Soundblaster Z support?

[_UV_]

Creative cards cost way too much IMO, because of their stance on drivers. I don't know any other company that abandons support completely just after a successor product releases.

Well, in first case Creative with SB Audigy 4 Pro, Elite Pro, E-MU 1820m/1616m and so on dropped market prices for "high end" sound 5-10 times, those 1 dollar DACs - CS4398 before them was used in ProTools studio hardware (cost 15-100k $) and audiophile grade receivers/external dacs (cost 5-15k $ each), for the rest of people DACs in even semiprofessional home studio hardware or 1k$ receivers was near the same AC97/HD Audio onboard, with a bit better surrounding electronics.

In second case agree completely, me waiting about 3-5 years for them to release proper Elite pro driver for W7...

 

[RejZoR]

Creative has a lot less problems since they switched to Core3D. Lack of real hardware accelerated API is also a factor I think. But it also shows in 3D audio quality. The audio aspect of games has never been as underwhelming as it is lately.

 

[m0nt3]

I take back what I said in the beginning... I friggin love linux now. Especially Ubuntu. It can be as easy as you want, or as hard. If just getting an usb dac for sound is all it takes, I'm getting one.
So easy to open term and issue: sudo apt-get install whateveryouwant. I've spent about 3 weeks in linux immersion so far, wake up to my linux screen, go to bed after seeing it. You learn lots when
you force yourself to do that. And the linux users are right, pretty much any issue you have, you can google it and solve it. Oh yeah, I started with computers using only dos, so maybe that helps....
but Ubuntu, especially Kubuntu, is so beautifully configurable, and should be familiar to any windows user, that anyone should find it usable. Sorry rambling.. but I've had a breakthrough!

If you like Kubuntu (when I tried it 3 years ago it was unstable and bloated) then you really should be using KDE Neon, it is ubuntu base but is maintained by KDE developors and has the newest KDE Plasma packages. It would be the best experience for KDE Plasma.

https://neon.kde.org/

 

[johnspack]

Dude, you should try Kubuntu now... it's very fast, and has features up the ying yang.... on my hardware install it would boot in less than 10 secs. It's rock solid, admining it is a breeze, software is plentiful and
easy to find. With a ton of stuff running, I still haven't been able to make it use more than 2gbs ram, or even that. You can install it fully in less than 10 mins including updates. Multimedia support is out of the box.
I'm sorry, but I could go on and on... quite frankly beats the sh*t out of windows. I will be trying neon... I have at least 2 dozen distros in vms right now, but I always come back to Kubuntu 17.10.

 

[m0nt3]

Dude, you should try Kubuntu now... it's very fast, and has features up the ying yang.... on my hardware install it would boot in less than 10 secs. It's rock solid, admining it is a breeze, software is plentiful and
easy to find. With a ton of stuff running, I still haven't been able to make it use more than 2gbs ram, or even that. You can install it fully in less than 10 mins including updates. Multimedia support is out of the box.
I'm sorry, but I could go on and on... quite frankly beats the sh*t out of windows. I will be trying neon... I have at least 2 dozen distros in vms right now, but I always come back to Kubuntu 17.10.

Kubuntu just uses older versions of Plasma and QT, other than that they both use an ubuntu base, however neon uses Ubuntu LTS (currently 16.04). I stick to rolling release because I need newer kernels and mesa (amd open source drivers, which are quite amazing now). Currently I am using solus a very nice and user friendly rolling release distro. It is also great because I can hop into IRC and speak to the devs directly for issues or questions, they are very helpful

 

[johnspack]

Incorrect.. Kubuntu comes in both LTS and rolling flavors. I use the rolling which is Ubuntu 17.10 based. LTS doesn't have enough for what I need. 17.10 has the newest plasma interface, and all the newest goodies.
Edit: Check out the 2 versions: https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/

 

[johnspack]

Plasma enough for ya?

 

[m0nt3]

Incorrect.. Kubuntu comes in both LTS and rolling flavors. I use the rolling which is Ubuntu 17.10 based. LTS doesn't have enough for what I need. 17.10 has the newest plasma interface, and all the newest goodies.
Edit: Check out the 2 versions: https://kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/

I am familiar with Kubuntu, KDE neon gets the newest version of KDE Plasma in a rolling release manor (not the base system, just Plasma and QT), so it is typically at a newer version. Kubuntu is unlikely to do a Plasma update till the next release. The ubuntu periodic releases is not considered a rolling release. Rolling release distros are OpenSUSE Tubleweed, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Debian testing/unstable, and solus to name a few. For instance, 17.10 will end support in 9 months at which point you have to do a do-release-upgrade to move to the newest Ubuntu release for support. With a rolling release there is no need to do a "system upgrade" because the release is rolling a normal upgrade gets you up to date and never loses support. With the Ubuntu releases they loose support LTS is for 5 years (with a new LTS every 2 years) and the periodic release for up to 9months. With Ubuntu method the xserver, kernel, mesa, and DE versions stay the same with the exception of minor version updates. Typically with a rolling release packages are pushed shortly after they hit upstream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_distribution