CinnaMate Studio : Building Your Own Linux Machinima WorkStation

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Be it as it may, I'm hell bent on pushing this idea of a free and open source New Linux based Machinima Studio.

    I'm calling it CinnaMate for a very good reason, it's based on 2 User Interface designs that suit my needs when combined. Cinnamon the X desktop is incredibly versatile, I see no reason why it can not work cooperatively within a Tablet - Laptop - Desktop scenario.  There is unfortunately a drawback, it is currently resource intensive, the son of a gun sucks up GPU cycles like crazy. This is where the Mate UI comes into place, I can do my thing producing in Cinnamon and then do the hard rendering stuff in Mate together with a little bit of KDE and XFCE  added in, it's a killer combination.

    My logic being, use Cinnamon for the really creative stuff, and for back end rendering you drop back to the Mate UI, and if you really need all the extra horsepower ya can squeeze out of you computer, then there is FluxBox.

    I gotta tell ya I am having a absolute blast playing around with this, and its not hard to do. I have had several versions running, on Debian, Sabayon, Mint, all of them extreme ALPHA's / Haa-Haa -that's half the fun

 The way I look at it is Linux is a set of building blocks, an erector set of sorts, you take a basic spin from a solid distro, and put together the various modules necessary to accomplish the end goal.

I'm getting a little fat headed here right now / but here are some instructions for a basic build of CinnaMate Alpha on Sabayon Linux 14.01

PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING

Download and install : Sabayon 14.01 at http://mirror.clarkson.edu/sabayon/iso/main.html

   I recommend a spare hard drive / partition / computer - whatever you do / don't try this on your your main rig. :_)

   Ok so I'm figuring ya got this far and your still with me. That's encouraging, however since this is Sabayon Linux your gonna need to do a few things before proceeding any further, when your finished doing this, and if you still have the stomach for some adventure come on back. I'll begin to walk you through a CMS built from scratch.


    So before you go any further PLEASE READ this.
https://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?title=Entropy#Fresh_Install_-_What_to_do.3F

If ya made it this far and ya know how to get to a root terminal / have at it :_)

# equo install mate-1.6.0

   // Then used rigo to install extra mate packages
   // Ok so that stuff is out of the way, now i need to install some stuff I cant live without.
 
# equo install konsole 

# equo install kate 

# equo install kdenlive

# equo install khelpcenter-4.11.4

# equo install highlighting-kate

   // Ok that got all the KDE stuff I wanted.

   // at that point i rebooted into Mate changed screen resolution and checked to make sure
   // bzimage & kernal matched 

# equo eselect bzimage list

# equo eselect kernel list

   // both should matched
   
   // OK next deal is to set up the generic video driver correctly / in most cases it should // be automatic for the majority of computers produced within the past 9 years or so.
   // Propriety drivers *NVIDIA-ATI-INTEL* your on your own there. Good Luck & Be Patient.
   
# equo eselect opengl list

   // If you see xorg-x11*
   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   // *note the " * " next to x11
   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   // if you were lucky enough you may have seen something like this
   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   // jayr@action4 ~ $ su
   // Password: 
   // action4 jayr # eselect opengl list
   //Available OpenGL implementations:
   //  [1]   ati
   //  [2]   nvidia *
   //  [3]   xorg-x11
   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
 As you can see it has correctly identified my GPU architecture / if it's not the right one is very easy to revert to the generic driver / however you may have to go into complete command line mode from the boot rescue login option / if thats the case just follow the proper procedure to login with your ROOT password and

 # eselect opengl list
   
   // this will get you a list of options
   // go for the xorg-x11 selection for now / until you can figure out your video driver 
   // issues / you can do that by 
   
# eselect opengl set 3

   // please note your numerical selection may differ from this example
   // in order to test it
   
# eselect opengl list

// OK my next step is to install a couple of XFCE4 & a few other X-Utilitities / 

# equo install xfce4-screenshooter
# equo install xfce4-mixer
# equo install xfburn
# equo install xfe
# equo install audacious

// Now we are going to want a ton of plugins
// So get ready as I walk us through this
// unfortunately we are gonna need Flash and ShockWave

# equo install www-plugins/adobe-flash-11.2.202.232

   // pease note that the actual Flash player numbering may differ
   // I am really hoping that the LightSpark project will take off / 
   // Gnash seems to be dead in the water
   // and I am sick and tired of Flash / LOL :_)
   // anyways you should be able to figure it out
   // now is probabably a good time to install the QuickTime Libs as well
    
# equo install libquicktime  

// OK now a bunch of Gstreamer stuff needs to be added, and your gonna have to do that later via RIGO

// there are a ton of other VST - Ladspa -LV2 plugins in the repositories / we can get them later
// for now we are just going to install the Cinnamon desktop UI

# equo install cinnamon-2.0.12


// This should get you up and running // Is Try at your own risk

I'll be posting some pictures and video's this weekend, and throughout the week.


JayR Cela :_)