More on usability issues, was Re: [linux-audio-user] VST Plugins Revisited (Again)

davidrclark(a)earthlink.net wrote: Ordinarily I might respond to this message with some spirited defense, but I've just spent more than a week of heavy attention to getting Demudi 1.2.1 working with my laptop. Of course, my machine is old but my problems were new, mostly thanks to inconsistencies between the ALSA version and the 2.6.12 kernel. I wound up hacking ALSA sources to resolve a problem for which I found exactly *1* useful Google message. And if I hadn't known just enough C to make me dangerous I wouldn't have been able to resolve the problem(s) myself. But trust me, I have a lot better things to do with my time, and after lo these many years I am heartily tired of this sort of "fun". 'Cause it ain't fun at all. Yep, that's another one. God only knows why xine sometimes simply spins out of control, leaving me with a frozen machine. Thankfully it happens less with audio apps, but I like watching DVDs on Linux and I don't like to worry about whether I'm going to make it to the end of the movie without a major lock-up. It doesn't happen very often, and it's easy enough to reboot but it's damnably tough to debug. Happily I've never suffered a damaged file in Linux. But I'm plenty wary when it comes to 3D video driver support in Linux (I use nVidia's own driver on my desktop machine). Too many answers to this one. Which is not an especially good thing, indicating that system complexity is getting beyond the grasp of an ordinary intelligence. Again, happily the solution is often as simple as "Because ALSA mutes all mixer channels" or "Because you didn't save your settings via alsactl", but when things get stickier it seems that they get a *lot* stickier. Time for some nmemonic therapy... or maybe it's time to learn how to use QJackCtl's patchbay profiles ? ;-) More to the point: We need LADCCA/LASH... Just two pesos from one guy in NW Ohio with 'way too much to do on an overcast Sunday afternoon... Best, dp