11 Dec
2007
11 Dec
'07
2:46 a.m.
On Tuesday 11 December 2007 00:54, Robert Persson wrote:
important features. Therefore it just isn't true
that LMMS can do
the kind of job that FL Studio can do, yet it seems that many
people in the Linux audio world think that it is. There is a lot of
this kind of over-optimism within the Linux audio world and this is
dangerous because it can lead to complacency. Developers need to
Longtime Linux users do sometimes get complacent because they think
some Linux application has reached the state of the art, when
meanwhile the state of the art has moved on. How many years was it
that people were holding up Tux Racer with its 1995 graphics as an
example of how Linux could compete as a gaming OS? (And it was a
great game that didn't deserve to be called something it wasn't.)
How often have you heard "Oh, don't bother trying to get Visio
working under Wine, because Dia is better anyway?"
Telling people that kind of stuff and having them switch to Linux --
which takes probably more effort than a lifelong Unix nerd trying to
switch to Windows -- and be disappointed, is far worse than
saying "Yeah, we have some programs that are sort of like Visio, but
nothing with the same variety of stencils and templates for network
management" and letting them try it with more realistic expectations.
But when it comes to Linux audio in particular, I think things have
been moving faster in the last couple of years, not settling into
complacency.
I have some of the same complaints as you (Rosegarden won't let me
manipulate note data as flexibly as the shovelware Windows 3.1
sequencer that came with my sound card 12 years ago; it takes hours
for me just to get Jack and the ALSA sequencer, my MIDI keyboard and
my desired client programs working together, let alone LASH, and by
then I've run out of time to compose or record, and the next time I
can look forward to going through the exact same ordeal) but I do see
forward progress here every week, if not every day. And a couple
years ago I wouldn't have even dreamed of trying an audio-oriented
live Linux CD, if any of the current ones even existed then. (No
offense intended to whomever was working on Agnula/Demudi/Rehmudi,
but none of them really filled me with much confidence.) While the
whole free-software-CC-licensed-music culture is still a drop in the
bucket, it's a bigger drop.
I was still far more productive musically in Windows 98 or even 95
than I am in Linux, but then, I had a lot more free time in those
days. At least some of it was probably just a matter of familiarity
and staying in practice. There are definitely gaps, and the "many
little programs that you have to connect together" philosophy that
works so well on the command line is utterly baffling to me in the
GUI, but I feel pretty confident that once I make it up the learning
curve I might end up being more productive someday. Even if I have
to write my own .rg batch processor in perl or something.
And yes, after all these years, "suspend to RAM" is still largely
broken. I feel pretty lucky that "suspend to disk" works on my
laptop and have probably become a little complacent about how my
notebook works under Linux versus how it would have worked under XP.
Maybe a lot of people making music with Linux are just making do
because they can't afford the 2 or 3 grand involved in getting a
decent Mac notebook and the commercial software required to make
music at a level beyond GarageBand, but the truth is, much of the
music I've heard here is pretty uncompromising.
Rob