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

Florian Paul Schmidt mista.tapas at gmx.net
Thu Oct 11 08:37:57 UTC 2012


On 10/10/2012 09:32 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> I also don't quite get what's the fun in having another distribution 
> even if it comes prepackaged will all the latest gizmos. It's still a 
> Linux distribution with all its dependencies, repositories and 
> suchlike. Dunno if you noticed, but it's marketplaces and app stores 
> what's trending today.

So, finally the big closed source OS vendors wisened up to a package 
management system (an android app is a zip file with a manifest and the 
system makes sure it installs nicely and also uninstalls nicely - a 
package, even the extension reflects that: APK - Android Package).. The 
difference is that package management systems in the open source world...

a] ...also track dependencies

b] ...focus heavily on free software

Point b] is a political one, and not a technical one.

BTW: about the technical superiority of OS X/Windows vs. Linux. I still 
can shock most OS X and windows users by demonstrating a period size of 
8 samples (0.6ms roundtrip latency at 48khz samplerate) without any 
XRuns while at the same time compiling a kernel in the background with 
make -j 8 on a -RT kernel..

The perceived superiority is purely one of a software ecosystem.. What I 
could do 10-15 years ago on a AMD K6-III with 400 Mhz and Cubase VST 3.4 
(or whatever it was back then) just became possible on Linux (the 
development of Ardour3, QTractor and closed source software like Renoise 
come into my mind).. And by "possible" I mean, not principally possible, 
but with a certain level of comfort and polish..

OTOH: If you are more exerimentally minded, then the Linux ecosystem 
still has some definite advantages over the more closed systems, simply 
for the openness and modularity of the software.. Too bad, Ingen isn't 
there yet :( It has so freaking much potential!!

Flo


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