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

From: david <gnome@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Sat Feb 09 2013 - 06:49:17 EET

On 02/08/2013 11:17 AM, shane richards wrote:
> I unfortunately had to download/code "new" versions of software
> recently due to burglary in what used to be a studio. This is what I
> found:
>
> 1. I never realised just how much time I had spent writing freaking
> .desktop files, designing icons, creating MIME types, associating
> programs, and mucking about with menus in general. Of course, where
> does one send their bunch of xdg files for others to use? It's not
> like packagers accept outsiders commenting on their sub-standard
> packaging. I have binaries installed right into /usr/share - how did
> that happen? I told the packager and was told basically where to go
> "NOOB". (30 years of CM production, 15 of those years on Linux. I'm a
> noob, ok, sorry).

Yah, I've gotten those kind of responses from developers. Not from
packagers, though.

> 2. What happened since 2010? About half my VST and windows programs
> stopped working. New wine sucks; lots of xruns, plenty of crashes,
> some programs won't even install or run. New kernel blows hard, I'm
> getting Xruns on a machine that's over 4-times as powerful as the
> last. Never, ever had that before. Why do we always have to have
> "cutting edge"? Screw the 1.5 release, the last good one was the
> 1.1.13/28/32, series. Use THAT tried and tested version for your
> install and allow upgrades later.

Hardware changes seem to have big effects on xruns.

> 3. So far, NONE of my old multi-app projects have been immediately
> useable, due to the above. An OS upgrade has killed some projects. It
> shouldn't happen. So I went searching for Ubuntu Lucid/KXStudio, just
> like I ran without incident for 3 years...it ran everything I could
> throw at it. There seems to have been an all-out scorched-earth
> policy towards Ubuntu Lucid. It no longer exists. KXStudio just wants
> to "upgrade" me - the original repos have been razed as well - but I
> don't want "upgrade", I want a wine that works and a kernel that can
> keep up on hardware that is 4 times faster than before.

I don't consider Ubuntu a good choice. Easy to use, but they're
definitely heading an unfriendly direction.

> 4. And now to the biggest gripe. On my laptop, I decided to create a
> login for my partner so she could quickly check her mail without me
> having to unblock facebook etc. When I finally got her to log in, the
> DEFAULT BACKGROUND WALLPAPER HAD A HENTAI CHICK IN A SUBSERVIENCE
> POSE. WTF!? Partner not amused. Are all the distro people 15 year old
> losers?

Yah, some seem to be. Which distro was that? Have never seen one that
had any background graphic that original.

I have a Live CD version of Aptosid. When you boot it, the first thing
you notice is that the trash can has a huge pile of stuff in it. Didn't
anyone think of simply emptying the trash before they made their live
cd?????

> 5. Related to 4 and 1: can we just spend an hour checking the
> defaults on the desktop before releasing stuff? KDE as presented by
> the distros is worse than XP off a Dell ghost disk. Horrible,
> horrible, horrible defaults. Nepomuk/Strigi disaster turned on by
> default. Why? We already knew it was a disaster. If you're gonna say
> "we're a music distro", then set it up for MUSIC not for eye-candy.

In my opinion, as a former longtime KDE user, KDE4 *is not usable as a
music workstation desktop*. Too many background daemons, too much
eye-candy wasting processor time and memory (note: the eye candy can all
be turned off), etc.

Start with an audio distro. Musix works as a music distro. ArtistX
worked for me, too. Aptosid works for me, cuz I can always boot from the
live CD of whatever version I had installed, and reinstall it. And
Aptosid doesn't automatically upgrade items like the kernel; you have to
do that manually.

Or start with a non-KDE/non-GNOME3 desktop like LXDE or XFCE and add the
music stuff to it. While you're doing it - document everything you did
and keep that offsite. Similar backups for /etc, all your customized
.desktop files, etc. After it's all configured and works the way you
want it to, boot from a live Linux CD and make an image of your system
partition. Back that up and save it offsite.

-- 
David
gnome@email-addr-hidden
authenticity, honesty, community
http://clanjones.org/david/
http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/
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Received on Sat Feb 9 08:15:02 2013

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