On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Kim Cascone <kim@anechoicmedia.com> wrote:

Hello Kim,

Yes I know that article, which is very biased I think, but I was
referring to your article on CDM in which you state that for music
production on Linux one only needs ALSA (or FFADO for FireWire) and JACK.

I see - this is correct and true - until one encounters other legacy layers which might present problems -- I have a vague memory of needing to add a Jack<-->ALSA midi bridge for Yoshimi synth as well as some sort of OSS ALSA mod for some other app to work - sorry but details are fuzzy -

Just look at the fun that is PulseAudio for many people these days. It is getting better but isn't there yet.

and also true is that one can use a distro that makes all this invisible to the user and streamlines the work needed to set up a workflow and get things customized but finding these other (sometimes arcane) distros is not all that easy -- the low hanging fruit is Ubuntu Studio which is rife with issues and no easier to use really than installing Ubuntu and setting up your own workflow with apps and utilities - which is what I have done because I didn't want to switch to another distro i.e. staying with Ubuntu was easier and didn't interrupt my busy work schedule etc etc

And here is the big thing, touched on later as well with the crapplications comment.

Linux is competing against itself in this regards.

Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio are two of the most troublesome distros for audio in general. If it isn't lack of proper configuration, it is lack of proper packages, very out of date packages, etc. These also happen to be the best known and most publisized versions of Linux out there and like it or not, when people that aren't already involved or have researched Linux hear the word Linux, this is what they think of. This is generally the first distribution someone tries, and their first thoughts are, "Well if this which is supposed to be the best of Linux can't do basic things like allow me to start Jack, the rest must suck".

I will repeat, Linux is competing against itself. The sad thing is that Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio have larger crews behind them, but because their focus is so varied they aren't often tuned well for audio. Maybe sometime it will get better, but until then, people are going to go with the terms they know(Ubuntu == TheBestOfLinux if not Ubuntu == Linux) and are ALWAYS going to walk away dissapointed because in order to do even basic things that even WINDOWS(Much less Mac) can do out of the box they have to 'hack the system'(Terminology courtesy of our tech media) just to get the basics working, much less the more advanced things like realtime preemption.