[LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

[Patrick Shirkey]

On Thu, October 11, 2012 5:41 am, Dan MacDonald wrote:
> Patrick wrote:
>
>>
>> Looking at the recent trade shows it seems that Linux/Unix is the
>> already
>> the hardware standard. I didn't spot hardware running on Apple or M$
>> OS's
>> but plenty of Linux and Unix platforms.
>>
>>
> Which trade show was this?

"Integrate" is the biggest A/V trade show in Australia. It's just a baby
compared to US or EU offerings though.

> I'm unaware of any hardware vendors advertising
> or even officially supporting Linux other than RME kinda but their support
> seems little more than half-hearted as they apparently don't provide any
> support for their drivers which they say on their website are 3rd party so
> did they even have any involvement in them at all? Focusrite provide specs
> but no Linux drivers or support so I wouldn't count them either.
>

Just walking around you can see who is using Unix/Linux and who is not.
Granted most of it is embedded or SoC but they are definitely not Apple or
Mac OS's on the clear majority of the hardware solutions. Unfortunately
for us in the proprietary world it's not "cool" to talk about where you
get your firmware/software from so no one is promoting that information.

When it comes to desktop solutions no one is representing Linux at the
trade shows here. Afaik noone is doing anything explicit for Linux
Multimedia solutions at any of the US or EU trade shows either.

Given that there are several companies on these lists who do go to the
trade shows it seems that we are all missing a big opportunity for
promotion of the general platform by not capitalising on the "We heart
Linux" bandwagon.


> I know its not audio related but even HP who's support for Linux is
> arguably better or at least on a par with their support for the other two
> OS still don't advertise or claim to officially support Linux - even
> though
> they do. Sad state of affairs - even now in 2012 when we can all safely
> say
> Linux isn't going away the big corps still like to pretend it doesn't
> exist.
>

Valve just announced that the Linux port for Steam will go live with 15
titles. Intel, AMD and ARM all promote Linux heavily. The entire top level
of the movie industry runs on Linux. Harrison is building Linux Hardware
Solutions. RME provides Linux support or standards compliant devices.

What is missing is a concerted effort to advertise and promote the
advances that have been made. We can't rely on the magazine and mainstream
news media publishers to do it for us as they are clearly not interested.

So we have to do it ourselves which either means paying the publishers for
space or blanketing the web with information. Given that we are unlikely
to crowd fund advertising the latter is more viable. Considering that we
have several thousand LAU people who also just happen to be handy with a
computer and the internet that actually works in our favour.

Marketing companies spend millions of client dollars on SEO and manage to
get a lot done with just a few dedicated people. We have thousands of
users and each one of us can build a website or post links in forums and
social media to the landing pages that we want to promote. Our sites all
link up to each other anyway so it just needs some effort from people
around here to spread the links and evangelise the platform.

Having some killer content won't go amiss either.

Perhaps the professional companies round here have some AV content that
they would like to share more widely for promotional purposes?

We are actually looking for some content we can turn into a show reel. So
if you know of anything that would be suitable please let us know.


--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd