which is running with wine.

      Let’s the music play on…

      1. you’re right! AVlnux not only detected my audio interfaces correctly but installed the nvidia drivers correctly. VST plugins work great….outta the box. My favorite audio distro. gotta be sure to donate.

  6. Why would it be better than audicity, which is free for all os linux os x and windows? Paying money for something does not automatically make it better than free software.

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