Re: [LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?

From: Len Ovens <len@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Thu Feb 07 2013 - 02:31:41 EET

On Wed, February 6, 2013 5:19 am, Raffaele Morelli wrote:

> One could be a professional with/without skills and/or an hobbyist
> with/without skills, no matter who you are you need apps which doesn't
> turn
> sound engineer or a guitar player or composer into a *nix OS student.

For me to use Win/OSX I would first have to become a windows or OSX
student. Say what? Yes I have been using Linux (CLI, fvwm, KDE, Gnome,
xfce, X, Xorg) for years... since I found out OS/2 (2.*) was not going to
fill my needs (win3.1 was _SO_ bad it wasn't even worth considering). I
find win and or OSX confusing, slow (at least windows is, OSX boxes are
beyond my family budget anyway) and flaky. That is my personal experience.
I have figured out that this is because I know the quirks of my own OS so
well, I don't see them. I have found windows users (and OSX users to some
degree) are similarly blind to their own OSs problems. The general thing
with OSs is to choose your software first and get the system OS that goes
with it.

> The majority of linux audio apps are such a mess to work with for the
> majority of, let's say, pure musicians which in turn are not interested at
> all in learning an OS to play music with a usb keyboard throug Qsynth,
> record things with Ardour, use Guitarix, configure a soundcard, etc etc...
> that's all.

Pure musician? Them are the ones that sits by the side of the road and
plays and sings for dollars thrown in their hat. (no insult intended, I
have heard some fantastic music from people who make their living this way
and am happy they share it) Anyone who does any electric music has
something of a tinker in them. Human beings as a whole are successful at
surviving because they are not pure anything, but rather great
generalists.

> So IMHO what really sucks is this overall geek approach of LAD vs end
> users, there is no one to blame for that but nevertheless it prevents lots
> of people to join.

That may be true, there are all in one projects out there that try to
emulate some of the well known win/osx SW. I have found though that people
who start with them tend to move on to other things as they get used to
linux. As other people have said Linux is not a (name whatever OS here)
clone. It is not even anymore a unix clone. It has grown into it's own OS.
Yes there is a learning curve, but there is with any OS. It is just harder
to see the learning curve for the old OS one has been using for years than
for the new one when learning it.

If we step outside of audio into "normal desktop computing" (browsing,
office work, etc) the changeover time from Windows to Linux (or the other
way) is about 15 minutes or less. This is mostly due to commercial made SW
(Firefox and open office). Music will be the same... when linux has enough
musicians using linux for their work, commercial products will show up,
interfaces will just work, etc. because it will make money for that to be
so.

What I would like to see, is a tool that helps someone switch from one lib
to the new version. The original developer of gcdmaster is not moving it
from gnome/gtk2 to 3 (that I know). A utility that can point out any calls
to the old lib and give hints on what to do to change over to the new one.
Might help to keep these very useful one off programs from vanishing. I
have not found a program that I consider a replacement for gcdmaster.
Anything else I have tried to use to make a .toc file from, I have had to
edit by hand or run gcdmaster on an old install I keep to fix it. Any
other program I have used to create a toc/cue file has also created a
single file of the whole audio track for the cd instead of allowing the
original wave files to be used as is. I am not complaining about other
methods of making CDs, I am rather saying the upgrade path from one
version of lib to the next could be easier for the programer who is just
learning or has limited time. This might bring more people into audio
software development.

Note: if there is such a tool... I would like to try it. A tool for adding
jack as an audio driver to alsa/oss software would be really nice too...
sorry, I mean a tool to help people convert alsa/oss software to jack sw.

-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net
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Received on Thu Feb 7 04:15:03 2013

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