[linux-audio-dev] Best-performing Linux-friendly MIDI interfaces?

[Jay Vaughan]

>it "just worked" for him on OS X
>because Apple pick the audio interface.

yup, and they set the API standard, and they govern the distribution, and ..

this doesn't work on Linux.  you can't herd sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpenguins 
with a flamethrower.

>several people provided
>reference SuSE supported h/w configs for example - had he been using one
>of them, it would have "just worked". what jwz wants is what everybody
>else wants, and its an entirely reasonable thing to aim for - all
>supported audio devices are just plug-n-play. it doesn't work that way
>on OS X, it doesn't work that way on Windows, and being a stupid
>petulant geek who continues to try to trade his involvement in lucid
>emacs, netscape and mozilla as excuses for his bad temper doesn't get
>Linux any closer to the goal.

hmm .. not sure i agree that jwz is 'trading ones app-hubris for 
brownies', i mean, maybe it'd be different if he'd written a 
multi-track audio editor and -then- jumped to the same OSX-lovin' 
conclusion ..

thing is though: he does have a point.  why is this stuff still so 
hard, after so many years?  its -not- the drivers, imho, its the 
moving-target nature of ALSA and all the competing audio API's, 
underneath a pile of semi-working apps ..

>ALSA's biggest problem was that people like me shaped its design too
>much. I was trying to ensure that ALSA was useful for pro-audio setups,
>and I had little interest in the desktop story. There were no
>(sufficiently) vigorous advocates for that world as ALSA developed, and
>we are seeing the cost of that now.

in all fairness, if there were a hardware vendor willing to follow 
the 'known working' path to ALSA glory, we wouldn't be having this 
discussion .. or, at least, if we knew of such a vendor (i'm sure 
they're out there, those quiet linux VAR's who pack it all up and 
send it off, operational-like).

i mean .. i've been using linux since the minix-list post, and i'll 
be damned if i can keep up with all this 
ALSA/esd/OSS/jackd/artsserver voodoo that is expected of anyone 
wanting to get audio working in linux, at the same/similar degree of 
operational status as we see under OSX .. even though, i'm very, very 
eager to see linux function as a working audio platform.  there's 
gotta be -some- way to get it all working, and i dont just mean "buy 
a Dell laptop" ..

-- 

;

Jay Vaughan