[LAU] Renoise - linux version ( soon !!)

[Nigel Henry]

On Sunday 20 January 2008 16:27, Dave Phillips wrote:
> Nigel Henry wrote:
> > I looked on the Renoise site, and could only find downloads for Windows,
> > and Mac.
>
> I've corresponded with Eduard (taktik) at Renoise, he tells me that the
> demo for Linux will be on-line in another week or so.

Thanks Dave for the feedback, it'll be interesting to try it on different 
distros.
>
> I'm currently evaluating the app for a preview in my next column. I
> can't say much about it now, not because I'm not supposed to but because
> I'm just learning its UI. AFAICT it's the same program that's available
> to the other platforms, with added support for JACK and LADSPA. Just
> FYI, the demo songs played beautifully on my JAD box. So far I think
> they've done an excellent job porting the app to Linux, but as I say,
> I'm just getting into it.
>
> Best,
>
> dp

It's nice to see that someone has taken a first step in porting an audio app 
to Linux, that was previously only available for Windows, or Mac. Yes you 
have to pay for the full version, but I don't think that there is anything 
inherently wrong with that. There are many nice synths that are available for 
Windows/Mac, and yes, they arn't cheap. I've tried demo's of many of them on 
XP, and also tried them under wine, but with limited success. Admittadly not 
recently, and perhaps the latest wine may give better results, but certainly 
if they were ported to Linux, it wouldn't be the hit and miss affair that it 
is, trying to get them to work under wine.

I bought Making Waves (a step sequencer) some years ago, and was getting quite 
used to using it on XP, but never could get the demo version to run properly 
under wine. Locked up, using 100% CPU when trying to access my soundfiles, so 
as to load one of them. When first run it would create an .ini file in wine, 
and would play the demo ok, but would do nothing the next time I tried to run 
it, unless I deleted the .ini file, and then restarted it.

Trying my paid for version under wine, and after consulting with the Making 
Waves folks about running it on Linux, they were prepared to provide me with 
the necessary code to enable it. The problem was that the code box is 
supposed to give you a set of numbers, then you give the Making Waves guys 
the numbers, and they give you the code to enter. All I got trying it on 
Linux under wine was a set of 0's in the code box, and couldn't activate my 
paid for version.

Looking back at what I've just written, something comes to mind. We in the 
Linux world, and speaking personally, are used to being able to install as 
many instances of Hydrogen for example, on as many distros as we like. Not so 
when you have paid for a licence to use Renoise for example. Usually this on 
a one machine/os basis. Making Waves though were a bit liberal on this, and 
provided codes for my XP machine in England, and also for my XP machine in 
France, but that is some time ago.

I appreciate that these software providers want to protect their interests, 
and don't want to be, as it were, ripped off, but just wonder how they might 
deal with the Linux world of many different distros, and users who have paid 
the licence fee, but want to try the app on their different distros, to just 
see how it performs.

Just a thought, and I suppose we'll just have to see how this pans out.

Sunday afternoon, now evening ramblings.

Nigel.