5 Aug
2009
5 Aug
'09
11:13 a.m.
In my assessment, while Windows XP was usable for RT audio,
Vista is not. So I am surprised to hear that people using commercial
media apps prefer it to OSX, which supports audio and media much
more integrally (and Apple seems to have deliberately invested in
development for this side of the OS).
But I really don't know much of the commercial world, apart from
studio recording, which AFAIK in Ireland still is digidesign+OSX
based.
In any case, I have not seen better RT performance than a well-tuned,
well-spec'd patched Linux system. IMHO it beats any competition.
And as Kim Cascone says, if you are going to invest time in setting up
a system properly, you may as well go Linux. (This is something I
could never understand about certain companies: they would buy
Microsoft software, employ full-time staff to maintain it and many
of them would even pay for MS support. If you are investing the time
of your staff to support a bought closed-source product, you may
as well not invest the money too).
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net>
To: "victor" <Victor.Lazzarini(a)nuim.ie>
Cc: <linux-audio-dev(a)lists.linuxaudio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 10:57 AM
Subject: Re: [LAD] Kim did the switch to Linux
victor wrote:
I note, interestingly, that even though in Linux
circles (at LAC for
instance), people keep mentioning MS Windows as a rival OS,
for us it's really Apple and OSX that constitutes competition these
days from the proprietary side of things.
A lot of professional studios changed from MacOS to Windows and more and
more of the professional studios still change from MacOS to Windows. This
isn't an opinion by me, but what I hear if I get in contact with people I
know from my jobs I did some years ago. A lot of devices e.g. measuring
instruments changed and still change from Linux to Windows. I'm unemployed
but still know people who still work in those businesses. I know, there
are some famous examples where companies change to Linux, but this isn't
the standard.
I'm positively surprised that people at LAC realize the state of the art
for real-time audio in the proprietary world. It makes me feel good that I
keep staying at Linux, while I read this. For home recording Windows in
any case has been all the time the competition from the proprietary side.
To get more companies interested in supporting their hardware for Linux,
it isn't a help to blur facts by ideologies.
Don't get me wrong, I do not know who you are thinking off with "us", so
you might be right, but the OS presumed dead is on the rise again.
I know people where I can guarantee that for their needs Linux is the best
OS and the second best OS is XP, but they like to use Vista and some of
them like to use XP, while barely one is using Linux.
For real-time audio there are a lot of technical reasons that make people
stay away from Linux, but for most other usage it isn't the technical side
that let people use Windows and MacOS instead of Linux, even if it's 100%
clear that there are a lot of needs where Linux is the better OS ;).