Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] thoughts on a Linux-audio distribution
From: Benno Senoner (sbenno_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Sat Sep 16 2000 - 18:50:31 EEST
On Sat, 16 Sep 2000, Dave Phillips wrote:
(....)
>
> And don't forget the LinuxPPC folks ! They'll be mad at you if you leave
> 'em out... ;)
Of course, and considering the fact that the PPC in combination with
its Altivec instructions is REALLY powerful compared to an x86,
and many studio folks already have a Mac at their disposal,
I regard the PPC platform as VERY important for the future
linux pro audio market.
(one necessary condition is that ALSA has to be fully supported
on PPC)
>
> I'm leaning towards the point of view that asks "Why do we need another
> distro ?". I'm not sure that's going to be an attraction for a musician
> who has already installed Linux, only to find that he has to re-install
> some other version of Linux to obtain the best audio performance. And
> unless it offers all the other amenities of Red Hat or SuSe or Mandrake
> then I'm not sure I'd be interested in it either.
I agree, and if you pay a bit of attention during the packaging stage,
I'm sure it will be very easy to make them run on the most popular distros.
And as said in my other mail, let's say a pre-patched Mandrake with the
audio addons will be available too so that all you have is to pick an
ISO image (or the physical CD), and install your favorite audio-patched distro.
>
> And anyway, we need more and better apps, IMO. All the low-latency in
> the world isn't going to draw Gigasampler (substitute your favorite hobby
> horse for Gigasampler) users from Windows unless we've got something as
> good as Gigasampler to offer them.
If you stress me with the audio-distro stuff, then I get distracted from my
coding on EVO
:-)
I thinks that it's better that I focus all my energies on the low-level stuff
(EVO engine, rtsoundserver, low-latency etc).
But I always enjoy to take part to the audio distro discussion.
> I just took a look through the
> Thinkware music software catalog: it was a sobering sight, and every piece
> listed is *not* available for Linux. We do have a lot of cool music and
> sound software, but we need more and we need better. I have faith that
> we'll get there, I just hope I live to see the revolution... :)
Commercially seen, the linux-audio is still a non-market,
but as we hard from all directions, the main audio-sw manufacturers, are looking
at it with great interest, but it's the usual chicken-egg problem,
plus no standards exists and very few linux-audio geeks are out here.
This is what scares the audio-sw firms.
(for example if you come from the windows world and developed an audio app
with MFC and VC++ , it's quite hard to "port" the GUI to Linux. (and in audio
apps like Cubase there is a huge chuck of code which consitutes the GUI part.
Therefore what's missing is some sort of ladspa-GUI standard ,
an application interoperability API and a STABLE ALSA API.
(for course the associated docs need to be present too).
And with that few number of linux-audio people that have
both the needed coding and design skills and enough spare time available,
the definition and implementation of these "standards" are going to happen
within the next days.
But I'm confident that the linux-audio market will grow exponentially,
it's only a question if it happens in 6 months or in 2 years.
Benno.
>
> Best regards,
>
> == Dave Phillips
>
> http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/index.html
> http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linuxsound/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Sat Sep 16 2000 - 18:03:32 EEST