Oneiric Update

[Fritz Meissner]

On 31 August 2011 20:03,  <ScottALavender at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> AUDIENCE
> A confluence of activities yielded an interesting result....the majority of
> the active team feels that we should define our audience as musicians who
> are new to Linux. This is still a continuing process so we might refine or
> adjust this definition.
>
This makes sense to me. The nice thing is that if you meet the needs
of that audience, you will also be meeting the needs of people who are
not new to Linux, but are new to Linux music applications (like me).

I see two things as important to reaching the defined audience :

1.  A new installation must work OOB for most users. It has always
driven me crazy when you do a clean install of US, start jack and get
a message that says something like "come back when you have a sane
configuration". This is unnecessary, and for most newbies would be the
end of their tryout. Optimising a jack configuration is complex and
probably beyond automating, but a basic configuration which runs OOB
on most hardware and will at least allow you to make some sort of
sound is not that difficult, I think.

2. Batteries included. Every application on the menu must do something
when you start it up for the first time, even if it is just loading a
demo piece and playing when you click the play button; applications
must come up in a working configuration. If it needs Timidity or jack
to run first, then start them if they aren't already running, or give
a message explaining how to start them. Some time back, Aeolius was
replaced with Genpo so I gave Genpo a try - what an exercise in
frustration! Files you needed to dowload first that weren't included
and no clues given as to what it wanted - it just sat there and looked
at me soundlessly and inscrutably. This is the sort of experience
which we cannot afford.

By the way, it is several releases ago since I last tried US, so if
some of the things I am implying above are dated and no longer true, I
apologise.

Fritz