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Huh, WinBoat looks pretty slick. It does seem to be a full (partial?) Windows install running in a VM, with all the pros and cons of that. I wonder how on earth they manage licensing... For those of us for whom installing MS software is a complete no-go, there are some alternatives to Windows-in-a-VM, and here in the year of our lord 2025 things run surprisingly smoothly. Might be worth trying out these solutions first. Everything is based on WINE, of course, which is a Windows API emulation layer. You can use WINE by itself like a neanderthal, but it's much easier with a nice frontend. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard good things about Bottles https://usebottles.com/ For games, the name of the game is proton, which is WINE + a DirectX translation layer. Again you can roll your own, but here you have a choice of a few frontends. If you're playing Steam games, just install Steam. Steam is Linux native and just works and so do 99% of games. By default Steam will only let you launch games that are "verified", but if you go to Settings -> Compatibility there is an option to enable Steam Play (what Valve has branded proton) for all titles. For some games you may or may not want to fiddle with running different the game with different versions of proton, but that is a game-specific setting. For non-steam games, first of all you can just add them as a Steam shortcut and run them that way. Works pretty great with things that are just distributed as a .exe inside a folder (I use it for Sonic fangames). But also, GoG, Epic, and Amazon storefronts have a frontend call Heroic Launcher which works incredibly well. It's how I played Baldur's Gate 3 and Witcher 3, both of which I have on GoG. There's also a miscellaneous game launcher called Lutris, but I haven't had much luck getting it to run anything successfully. In a certain sense that can never happen and in a certain sense it already has. We have to get our terminology straight a little. "Linux" the way we've been using it in this conversation is shorthand for a big glob of software, only one part is technically actually called "Linux". "Linux" is just the kernel of the OS, the very low-level part that talks to the hardware directly and provides APIs for applications to use computer resources (among other more technical duties like process scheduling and memory allocation). The rest of the OS is usually called "userland". Android is Linux in that it uses the Linux kernel, but the userland on top of Android is increasingly under Google's draconian control. They just announced new shenanigans about sideloading set to take place next year that people are actively protesting https://keepandroidopen.org/ In that sense, large companies have already taken over and displaced open-source software. Desktop Linux (what Stallman wants everyone to call GNU/Linux but that's also kind of not technically correct anymore) though has proven more resilient. Large corporations have tried shenanigans with desktop Linux, but every time they do, someone comes out of the woodwork and creates a new Linux distro without said shenanigans. A sort of "my own Linux, with blackjack and hookers" sort of strategy. The biggest threat to desktop Linux isn't so much corporate software meddling, but corporate hardware meddling. Microsoft continues to try to make Linux more and more difficult to install on your own hardware with "features" like Secure Boot. I worry that the almost-assuredly-impending mass migration to ARM-based PCs will be the opportunity that MS seizes to really lock down the hardware and make it impossible to install a non-Windows OS. (Even then there are companies like Raspberry Pi and Framework that will keep the torch going, but I worry that's not a self-sustaining ecosystem...)

This is cool, not too often that I hear a chill rendition of Dedede's theme, so this is a great change of pace. Could take this on a city at night drive and would feel just fine. Very nice.

Gives me a big "shanty party in a tavern" vibes during the Jib Jig bits, and it's neat to see the boss theme work into it as I also didn't realize the motif similarities. This is really good.

Here's to the first of (hopefully) many Halloween album volumes to come! Thank you for putting the project together and sharing it with the world.

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Hey all! I'm not on either team this time but wanted to stick my notes in writing somewhere: Калинка Cool proggy/post-rock opening, good vibe to start GSM4 on. Sounds like seph did a ton of overdubs. Ending is also cute and well thought-out. I Wish I Wish I can see people wishing the sources were more dominant but this is my second-favorite one for this round. Not sure who did what (I'm not familiar with Oscar/Atcero's styles) but it does a lot with a little* and I love the Satisfaction/VN-sounding portamento saws. Burning Obsession Perfect "fire stage" intro with the guitar trills and toms. Thought josh did these drums at first. Heard Queen did the mixing, sounds great. The bridge being tongue-in-cheek is really funny and Weeks' range works good for the X VA. Only real critique is that I think it could either be a little more punk/sludgy or a little more Broadway; as-is the backing track sounds almost surf rock at points splitting the difference. Vulcan's Doorstep Was expecting this to turn into full-fidelity psytrance at some point but kind of glad it didn't; JSA's writing with Xaleph's mixing/perfectionism is a great combo, reminds me of Project S-11 in some places. Specifically wrote down that the bass at 1:44 and Rocket Hideout-sounding foley at 2:08 are cool. Vile Circuitry Think this is my favorite one of the round. Seph(?)'s vocal foley at the start is funny but this one is really technically impressive. The almost djent-y rhythms and stuff in the second half help spice it up. I heard yami did the mixing - I'm not familiar with their style yet but it's a great start for mixing metal, the kicks around the 3 min mark are super aggressive. A Vile Medley Weil and Wave are both crazy sources - surprised neither team just called it Weilwave. Medley is really, really well-produced, to the point that I think it would have trounced anything from GSM3 Round 1. It's lush but not muddy. cammy's sax kicking in is comparable to Weeks' soprano coming in for Sakura Wa Karenai during GSM3. In practice this track has everything I'd want out of a jazz/funk mix, but I'm leaning slightly towards Circuitry, just because I'm familiar with seph's workflow and know he would have sunk a ton of time into doing those guitar overdubs/countermelodies for like 4 minutes straight. Hemo's debut on the keys is cool too - they're slightly too humanized imo, but a really strong opener and again, production is crazy across the board. --- Overall notes It's fun seeing the genres/production of each GSM based on who's playing. GSM2 leaned a lot more electronica, GSM3 was weirdly super consistent with longform pop/rock tracks. It was fun for 3, but I don't think 18 four- to five-minute tracks is sustainable or a normal expectation for every GSM. *The tracks being shorter but "burning brighter" for 4 gives it more room for stuff like I Wish I Wish to exist. I wouldn't really describe 4 as anything but "experimental" genre-wise so far but it'll be cool to see teams find more niches round-by-round. Also, just a suggestion for Team Mega Man - do something Splatoony! Get seph or someone to do some wobbly resonant synths and it splits the difference between the punk instrumentation and the more "aristocratic", un-filtered vocals on Burning Obsession.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. )) Since the delivery of my SSD hard drive for the planned Windows 10 Pro installation has been postponed by almost a month, I think I'll at least install and test Linux on my old notebook to find out how it works in detail, how well, fast and safe it runs compared to a Windows version, and what DAW-related possibilities it offers. I've already flashed the latest version of Linux Mint onto a USB stick so that I can install it on my older notebook later. Another interesting development in the Linux universe seems to be Winboat, which allows modern software developed for Windows to run smoothly on Linux: https://www.winboat.app/ The version is currently still in the beta development phase, but is already said to be working not too bad: Let's see what the near future will bring for developments like these. ... And once software developers realize that more and more people - perhaps 10 to 20% of operating system users - are switching to Linux (which is already a significant number), it is very likely that more and more programs and well-known software will be developed as alternatives or even natively for Linux. And then we can only hope that Linux, with its increasing market power, does not follow a similar path to Microsoft, for example by allowing large companies to overshadow, take over, displace, or even buy up the open-source software sector within Linux distributions.

🦇 Ahhhhhhh, yes. . . 'Tis the time, my children -- The Witching Hour *(GMT)! 🦇 Gather 'round!--for the Oogie Boogie Man has come to me bearing gifts on this eventful All Hallows' Eve! 🎃 It is (a)live, my darlings! The first ever 'Unofficial' An OverClocked Halloween, Volume I! 🪦 https://overclockedhalloween.boo/ 🪦 Get it now while it's *F R E S H* from the witches' brew, empowered by the fires of Hell and Brimstone!!! 😈 Have it in the background for your sordid partying affairs! Groove away the blasted day on-through till the dead of night with these wonderful tunes! I'd like to thank everyone who believed in this project: helped out, made the website, endorsed it, made their tracks for it (and placed them trustingly and lovingly into my claws to help produce and master), AND (lastly but not least-ly) those of **YOU** who're downloading the .zip folder *RIGHT NOW* and partaking of the treats (and tricks) this marvelous day! 🧡🌹 Thank you so, so much, from the bottom of my hearts (all three of them!!); have a lovely Halloween, and I look forward to spreading the spooky cheer next autumnal season, October 2026! ENJOY--and remember kids: "don't ever invite a vampire into your house, you silly [humans]. It renders you powerless!" 💀

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really lovely to listen to

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - The Purgatory Arena Remix | Astroverse Dimensions

Fantastic round 1. Very impressed with what came out. Looking forward to the future rounds.

Ha, thanks! I got more cooking 😁

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So I'm a little ahead of the game on this, as I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about 20 years now. The good news is that switching to Linux has never been easier. There's never been more options for user-friendly distros, and almost everything just works now. For general Linux advice, almost any beginner distro will do. I would personally avoid Ubuntu (and its flavors, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc). Ubuntu derivatives are fine, but Ubuntu itself has a new package format (snap) that only it uses, and I've found it to be a bit janky. I would also avoid Arch and its derivatives because first of all Arch is not user friendly at all, and second, Arch updates tend to be pretty unstable. Updates are frequent and pretty bleeding edge and you can expect stuff to be janky or stop working over time. I think the current best beginner distros are PopOS, Mint, and MXLinux. Honorable mention for ElementaryOS. As for DAWs, for obvious reasons I only ever considered DAWs that run on Linux. I found Ardour to have too much of a learning curve and not enough documentation to surmount it. Audacity is easy enough to use, but pretty clunky and not really intended as a full DAW so much as feature-heavy audio file editing. Someone (I think Argle) brought Reaper to my attention. I tried it out, fell deeply, madly in love with it, and have been using it ever since. That said, I'm only using it to do podcast editing. The closest I get to actual music production is Furnace Tracker, which does run flawlessly in Linux. I'm sticking with Linux for the foreseeable future, but I do have a couple of caveats and quibbles with the modern state of Linux. I don't mean this as a discouragement, but just to temper expectations. Things are improving but not perfect in Linux right now. We are somewhere in the middle of a major infrastructure transition. Everything still works, but you might notice more little inconsistencies and bugs and jank than you would have even five years ago. Distros and desktop environments are moving towards making the newer Wayland windowing system the default instead of ye olde X11. Wayland is a much cleaner design than X11, but it is less mature and rougher around the edges. My experience using Wayland has been a desktop with annoying little bugs and bits of jank everywhere. Because of this, I still run X11, but I know someday I'll have to make the switch. Linux audio infrastructure is also a bit complex these days. Something called PipeWire has largely replaced the older PulseAudio and is backwards compatible with it. There is a similar story with PulseAudio and JACK. But if you need to do anything off the beaten path with audio at the moment, which I suspect a lot of us might, you will probably find yourself having to wrestle configs that have to mess with pulse and pipewire and JACK all at the same time. As for what made me switch? Windows Vista was waaaaaay too slow on the laptop I had 20 years ago.

Kakariko Village with blast beats and reverb for days was not on my bingo card, but I'm glad someone's doing it! I'm on board with the arrangement of this one; there's a nice energy curve from the open and reverb-drenched intro into the heavy groove of the first pass or two of the source material. The parts as written are a great fit for the styles you've chosen. The accompaniment falling out for the lead guitar at 1:18 leading back into more riffage at 1:30 is tasty as hell as are the aforementioned blast beats and double-bass patterns that follow. The post-rock ending with the returning wash of reverb works (though a fade rather than a clipped-off tail would be fantastic; this should be an easy fix). Ultimately, though, I have to side with my fellow Js on the NO side of the fence for the production quality. The snare is overcompressed and the rhythm guitars are oppressively loud in the mix, not to mention the lack of bass frequencies outside of the sub hit. This track is really close to the bar IMO and those tweaks are worth it for the best presentation of this track. Please get this one back to us as soon as you can because this is an idea with legs! NO (resubmit)

Man, it took me a long time to finally break away from Windows. Coming from a graphic design background, I was deep in Adobe’s ecosystem, so it wasn’t easy to let go. I eventually gave up on Windows 10 when support was ending — I was just completely fed up with the whole experience. I decided to try Ubuntu, which sent me down the rabbit hole of hopping from distro to distro until I finally landed on Debian 12. Since I’m on a budget, I’ve always used older, inexpensive hardware — stuff that often had no real support on Windows. But on Debian? Everything just worked! Sure, a few things needed extra drivers, but the community support for aging hardware was incredible. It’s honestly a beautiful thing. Plus, not having to support a mega-corporation that’s pushing spyware into its latest version feels even better. Finding a new DAW was the real struggle. I came from FL Studio and was slowly transitioning to Ableton, so switching to Linux was pretty jarring. At first, all I could find were Reaper, Ardour, and LMMS — none of which really clicked with me. I just wanted something that felt like Ableton, with an attractive, intuitive interface that was easy to navigate. After a while, I stumbled upon Bitwig Studio. One of the main reasons I chose it is because it runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, so I’m not locked into a single operating system. I often see people say they can’t switch OSs because their DAWs, VSTs, and other tools are tied to one platform — and I totally get that. But for me, I want the freedom to go wherever I want. VSTs are still the one area I haven’t fully figured out yet, but for now I’m using CLAP plugins and plan to explore Winboat for running VSTs in the future. Other than that, I’m really glad I finally made the switch to Linux. It took some time to learn, but with the help of ChatGPT and the online community, the transition was so much smoother. Sidenote, this was the video that convinced me to make the switch.

This and https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04936 this download are not working unfortunately

We love a little Licc every now and again 😂

Still proud for contributing to that song via bell synths hehe Also I may have put... too many Lickitungs in the MIDI...

Amen. Highlight of the round for me :)