Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Audio-oriented Linux distribution
From: Paul Winkler (slinkp_AT_ulster.net)
Date: pe elo 06 1999 - 05:13:45 EDT
Dave Phillips wrote:
> Now, a dilemma: I'm to provide a disc for the book, and it will include
> as many of the profiled items as I can get on it. When the publisher and
> I began planning the book he was enthusiastic about the possibility of
> including a Linux distro along with the apps. It appears that what
> you're talking about would be exactly what he had in mind. So I ask you:
> given that it actually came to be, what would you think of it being used
> as the accompamying disc ?
*I* think it would be cool, but my contributions to the world of linux
audio consist of random bits of documentation. How do those folks feel
who put their mental sweat into all the fun code I use?
> > Would the hypothetical audio-linux distribution be targeted to
> > experienced Linux users, or to newbies, or both? [snip]
>
> Your questions are precisely the ones I've had to keep in mind while
> writing chapters. I've opted for a presentation which will hopefully
> suit both the new and the experienced users. A little tougher to do than
> I thought...
I think this difficulty -- the level of experience presumed by most
existing documentation -- continues to be an area that the linux
community battles with. People want linux to be widely adopted, but not
at the expense of dumbing down the system; and people who already know
their way around a gnu/linux/xfree86 system aren't that motivated to
write entry-level documentation since they've gotten used to the
expert-level docs.
I think plenty of people want to give linux a try, but are intimidated
by the perceived (and actual!) difficulty of getting started; and even
though progress is continually made on this front, there's still a lot
that can go wrong for a new user and people have limited patience. For
this reason you can still find plenty of disgruntled postings on
comp.os.linux.misc along the lines of, "I heard Linux was great, I tried
it, something didn't work right, I asked a question and nobody on the
newsgroups could help, I'm giving up and going back to Windows."
When I think how simple it is to put useful messages in /etc/motd and
/etc/issue, I'm amazed that the commercial distributions aren't already
doing it.
True, people like linux to be wide open to user configuration, but
anyone who would be annoyed by these messages probably already knows
enough to know how to get rid of them!
I think part of the objective for any such entry-level documentation
should be to provide useful information that's a little more welcoming
in its tone (while telling you where to get the real deep stuff if
you're ready for it).
Well, that's probably enough of this tangent. It occurs to me that such
a documentation project would be useful to a whole class of linux users
who have no interest in music/audio; it could be a separate project
(perhaps affiliated with the LDP?), which, of course, the hypothetical
audio-dev distribution would be free to make use of, extend, etc...
---------------- paul winkler ------------------
slinkP arts: music, sound, illustration, design, etc.
zarmzarm_AT_hotmail.com --or-- slinkp AT ulster DOT net
http://www.ulster.net/~abigoo/
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