[LAU] [ANN] JAD 1.0 officially released

[Dave Phillips]

Forwarded, sorry for the cross-posting:


The JackLab Project announces its first public release

Promotion association planned

The technical manager of the JackLab of project, Oliver Bengs, released the
final 1.0 version of the JackLab Audio Distribution (JAD) today after
development period of over eight months. JAD 1.0 is based upon OpenSUSE 10.2
with the addition of a real time Linux kernel for fast audio processing 
with the
professional audio server JACK. JackLab 1.0 includes one of the most 
comprehensive
selections of open source audio and multimedia software to date. The
Enlightenment D17 window manager (with 'KDE-lite' tweaks) is used by 
default,
with the option of using the full KDE 3.5.7 instead.

JAD 1.0 aims to lower the Linux entry barriers, making things as easy as
possible for musicians and multimedia content creators, and it offers 
complete
compatibility with openSUSE 10.2. The Smart package manager is included for
quickly and easily updating or adding new software and the YaST
system tool is included for easy graphical system administration. The 
system
is immediately operational after installation for tasks such as 
multi-track recording
with Ardour 2, real time audio synthesis with  ZynAddSubFX , MIDI 
sequencing
with Rosegarden, video editing with KDEnlive, and graphics manipulation with
programs such as Inkscape and Gimp.

Unlike most other existing Linux audio distributions JAD 1.0 offers 
complete
support for ASIO. Thanks to WINE you can useWindows VST host programs
such as Reaper or EnergyXT2 with a very large number of VST plugins, with
latency as good as native Linux JACK audio applications. Simply add the
wineasio driver to the WINE registry and these applications can then be 
used as
easily as if from native Windows. This is all easily done and 
well-documented
on the JackLab wiki.

In addition, native VST for Linux is supported by JOST, a powerful modular
host. Some native Linux VST plugins are included with the distribution but
there are more that can't be included for legal reasons. JOST also 
supports LADSPA,
the native Linux Audio Developer plugin format. JackLab comes with over 300
LADSPA plugins.

JAD 1.0 is the result of a collaboration of musicians and free software
developers and enthusiasts. This community was started by musician and media
producer Michael Bohle in order to improve and promote the development of
pro-audio under Linux. OpenSUSE was selected as the basis of JAD because it
is a very user-friendly version of Linux. The project is independent from
OpenSUSE but intends to give back to the community by improving SUSE's
support for pro-audio and multimedia creation.

In order to safeguard JAD and its future development, a registered promotion
association [JackLab e.V.] is planned. JackLab e.V. will sponsor
activities of the JackLab community such as workshops, participating in 
shows,
and holding developer conferences. Hopefully it will also fund the
development of exciting open source audio projects.

The project would like to thank all the testers and early adopters for their
assistance in creating JAD 1.0, along with all the good discussions in
blogs, forums and magazines. The overwhelmingly positive response from
musicians was very encouraging. We received feedback from the whole world,
where JAD 1.0 is now used in recording studios, schools, workshops and youth
centers.

Michael Bohle,
project-leader

www.jacklab.org

Screenshots:
http://jacklab.net/jacklaborg/english/?JAD_1.0_Screenshots