[LAU] Issues with distros (and GTK2?) prev: A3 video

pshirkey at boosthardware.com pshirkey at boosthardware.com
Sat Jun 11 09:45:17 UTC 2011


> On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 09:26 +0200, pshirkey at boosthardware.com wrote:
>> > On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 06:49 +0200, pshirkey at boosthardware.com wrote:
>> >> 2: The people who are being paid are purposefully screwing things up.
>> >> 3: The people who are being paid are incompetent and should be fired.
>> >
>> > Full ACK in general *just kidding*. Regarding to Ardour3, as long as
>> the
>> > coder don't wish his alpha version to be packaged and IIRC he does
>> > (Pardon Mr. Davis if I'm mistaken ;), the packagers shouldn't include
>> it
>> > to a repository.
>> >
>>
>> That is reasonable for an alpha version but when there is no ongoing
>> support for the stable versions of the most useful tools and making sure
>> there is a decent collection of unstable tools to work with in the major
>> distros that suggests a more sinister angle. There is absolutely no good
>> reason for the major distros to be so slack in this regard. They are
>> literally making us all look bad.
>>
>> It's been this way for years and by now they should have realised that
>> being successful at desktop Linux means supporting multimedia production
>> tools. Apple realised this long ago with Garage band, iphoto, imovie,
>> etc...
>>
>> I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft and Avid were paying people
>> to
>> sabotage the major distros.
>
> :D
>
> There's a similar discussion here and I quoted you:
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/2011-June/003364.html
>
> One sentence I wrote there is:
>
> "Booking and other annoying stuff already is a PITA, so tweak a Linux,
> writing scripts, switching the DE is the very last a musician which to
> do."                                                          ^^^^^
>                                                               wish ;)
>
> A new issue seems to be, that apps could become unstable, when they were
> written for GNOME2 and GNOME2 becomes unsupported.
>

It goes deeper too. There is serious problem with backwards compatibility
across the board. Try getting any of the recent updates to your favorite
tools to compile in an older (>3 years) version of Debian/Ubuntu/Redhat.
They should just work but there are so many dependency issues that most
people will just give up.

Having to constantly upgrade to the latest version of x distro just so we
can use a new version of an app is a big hassle for most users. It's a
complete no go for any uninitiated n00b.


>> They surely see Linux multimedia production
>> tools as a significant threat by now. The last thing they want is for
>> the
>> tools to be widely installed and utilised ootb. At the moment there are
>> only hardened Linux users pushing development. With more unified
>> distribution from the major distros that will significantly increase the
>> user base and the potential for funding of major development efforts to
>> close the remaining gaps.
>>
>> Avid and Microsoft are well aware of this current situation and are no
>> doubt doing their best to keep the status quo. In other words they are
>> poisoning the well.
>>
>> If it's not that then the only option left is incompetence on the part
>> of
>> the major distro's and the people they pay or choose not to pay to look
>> after this stuff. But as it really doesn't take much effort on the part
>> of
>> Avid and Microsoft to get to those people and they can print cash to
>> facilitate their agenda I have given up on the idea that the current
>> situation is due to incompetence.
>
> It seems to be that Mark Shuttleworth (I never liked people like him)
> does force the Ubuntu Studio guys to do everything as Ubuntu does for
> averaged desktop users, which in IMO is idiocy. IMO we are under
> friendly fire too!!!
>

I don't think it is his fault but the people he hires. Unfortunately his
core team seems to be infiltrated for some years now. Just look what they
did to Pulse Audio integration for a good impression of how bad it has
been. Things have changed significantly since they cleaned hose on the
people responsible for that fiasco. It is the same at Redhat too with this
stupid policy of not including any potentially proprietary codecs and
software enabled to use them and providing absolutely no official
support/documentation for the rpmfusion repos. Now that Nokia has been
absorbed by the MS borg we can write off any further support from them.
Just look at what happened to QT/KDE since MS took over Nokia. Suddenly
there are a whole bunch of dependencies that break existing installations
if you want to upgrade. We can pretty much forget about Suse as they sold
out to Novell/MS several years ago...



--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd




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