Subject: [linux-audio-user] Agnula, audio distribution and more....
From: marco trevisani (marco_AT_centrotemporeale.it)
Date: Sat Aug 24 2002 - 19:03:08 EEST
Hi all,
i would like, even if a bit late...well it is August after all, to give
my two eurocents to this thread and some info.
Added note: Well when i started to write this i was thinking about
writing two lines...now it is almost a long paper...:-) ...Sorry if it
is too long...i had a keyboard mania attack..:-)
Brief history, just to avoid possible confusion... We started DeMuDi - i
skip telling you all the projects that lead to DeMuDi :-) -, one year
before ICMC2001 with the hope that would have had some impact. The alpha
release proved we were right. So since October 2001 till April 2002, the
project appeared to be dead, but it was not, we were actually doing an
intense underground work to find some way to support it. In Fact in
April 2002 started the AGNULA project, into where we merged DeMuDi
(DeMuDi, as web site will be kept alive, and will have another possible
merge in the future...see below...). AGNULA will be for the next two
years an IST -European Community project-, led by Tempo Reale (in
Florence), with a consortium that includes, fsfeurope -free software
foundation- UPF Barcelona, KTH Sweden, Ircam and red hat France. The
presence in this list of red hat France, as you could guess, means that
we will have two distributions: one based on Debian and one on Red Hat.
I'll be personally focusing on the DeMuDi side. The partners of the
consortium, a part for Tempo Reale, basically provides very functional
versions (including documentation etc.) of their software, as jmax
for Ircam, CLAM from UPF etc. Another key point of AGNULA, considering
the presence of fsfeurope, is that both distribution will be based
exclusively on Free Software.
Important...when is scheduled the first release?
Release 0.9, as far it concerns DeMuDi will be based on Woody Debian, is
scheduled by November 2002, the following release in April 2003 -if i
recall correctly the long term schedule..., and during the second year
we will extend AGNULA by porting to different architectures, i.e. PPC,
64 bit machines etc.-, of course between November 2002 and April 2003 it
will be possible to upgrade while we upgrade the packages, like the
unstable Debian releases. DeMuDi is and will be perfectly compatible
with Debian/woody, and later with sid. Actually we are thinking, in the
next year, probably much earlier, to integrate DeMuDi into the official
Debian project as a task, as Debian-junior and Debian-med. In which
case, integration of the project will not be simply in terms of
policies, but rather total, this, amongst other things will prevent the
project to die after the two years under the AGNULA wings.. (in any case
Tempo Reale will be working and supporting Agnula and DeMuDi)
What AGNULA does?
the main goals we have in mind are:
(suggestion and contribution and discussions are really welcome, here
or on the Agnula mailing lists)
Easy installation:
-Debian installation is notoriously tedious, i personally do not
think so, but maybe i did it so many times...:-). In any case
since DeMuDi is a focused distribution almost all installation
process can be done with no questions, or minimal ones and
written in human language...
- It could be that we will use progeny (a graphical installation
program for Debian), maybe not in the first release, but in my
opinion, as you will see, it wont be necessary
- automatic detection and hardware configuration
during installation process....this is not a minor task and will
make happy a lot of people....finishing the installation and
ending up with ALSA installed and working out of the
box....that's nice isn't it? -- Hardware detection and
configuration will include graphic cards ...etc..
DeMuDi as distro or task:
If you have an already existing Debian system, you wont need to
erase it at all. DeMuDi can be integrated as a task,
either completely or partially installed, as you like it.
DeMuDi will be also available as stand alone distribution with
different supports:
- CD
- Net down load (in various forms...)
- we are also working on a "live CD" - installing the system on a
CD-ROM with writing the system on hard disk, but we dont know if
it will be ready for 0.9 release...i guess not..-)
Kernel:
another recent popular subject here....we are working to package
a well tuned kernel. we are now working on 2.4.18 kernel, and
after confronting benchmarks we will decide which 2.4.x
flavour we will adopt for 0.9 release (my bet is 2.4.18)
Cooperation and contribution on this task, as in all other tasks
(DeMuDi philosophy is the same as Debian, as community
contributed work) is welcome too..in few word this is not
a project made behind the doors...is an open project.
Jack:
we would like to have all core applications "jackyfied"....we are
working on that...
Core applications:
- While many audio applications will be installed, some of them
as part of the official Debian distribution, we decided to focus
on a set of AGNULA core applications, a wide spectrum that
covers hopefully all different fields and needs. Sectioning is
based on Dave Phillips book/web site (Dave is part of the AGNULA
staff and it will be basically our headlight in selecting
applications and he will write the documentation and more...see
below again). There is a preliminary list, still missing
some packages, do not see that as complete...:
http://www.agnula.org/user/packages
(main missing packages but available as core apps are
CLM,CMN,SND (*see not about SND) )
Agnula Control panel
- Core applications will have full documentation, tutorials and
examples. All this will be easy to surf with the Agnula
control panel. The control panel will provide:
- a tour to the system
- documentation, tutorials and examples for core apps
- a way to set up basic audio functions
- ...and for some extent apps functionality
Will be the Agnula Control Panel available in the 0.9 release.
Yes, maybe not in its final release....is a lot of work, again,
contributions, suggestions are welcome.
Free Software policy:
One of the project goal, and part of the IST contract is that
AGNULA will be completely based on free software. We believe
this is a very important part of our project. Of course this has
raised a certain amount of problems, all can be solved with not
much work. A simple example case is SND. SND comes in two
flavours now: gtk or motif. Support for lesstif has been
abandoned by the author. The most developed version of SND (and
fully supported by the author) is the motif version. The gtk
version does not seem to have a ..brilliant future, even if i
personally find it nice. __Open__ motif libs are not free
software (gratis but not free software...), it might be that in
the near future motif will become GPL so lesstif will become
obsolete. In the mean time we decided to compile SND against
latest cvs lesstif libs. It works, also with Dave
plug-ins...still with few problems to solve. Also the idea is to
avoid touching even one line of code in SND (or any other
program), but rather having the lesstif authors to fix
compatibility with the motif libs. In this way, we will help
free software to grow and enhance their possibility, and fix
gaps with non free software apps, where/if this exists...and
after some investigation we did on different *problematic*
software we figured that there is not much work to do...
How to contribute: Even if we already have some packaged parts i would
not consider safe for you to test them unless you are very skilled....but
soon it will be possible to start to down load packages and parts of
DeMuDi. So at that point testing will be a valuable contribution.
Right now, participating to the debate on th Agnula mailing lists, or
here as well...that would be important...
That is the end of my two lines....-( an excess of verbosity, but i think
some of you might be interested on this detailed information.
Last note. Even if it is not a distribution in itself, rather a
collection of packages for red hat distributions with good notes and
suggestion on how to build a good GNU/Linux audio system, Planet CCRMA ,
http:www-ccrma.stanford.edu
is a very good place were you could satisfy your needs for a good
selection of audio packages.
I mentioned PLANET CCRMA, and i dont want to raise confusion. These are
two completely different projects and with different goals, one is a
package collection, perfectly fitting already installed red hat
distributions, AGNULA is instead a distribution in itself (that can be
also installed on a already existing Debian system).
They serve in two different ways the same need and the lack - till now-
of a professional audio environment for GNU/Linux.
Once again sorry for the verbosity....and hopefully you have found here
useful information.
ciao,
marco trevisani
-- ************************************************************** * marco trevisani * * http://trevisani.mine.nu marco_AT_centrotemporeale.it * * http://www.agnula.org -- A GNU/Linux Audio Distribution * * Neither MS-Word nor MS-PowerPoint attachments please: * * See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html * **************************************************************
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