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

[Dan MacDonald]

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? 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.

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.

Back onto LVs article...


He made a number of valid points but I have to agree it was a bit overly
negative. Linux audio has come a long way in the last few years- if still
trailing some way behind commercial offerings in some areas but its
unrealistic to expect otherwise when the big boys have large teams working
full time on development plus some of the apps (Cubase etc.) effectively
pre-date Linux back to the 80's.

Considering Paul is pretty much the only person (OK- 2 with Ben) being paid
to work full time on Linux audio what we have is damn impressive. There are
no genuinely free DAWs for Win or OSX that can compete with Ardour or
qtractor for one and before anyone says so no, REAPER is not free software
and they make a point of reminding you every time you run the unregistered
versions.

A3 MIDI was totally broken and unusable 3 years ago, qtractor has come on
leaps and bounds, Rui has given us an easy to use sampler plugin, DISTRHO
has arrived complete with the excellent Noisemaker LV2, Mixbus, LinuxDSPs
plugins, Bitwig - there was none of this 3 years ago and those are just my
personal highlights.
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