4 Mar
2011
4 Mar
'11
3:38 p.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 09:07:58 -0500
Thomas Vecchione <seablaede(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Answers inline below...
On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Kim Cascone <kim(a)anechoicmedia.com>
wrote:
Jack doesn't work out of the box on Ubuntu? From what I can remember it
did for me. Of course there was the usual period/frames/buffer tweaking
but that's unavoidable isn't it?
For me Ubuntu worked well for Audio except for one thing: keeping up to
date. Many linux audio apps are changing fast and comipiling often,
using checkinstall which didn't allways work, was hell. It's much
easier now with Arch.
cheers
renato
Hello Kim,
I see - this is correct and true - until one encounters other legacy
layers
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.
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lack of proper packages, very out of date packages, etc.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.
Until something can be done about that, there is only so much point in
competing with even a now defunct product to be honest.
Seablade