Getting started on STM32F10x with *buntu Linux

I've struggled every time I need to do an installation for developing STM32 microcontrollers under any *buntu Linux distribution. There are quite a few websites with information, at my first attempt I downloaded and compiled everything per hand. But if you just want to get started as quickly as possible and spend your time getting that LED to blink and not looking for compilers and libraries and installing program after program, I might be able to help. I'm installing and setting up a simple yet good enough development environment on a Linux Xubuntu 14.04, and it has worked on higher versions too.

My system runs using the arm-none-eabi GCC compiler for bare metal, that is, you program everything per hand. printf won't work this way, I haven't bothered to install the newlib and generating the correct library. To be honest, I'm not even sure how that works.

These instructions will allow you to program pretty much every STM32F10x controller around, and later on, we can proceed to the STM32F2xx family, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The first ARM based Guitar Amp in the World!

...unless I'm mistaken of course, but from what I've looked, no one has (yet) built a guitar amp based on the STM32 ARM microcontrollers. So, this one's the first!

I've been working on my DIY guitar amp for a couple of years, starting as early as 2012 or so I recall, with the cabinet.

While I could have gotten a good modeling amp (Line6, VOX, et al) I think they are way over the top for what I want. Too many effects, in the end, you fiddle more with the amp than with the guitar. But an all analog design while nice, can be modified only on hardware, and those are costly and time consuming iterations. No problem with that, but you also want to have decent results from time to time. The idea came to me then, 2011 actually, why not build a very simple input stage with some gain, pass it onto a microcontroller via a ADC, add some effects, and take the output out via DAC / Amp combination?