25 Nov
2011
25 Nov
'11
10:47 a.m.
[Long, partly rant-ish, pouring OT email, so if you want feel free to skip]
This morning I got the most polite, kind email from a person who knows
me as "the linux guy" and saw me use linux with audio a lot, candidly
asking "I need your help: were can I get drivers for my RME Fireface
400" for Ubunto?
Now, I went writing the usual leitmotiv of explaining the situation with
Firewire hardware on linux, the fact that most audio hardware makers
suck at linux, the great FFADO effort, etc. etc. What will he think? I
don't know.
But, while writing I couldn't keep back a bitter frustration feeling
thinking of having to explain this over and over. I'm not trying to find
'someone' to blame or anything, simply it feels frustrating,
evangelising linux, showing it how great it is for audio, but then...
there you go a simple polite question and this bitter feeling you can't
really help him much... Arrrghh. And I wouldn't feel like saying thow it
away and get a fully supported FFADO one, right?
So. I wonder if we should do a audio-hardware-manufacturers push effort.
I once wrote a (probably solitary, naive) email to RME who (rudely)
replied that "ALSA does the drivers for linux, ask them" (WTF??).
Maybe we could pick the 5 most popular yet lieux-unfriendly
manufacturers and do a collective petition, lobbying, PR action. I'm no
low-level dirver programming expert, but my feeling is that in some
cases doing a binary version of their drivers wouldn't be so much
effort. I know, I know... I said the "B" word (binary), but that's yet
another debate. Having "something" for linux IMHO would be good starters.
Sorry for the long pouring out, but this is one topic which I'm really
sensitive to especially when relating to the "Macs are for serious
audio" universe. (Arrrrggghh)
Lorenzo.
--
** NOTE **: This gmail address is my new email.
I will still be reading my libero.it email, but please use this new one
for any further email.
Thanks you for understanding.
** NOTA **: Questo indirizzo gmail è la mia nuova email.
Continuerò a leggere la posta libero.it ancora per un po' ma vi prego di
usare questa nuova da ora in poi.
Grazie per la comprensione.
25 Nov
25 Nov
10:56 a.m.
I understand how you feel very well. Hardware on Linux is the most serious
problem. Up to 90% of issues I observe people have with GNU/Linux systems
are driver problems. Even with things like graphic pads.
I had the same unpleasant experience with an E-MU soundcard. I even wrote
to ALSA developer and got a pretty cold reply. And while this person does
not owe me any warm replies, it was still not very pleasant. I have written
an article concerning this and, I have to report, just yesterday I tried
E-MU on Linux again and it still is not usable.
http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=linux&a=…
--
Louigi Verona
http://www.louigiverona.ru/
3:02 p.m.
Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
it feels frustrating, evangelising linux, showing it
how great it is
for audio, but then... there you go a simple polite question and this
bitter feeling you can't really help him much...
You cannot show that Linux is great for audio when it is _not_ actually
great for audio.
I'm no low-level dirver programming expert, but my
feeling is that in
some cases doing a binary version of their drivers wouldn't be so much
effort.
I am, and a binary driver would require much more effort to make it
compatible with all the various kernel versions.
The reasons that manufacturers don't help much is that the Linux market
isn't big enough to justify the cost of supporting driver development.
(There are some manufacturers that do give out information, but this is
possible only for those that actually have documentation.) Furthermore,
without anybody sponsoring the actual development, there is no guarantee
that a complete driver will ever be written. (There are currently no
Linux FireWire developers who have much free time.)
Regards,
Clemens
6:31 p.m.
On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 10:45:03AM +0100, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
[Long, partly rant-ish, pouring OT email, so if you
want feel free to skip]
This morning I got the most polite, kind email from a person who
knows me as "the linux guy" and saw me use linux with audio a lot,
candidly asking "I need your help: were can I get drivers for my RME
Fireface 400" for Ubunto?
Now, I went writing the usual leitmotiv of explaining the situation
with Firewire hardware on linux, the fact that most audio hardware
makers suck at linux, the great FFADO effort, etc. etc. What will he
think? I don't know.
Don't have anything very helpful to add, except join
my voice to yours.
I once went into a recording project situation with someone wanting me
to set up their ubuntu system for audio work (knowing I used linux
exclusively). Well, I pointed out all the great packages like ardour and
rosegarden, and so forth, of course, but their soundcard (Focusrite
Saffire pro) didn't work out of the box. It eventually did, but it
involved, iirc, switching stack and modifying and recompiling the code
just to add the vendor id of the specific card. While I was
knowledgeable enough to do these things, I'm pretty sure it put that
person off linux-audio for life. :(
A binary driver, if it worked at all, probably wouldn't be much good for
low-latency work, unless the manufacturer were willing to allocate
serious devel time.
Cheers,
S.M.
8:01 p.m.
One solution to improve the situation would be to create a scheme for
donations to
Linux drivers developers , as well as inventive companies that support
Linux development
buying their products.
A website like linuxaudio.org could list such information on the
various sound-cards and
their technical status of their manufacturers.
That is, choose products from companies friendly to Linux, then
support and help through
donations to independent developers to make it even better.
8:35 p.m.
Hey Bernardo!
Donations is a difficult idea to realize - technically and socially.
Speaking
simply: I doubt people will pay enough. Too few people may be interested
in a particular driver. They can, of course, collect money for months, but I
personally would not pay more than the price of a soundcard even over
several months.
--
Louigi Verona
http://www.louigiverona.ru/
9:15 p.m.
Companies and organizations could help too. Just an idea. Otherwise
what would help?
10:55 p.m.
I'm wondering what the allure of firewire is in Linux.
Not trying to be snarky by saying that either.
Seems that the rme multiface 2 gets the job done albeit via a pci
connection...... From what I've read anyway.
I think firewire was designed with dollar signs set in place and people
gotta eat no matter what.
So they've got ya coming and going. To be honest it would be really
awesome though.
On Nov 25, 2011 12:36 PM, "Brendan Jones" <brendan.jones.it(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 11/25/2011 09:15 PM, Bernardo Barros wrote:
Companies and organizations could help too. Just
an idea. Otherwise
what would help?
Loaning hardware to developers (or coercing the vendor to) would certainly
help things along I would think.
Brendan
______________________________**_________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@lists.**linuxaudio.org<Linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org>
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/**listinfo/linux-audio-user<http://lists.lin…
29 Nov
29 Nov
5:06 p.m.
Another benefit to this is the uncooperative manufacturers have a place to
see the money they're losing
-----Original message-----
From: Bernardo Barros <bernardobarros2(a)gmail.com>
To: lists(a)wolfdream.ca
Cc: linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
Sent: 2011 Nov, Fri, 25 19:01:17 GMT+00:00
Subject: Re: [LAU] The pain of Firewire audio hardware
One solution to improve the situation would be to create a scheme for
donations to
Linux drivers developers , as well as inventive companies that support
Linux development
buying their products.
A website like linuxaudio.org could list such information on the
various sound-cards and
their technical status of their manufacturers.
That is, choose products from companies friendly to Linux, then
support and help through
donations to independent developers to make it even better.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
6:51 p.m.
On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 8:06 PM, aaronpeart wrote:
Another benefit to this is the uncooperative
manufacturers have a place to
see the money they're losing
Back when I used ffado-mixer for that first time (a year ago), it told
me I was #32 to used my Focusrite with FFADO in the whole damn world.
Who are you going to impress? :)
Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
4771
days inactive
4775
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
10 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
Aaron L. -
aaronpeart＠yahoo.ca -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Bernardo Barros -
Brendan Jones -
Clemens Ladisch -
Lorenzo Sutton -
Louigi Verona -
S. Massy