Making Studio work with more than one DE

[Hartmut Noack]

Am 22.05.2013 22:09, schrieb Jimmy Sjölund:
> Hi,
> 
> this is my first post to the mailing list. So bare with me for a short
> introduction. When I discovered Ubuntu Studio some years ago I only had
> access to a very old pc and a quite old laptop. However I was able to
> record some songs on it, but mixing was a nightmare since the computers
> were too old. Then I upgraded to a Sony Vaio after much research about Vaio
> and Ubuntu. However, there were issues between jack, my audio card and how
> the Sony Vaio use USB. The result was that I could only record in 16 bit,
> 44.1 kHz. Which was worse than I had before on my old computers, 24 bit and
> 48 kHz.. So I reverted to Windows for my audio recordings and tried out
> every new release of Ubuntu Studio until finally everything just worked in
> 12.04. At last, I could actually do all my recordings, mixing and mastering
> in US. But by then I was about to have my first child and the time for
> recording somehow disappeared...
> 
>> Anyway: any person, that uses Win or Mac for that that tries US and is
>> encountering this problem will switch back and maybe consider using
>> Linux next year or never....
> 
> Which was just what I did. I was persistent to try out every new release
> until my equipment finally worked. By now it's outdated, oh well, but
> that's another issue.
> 
>> Do you have a statistic on how many people out there use US for
>> music-production?
> 
> This would be interesting. From reading the Ubuntu Forums there seem to be
> at least some using it in their professional studios. I do music
> recordings, but the degree of "professionalism" could be argued. On the
> other hand, with the DIY revolution in the music industry many could be
> labelled professional.
> 
>> First of all, Ubuntu Studio is not a pro audio distribution. It's for
>> all multimedia content creation.
> 
> I have always considered US as a pro audio distribution, why not? Real
> time/low latency kernel and all... I see now that site actually states
> "multimedia" in several places. But if I wouldn't use US for pro audio,
> what should I use instead? Back to Windows or Mac? Further, what defines
> "pro audio"? Probably in the music industry ProTools on Mac and so on will
> continue to be leading, but for a home studio or in the early stages studio
> I think Ubuntu Studio could be a choice to consider. And more with the
> right marketing and support. Mind you, being an audio engineer and musician
> I'm mostly thinking about the audio parts of the distribution. (Though I
> happily use Gimp and Kdenlive).
> 
>> Getting audio working for audio production, with some bloated desktop
>> environments is not very useful.
> 
> I couldn't agree more. I like when my desktop looks nice but when I'm about
> to record, cut a video or handle large graphics my main concern is
> performance. 

Mine is time, thats why I use to spend 1-2 E more when shopping for
hardware -- I buy the performance to spare the time tweaking a feeble
computer into a powerhouse-workstation. And for my day2day job I want a
desktop, that offers all I need in less than a second as I need it.

And I want a real-world Linux desktop because I want to keep an
understanding for the average end-user. I write for Magazines that are
for such users and to be experienced with a custom made tweaked
Super-Linux does not help much to walk in the shoes of such normal users.

And it works great for me. Whenever I get in trouble it is because of
misconfiguration or misbehaviour of software, never because of the
"natural" demands of that software.

It could be, that for some critical live-recording I would switch to
Fluxbox and kill all the background-services I use to have running
normally (LAMP, Networkmanager etc) But not for editing or for recording
overdubs.

> I was quite happy when US changed to Xfce. I think it's the
> right way to go. I actually changed my other workstations to Xfce as well
> after that.

XFCE is perfectly OK but not primarily because it is leaner than UNITY
or GNOME3, but because it is more simplistic and it does not need 3d.
KDE would have been a good choice also, because it can easily be
configured to be even more lean and simplistic than XFCE. And it comes
with a better file-manager. But again: XFCE is good.

best regards

HZN

> If you want Unity or other you can always use standard Ubuntu and add the
> audio, video and/or graphic tools you need. Make Ubuntu Studio a bit
> special for the creative people.
> 
> But:
> 
>> We don't know how long into the future the xfce platform will best suit
> our needs (very little warning was given during the
>> gnome/unity move that prompted our switch to xfce in the first place),
> and the lack of DE-specific code the easier it will be for those
>> of us who love a different DE to just switch.
> 
> Which also makes sense.
> 
>> Please remember
>> that the team is only a handful of people, and constructive help in most
>> cases is actually doing things yourself.
>>
>> I'm currently trying to get more people involved, and we have gotten
>> some responses. Many people come by, but getting really dedicated people
>> doesn't happen every day, and most people simply don't have the time for
>> it.
> 
> Not being able to code I don't know how to contribute even though I really
> would like to? Other than participating in the mailing list that is.
> 
> Kind regards
> Jimmy
> 
> 
>