Wishlist

Sat May 21 20:11:29 UTC 2011

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net>wrote:

> Hi all :)
>
> I'm new to the Ubuntu Studio devel list and I'm not sure if it's the right
> place for me, so please blame Mike, if I should annoy you ;p.
>
> I was upset when I read that you'll switch the DE, until the community give
> a fair warning, that GNOME2 won't be supported any more.
>
> Hurray, I already needed to switch from KDE3 to GNOME2 when there was the
> switch to KDE4 and now I've got to switch again, I believe unsighted that
> GNOME3 isn't a good choice and I do agree that there are two DEs that in
> case of emergency could replace GNOME2. XFCE and LXDE. Fluxbox and e17 can't
> do, dunno which DEs you were thinking of and I don't know the current XFCE,
> but I guess you did a step in the right direction with XFCE.
>
> Anyway, Mike is right that now is a good time for some "wishes".
>
> First of all, since 2003/2004, when I switched from the Atari ST TOS to
> Suse Linux 9.0, the wheel of my mouse is working, until I switched from
> Ubuntu Karmic (resp. 64 Studio) to Ubuntu Studio Lucid. For my current
> Edubuntu Maverick, the mouse wheel seldom is working. I'm not only thinking
> of my mouse-wheel issue, but about the mouse movements in general. Over the
> weekend I'm sorting out old Linux installs and data on my HDDs, while doing
> this I run 64 Studio 3.3 with LXDE. Using the mouse there is like slow
> motion. For home recording and I suspect less professional audio studios are
> using Ubuntu Studio, often one person needs to do everything her/him self,
> the instrument in one hand, the mouse in the other hand, hence using the
> mouse should be "fast", resp. small movements should enable to cross the
> whole screen, while it also should be possible to select -1, -2 and -3 dB
> for a fader and not only  -1 and -3 dB ;), this is able by using GNOME2.
>
> Did you notice something?
>
> I'm talking about music only. IMO the usage of video, paint and animation
> apps doesn't really need a special distro, ok, for e.g.  Cinelerra there
> might be the need to have a special repository, regarding to codec issues
> and the GNU etc., but special tweaks are needed for real-time audio.
>
> For GNOME2 sessions on my Maverick install, the default CPU frequency
> scaling setting of my customized configured kernel 2.6.33.9-rt31 is ignored.
> It's set down to "ondemand".
>
> Today I installed Ardour3, hence I'm knowingly just used the computer set
> to "ondemand". The installer warned me:
>
> "!!! WARNING !!! - Your system seems to use frequency scaling.
> This can have a serious impact on audio latency. You have two choices:
> (1) turn it off, e.g. by chosing the 'performance' governor.
> (2) Use the HPET clocksource by passing "-c h" to JACK
> (this second option only works on relatively recent computers)"
>
> And even on relatively recent computers there's a limit for the apps that
> can use HPET, I'm only enabling it for ALSA seq and not by/for Jack.
>
> Perhaps you should connect a power meter to your computer and compare the
> load. The difference between "performance" and "ondemand" will be around 1W
> for modern multi-core machines, which isn't much. If you're using a laptop
> think about the load needed by the display ;).
>
> Envy24 cards should work OOTB as they did, before PolypAudio grabbed
> everything and by the way, current version of Envy24 control is version 1
> "mudita" since a long time ago.
> Note that just editing /usr/share/alsa/cards didn't work for Maverick any
> more here! I need to pseudo-disable PA, without really knowing what I'm
> doing ;).
> I'll order a better card next week, but Envy24 cards are wide spread and,
> because we're talking about future releases of Ubuntu Studio, using Jack2
> from svn with
>
>        sudo chgrp audio /dev/hpet
>        sudo chmod g+rw /dev/hpet
>        sudo modprobe snd-hrtimer
>
> and
>
> jackd --sync -Xalsarawmidi -dalsa [snip]
>
> +
>
> a2jmidi_bridge
>
> +
>
> the current kernel-rt enabled using hw MIDI out without audible jitter. I
> already got best results with older versions of Jackd2, when running latency
> tests, but the jitter anyway was audible for me, I couldn't use external
> MIDI equipment.
>
> The kernel can set a default for the frequency scaling gov and the DE, WM,
> frame based environment, install for text mode only, in other words, any
> kind of userinterface should use this as the default.
>
> Set "ondemand" as default for the PREEMPT only kernels, I'll set
> "performance" for my kernel-rt and if there should be a kernel-rt by the
> repositories too, it also should be set to "performance".
>
> I add
>
> $ cat /etc/rcS.d/S69switch_xorg.conf
> #! /bin/sh
> # /etc/rcS.d/Switch_xorg_conf
>
> rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> case $(uname -r) in
>    *rt*)
>        cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nv /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>        ;;
>    *)
>        cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>        ;;
> esac
>
> to my current install, to solve that annoying proprietary driver issue,
> regarding to the RT patched kernels.
>
> You might add a similar script, while just "*rt*)" and "*)" is a vague
> sort, that might not work on all machines. I know that the main issue with
> this idea is, that usually there isn't a xorg.conf any more.
>
> Qtractor needs more often upgrades for it's package (but not without
> consulting testers, before changing a version) and perhaps other sequencers,
> I'm not using need might need more often upgrades of the packages too and of
> cause, Ardour3 should be included ASAP.
>
> Basic apps, such as e.g. Fluidsynth IMO don't need upgrades that often, but
> because they are basic apps they have to be stable. The default
> Fluidsynth-DSSI is (or was?) hardcore broken for Maverick, just producing
> noise.
>
> What's about LinuxDSP FX?
>
> VSTs? And yes, something similar to a chroot or in general 32-bit libs for
> a 64-bit install? Think about Animata, LightScribe, VSTs etc..
>
> I can try to help a little bit, but I'm not a coder and I don't want to
> spend too much time with testing etc. any more.
>
> Perhaps more, but just 2 Cents.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Ralf
>
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Ralf,

Thanks for the input!  There is a lot there to consider, however, consider
we shall.

I will warn you clearly now, I'm not sure we will be able to do everything
*at this time*.  Some items may be prohibited by Canonical/Ubuntu like
including VST support in the binary.  Others may not happen immediately
simply because of limited resources.

Thank you again,
ScottL
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