New subject: [LAU] Join the Debian Multimedia Team! (to improve the state of Linux audio)

9 Mar 2009

Crypto wrote:
...
  On Monday 09 March 2009 16:29:53 Ivica Ico Bukvic
wrote:

>> My point was : if Debian Multimedia is just an effort to make things
>> better
>> looking on the audio/multimedia side, then it has more to do with the
>> "Debian packages and process" group of people than with the linuxaudio
>> people.
>>       
> I guess this part is for Debian folks to answer. Even if multimedia part
> cannot be treated as a separate entity, perhaps having Debian as a whole a
> member of Linuxaudio.org would not be a bad idea. After all, we do have
> Canonical/Ubuntu and Mandriva on board already.
>
>      +1

...

 I think one of the most important things to have would be a debian RT kernel 
 that can be installed like any other deb package already can. This would mean 
 to patch/finetune a standard kernel to make it RT capable everytime a new 
 standard kernel is released. Maybe it could be sufficient not to do that for 
 EVERY single kernel version that is released but stick to some "milestone" 
 versions instead that nevertheless reliably do the RT and of course MIDI 
 stuff.

 This RT kernel could then be offered as a standard debian package in any of 
 the existing standard debian repositories, so that anyone needing RT could 
 install it on their machine in parallel to their previously installed 
 ordinary kernel without having to change a lot on their machines.

 As for the LAU-related stuff:
 It seems to me that there are some great LAU applications out there for which 
 there are no deb packages available (neither are Ubuntu packages). I think we 
 need some place where LAU programmers can announce their software (which has 
 been here so far) and make other folks aware of it and we also need some kind 
 of deb repository where programmers can release their software so we can all 
 apt-get it. Maybe this place could be on an official debian software site 
 with only one limitation: as this software tends to be updated frequently it 
 is kind of experimental and debian people would rather not declare this 
 as "rocksolid stuff" that can be mixed with the standard release of debian. 
 So people of debian could release LAU related software on their sites without 
 having to give any "warrantee" for it.

 BTW: when having a LAU related repository I look forward to seeing DSSI-VST 
 and fst released as true apt-get installable packages ;-)

    I think such a repository you're talking about could be indeed a good 
idea. But it could have some disadvantages to, like also all those 
custom PPA Ubuntu repo's has.

The packages maintained by the Debian Multimedia Team are safe, stable 
and have good quality. The Debian packages do pass some quality rules, 
which is a very good thing imho, better then having a repository without 
any 'warrantee'... Also your idea could have the effect that people only 
upload their packages to this repo and not to Debian itself, so there 
will be a quality loss...

But for packages which are valuable and do not pass the (license) 
criteria of Debian it could be good to have such a repository. For 
example for a realtime kernel and stuff like dssi-vst, (FST is a 
candidate for Debian imho), linuxsampler (?), Jost...

Also, some developers make packages of there apps themselves. I think 
it's the best for Debian (based) distro's that they build it against 
Debian unstable, so the community can use it and the package maintainers 
can use it to build it against their distro easily.

So maybe some kind of an

- Debian Multimedia 'experimental' repo > for packages build against 
unstable, which are not in Debian yet.  Devs can upload their packages 
to this repo and package maintainers can use it for uploading it to 
Debian. (I think if you setup such a thing, it should happen in 
corporation and communication with the Debian Multimedia Team!)

- Debian Multimedia non-free repo > for dssi-vst, jost, etc.

Btw. There was a guy who was aiming to have such a Debian repo with a 
realtime kernel:
https://www.scimmia.net/code/wiki/DebianRepository

Above all, the most needed are people who want to maintain packages for 
the Debian Multimedia Team!

Regards,

\R

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Join the Debian Multimedia Team! (to improve the state of Linux audio)