Re: [Consortium] Next item...

Now that we have firmly established the neccesity of having an official group that focuses on the professional representation of the Linux Audio community, I'd like to discuss some more points which should be added to the resources that are being provided for people to take home at the trade show. Also It would also be useful to identify some targets we want to promote to. Obviously we are already being represented in SoS and other mags have started the process of representation too. That's very gratifying for the people who have been around for a while doing the hard work. What are the main prejudices towards Libre audio software? I can think of a few. 1. Not cool to look at 2. Too geeky 3. Difficult to use, "Complicated" 4. Unstable 5. Installation is difficult 1. We have come a long way recently with the looks of the GUIs. Unfortunately not many of us are grafik artists. That makes it hard for us to get da funky looks goin on. There have been a few people who offered to work on grafiks but so far they are mostly dead air. Still we have some great artists out there contributing. gdam, ardour, ssm, seq24, Jamin, RTMix, vstserver, hydrogen, MusE, rosegarden, jackeq... 2. Too geeky. We need more recordings to be released. 3. Difficult and complicated. Very true. It doesn't bother me, infact I think it is good for my DJ persona. (Apparently everyone in Korea thinks I play abstract music ;] ) Did anyone complain when they couldn't play a Jimi solo the first time they picked up a guitar???? 4. Unstable. Not so bad these days. The team working on JACK has made huge steps in this field. I regularly play for many hours at a time while DJing. The only thing that stops me is unearthed mains (there are a lot of those in Korea :/ 5. Installation: Maybe (for the trade show) we need a really big sign with: -------------- 3 steps to Linux audio happiness ./configure;make;make install --- it's that simple! --- --------------- Improving the ALSA install would be a big plus too. I've heard of OSS being very user friendly a few times in the past year. The problem seems not to be installing ALSA but getting it working after install. The install process could provide a flag to write the /etc/modules.conf file and the .asoundrc for a start. Maybe someone just needs to explain to me what the alsaconf utility does so I can write it up :) <psuedo philosophical> This is a very good opportunity to promote and Daniel should be commended for doing the hard yakka to set it up. Now we have the chance to capitalise on this. If history tells the truth, Messman and the Novell corporatists are muscling in to affect the direction. We have to dig in even harder now to make sure we don't get washed away in the tidal wave. </phil> Prevention is better than the cure - anon