Re: [LAU] Yoshimi - trying to help newbies

Hi Will,

I really can't comment on what you are asking specific to Yoshimi because
I'm not much of a synth user (but you can sure make it sound great!)

I'm not a developer like many here, but my fumbling contributions to the
Linux Audio world have always been in service of making a complete
JACK-based system ready to use so newbies to Linux can have as full and
rewarding an experience as I've had. JACK's interconnectivity has always
been and still is one of the most amazing and powerful features and I
think if projects like Ardour and Yoshimi provide an OOTB easy ALSA
experience it may well make the first step easier but completely
undersells Linux Audio's most powerful and unique feature. It's great to
fire up Yoshimi and hear a sound, but if I can't seamlessy patch it into
Ardour (or Qtractor or Rosegarden) which is the next logical step in using
it then the new user may completely be confounded by the isolated
modularity provided by ALSA and then write Linux off as being to confusing
and difficult. In either case there is no gain.

I think better and more complete documentation of our wondrous JACK
workflow is a better long-term answer. I personally added 20+ pages to the
last AV Linux Manual completely in service of explaining JACK's routing
and real-world examples of using it with Ardour and Mixbus.

I commend you for taking the time to document Yoshimi and I know it seems
like a thankless task that many users will ignore out of laziness but
truly the kind of users that are committed to learning are the kind of
long-term users that will evangelize and help others discover how great
Yoshimi is.

It is also great to have starter articles like the ones on
libremusicproduction.com. My opinion is stop dumbing-down and start
smartening-up new Linux Users :)

Just my $0.02 as someone who has tried to facilitate/evangelize Linux
Audio and JACK for 10 years now.

Will Godfrey wrote:
> Right from V 0.016 we had the default MIDI and audio set for Jack, and
> soon
> after that we abandoned the beginners Gui option.
>
> Since then a lot has changed, and I'm wondering if we should reappraise
> these
> decissions.
>
> Fairly recently we gave a nod in the direction of helping beginners by
> making
> the virtual keyboard appear alongside the main window on a very first time
> startup. Personally, I think that's better than a dumbed down Gui.
>
> These days, we also have the short Yoshimi guide that tries to get new
> users
> started.
>
> Now I'm wondering if we should change the first-time startup to an all
> Alsa
> configuration. It would make no difference to existing users, as for quite
> a
> while these have been re-settable preferences, and are stored in the
> config
> file.
>
> Would it get us closer to a 'just works' position?
>
> --
> Will J Godfrey
> http://www.musically.me.uk
> Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
> Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
> _______________________________________________
> Linux-audio-user mailing list
> Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
>

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Received on Sun Sep 11 00:15:02 2016