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Nice! A few tech comments...

Posted by AbeCollins (A) on August 1, 2018 at 08:15:54

In Reply to: For Abe posted by Mercman on August 1, 2018 at 05:10:50:

Thanks Steve.

The Nucleus/Nucleus+ seem like great turnkey solutions for Roon enthusiasts that want something that works reliably and consistently, along with support, unattended automatic updates, and a warranty from Roon Labs. I test drove Roon software for two years on the subscription plan. My initial hesitation was whether these guys would be around for the long haul. I finally paid for the lifetime license last month. Roon is IMHO by far the most user friendly, feature rich, flexible music player around, and it sounds great too.

I have a minor technical 'nit' and some comments.

Roon Labs decided to write their own operating system from scratch based on the Linux OS. It is optimized for the Nucleus / Nucleus+ CPU architecture and the kernel optimized for running RoonServer.

My little nit-pick here, which should be of no concern to someone considering a Nucleus:

- If the Nucleus is based on the Linux OS, then Roon Labs didn't write their OS from scratch. They modified and optimized the Linux OS for RoonServer. Nothing wrong with that. But it would be a stretch for Roon Labs to say they wrote the OS from scratch. The Linux OS evolved over decades with lots of work from open source developers writing and contributing code in support of Linux. Writing an OS from scratch would be a monumental task for a small company not in the business of writing computer operating systems. So which is it, Roon Labs? Is it modified Linux or your "own operating system from scratch". It can't be both.

The Roon OS provides features not found in many other servers. From the Roon Nucleus White Paper:

"Compartmentalized Filesystem Layout. Most media server products utilize a single read-write filesystem that contains the operating system, user-specific databases (including settings and caches) and application components. Roon OS is built with a compartmentalized file system layout to provide increased robustness against user error, hardware failure, and software bugs."

This design of the OS into three partitions - Boot, Application and Data - ensures that the Nucleus+ will always boot-up.

Partitioning the disk in this way is not a bad idea and it may be unique for commercial music servers, I don't know. But it's not unique in the computer industry. However, this does not guarantee that the Nucleus will always boot-up. While more robust than a single large disk parition, there are still many single points of failure and opportunities for Nucleus to not boot-up. Again, just a tech nit-pick ;-)

"Each update fully re-installs Roon OS, including the kernel. This guarantees that devices running the same OS version are always in the same state. Updates are installed atomically, meaning that it's safe to power off the device or reboot during an update without the risk of corruption or a partial install."

This is good. Rather than patching components of the software, re-installing a fully patched product with all patched components pre-tested together is a good practice, especially from a support perspective. From a support standpoint Roon Labs will always know what software level a customer's product is on w/o the potential for a mish-mash of out of sync patches on his Nucleus. It also appears that the entire update bundle is downloaded before it reboots and goes live. Again, good practice for a consumer turnkey product and from a support standpoint.

I'm completely happy with Roon on my Mac Mini. Roon ROCK on a NUC might be fun to build. I also think the base Nucleus is pretty reasonably priced for someone looking for a turnkey system. The Nucleus+ seems a bit pricey IMHO but in my case I probably wouldn't need it's capability over the base Nucleus.

Thanks for the write up!

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