Re: [linux-audio-dev] Other real-time options

I'm serious, mailing lists are not enough. We need a permanent page with
instructions on making the noise so that the people who are *not yet*
fully jumping ship to linux can say to the developers, "that is what
will make me abandon OSX". Those people aren't on mailing lists yet but
they still troll through the net looking at pages on linux audio
wondering whether it's time to format c:

I don't know squat about kernel development, but having worked in the
environmental wars of BC for a couple of years, I definitely have seen
how well a well organized letter campaign can work. And the most
important ingredient is making it *easy as pie* for someone who is only
casually interested or maybe not even quite sure yet to add their voice.
Give them hand holding instructions and a sample of what kind of thing
they should write. Make sure they can find these by accident easily.
Link it from all the pages that a new user would go to while learning
how to do audio on linux.

I don't really know what to say and who to say it to. But if someone
tells me, I'll do it, and I'll tell every linux interested musician I
know to do it to so we can all get the best audio platform.

Iain

Jean-Marc Valin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think a part of the conversation I had with Con Kolivas may be of
> interest here:
>
>
> <jmspeex> I still don't understand why this [unprivileged real-time]
> hasn't gone in the kernel a long time ago.
> <con> demand
> <con> noone demands it
> <con> no distro needs it
> <con> no market for it
> <con> noone coded it
> <con> all of the above
> <jmspeex> con: Everyone doing audio demands it, perhaps just no on lkml
> <con> jmspeex we talked about this; the developers think they know what
> users want
> <jmspeex> Just look at how many people are complaining about audio skips
> <con> jmspeex where? I see none
> <con> what audio skips?
> <con> find me a report anywhere that shows a properly configured 2.6
> system is skipping audio even with a mainline kernel
> <con> the demand for real time is from the professional audio people
> which there are but few
> <jmspeex> con: Search for "xmms" and "skip", or "jackd" and "xrun"
> <con> ordinary desktop users get good enough low latency out of normal
> scheduling
> <con> jackd xrun != audio skipping on normal desktop usage
> <jmspeex> con: In my case, I needed your patch just so I could play and
> record at the same time on an 8-chan card.
> <con> aah record
> <con> that's not normal desktop usage
> <con> see what I'm getting at?
> <con> you're claiming it is required for ordinary audio playback
> <con> it is most definitely not required for ordinary audio playback
> <jmspeex> con: There's more people doing serious audio than you may
> think.
> <con> jmspeex ok now you're at the crux of the problem
> <jmspeex> Most people perhaps don't know what to do about it.
> <con> the crux of the problem is the potential userbase is not well
> known
> [...]
> <con> a tiny bit of history for you - when the realtime LSM got knocked
> back for the professional audio people, I stepped up and defined what
> they needed, and offered to create what they needed...
> <con> that's when I started coding up the SCHED_ISO work
> [...]
> <con> jmspeex since lkml is so hopeless as a forum for that sort of
> thing, feel free to start an online petition to show how many people
> there are. 1 of 2 things will happen - 1. you'll have thousands signing
> up, or 2. there are less people doing it than you think
>
>
> Jean-Marc
>
> Le vendredi 08 avril 2005 à 16:28 -0400, Lee Revell a écrit :
>
>>On Fri, 2005-04-08 at 16:14 -0400, Jean-Marc Valin wrote:
>>
>>>As far as I see it, we'll at least get listened to by Con, Ingo and
>>>Andrew Morton. I've had a long discussion with Con recently and from his
>>>point of view, the problem is that not enough people ask (loud enough)
>>>for such features. For instance, I'm still the first and only user of
>>>his real-time patch.
>>
>>I think many of the kernel developers have fallen into the trap of only
>>listening to the distros on the assumption that if enough users want
>>something that they'll hear from RedHat or SuSE. Clearly this is
>>necessary to some extent, as the distros have to filter out the
>>actionable bug reports, etc., and works for 99% of what users want, but
>>the other 1% who use a specialized distro that does not have kernel
>>hackers on the payroll have a hard time getting heard.
>>
>>But they will listen if people make enough noise on the mailing list.
>>
>>Lee
>>
>>
Received on Sat Apr 9 04:15:07 2005