[ubuntu-studio-devel] Elementary OS

[Len Ovens]

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015, Mike Holstein wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 8:27 AM, ttoine <ttoine at ttoine.net> wrote:
>       Hey Guys,
> I would like to share an idea I have for some time ago. Seing the success
> of Elementary OS or Linux Mint, both based on Ubuntu, I really think that
> we should create something like that.

...

> if the goal is, to get cash in the pockets of developers, i think there is a much
> easier way. we can just simply donate to them, personally. most, such as ardour,
> will have simple scenarios in place making it easy to give them funding.
> 
> if the goal is to make a competing product to KXstudio, i think that would be a
> conversation to have.. and, can we compete, within the confines of the ubuntu
> repos? etc..
> 
> the largest positive, i see, that ubuntustudio has, is the ubuntu branding.. to
> leave that, and try and directly compete with KXstudio may just create a small,
> niche thing that may not really address any of those issues.. though, i think its
> a great conversation to have
> 
> just because ubuntu/canonical goes a different direction in the future, doesnt
> mean we cant visit that, if/when that happens..

Thank you Mike. You have said what I would have said.

Really, the repos are the smallest problem. I think the glue is the thing 
that makes audio work well. I think if US keeps the basic utilities in 
ubuntu working, the repos will be fine.

What we have towards this already:
 	- the kernel (lowlatency)
 		- grub puts the right kernel first even if generic is also
 		  installed.
 	- Jackd has RT and memlock enabled.
 		- it would be nice to improve this for non-iso installs.
 	- a controls app for checking and setting audio settings
 	- rtirq
 		- it would be nice if controls would act as a GUI
 		  for setting the priority order inteligently.
 	- swappiness is set reasonably (10 instead of 60)

What we should be doing in the future to make things better:
 	- Make sure basic tools are kept up to date/fixed
 		- our last LTS was shipped with broken jackd2
 	- Set jack as the audio backend from session start.
 	- prevent pulse from seeing ALSA devices
 	- install libjack-jackd2-dev by default
 		- try to get upstrean (debian) to include this in jackd2
 	- allow changes to jackd devices on the fly
 		- detect new USB (or whatever) audio devices at plugin
 		- allow jackd to auto default to USB device
 		- provide access to all audio devices using zita-ajbridge
 		- allow on the fly latency change
 		- allow pulse detach for very low latencies
 	- detect USB audio device plugged into a shared USB port and
 	  warn user.
 	- allow dynamicly changing rtirq settings when un/plugging USB
 	  device.

Note: almost all Linux (alsa and Jack) internal stuff was designed when 
internal audio was _the_ way things were done. The world has changed and 
USB has become king. Anyone buying a new audio interface will likely end 
up with a USB IF. It is time to treat these correctly. Linux audio needs 
to start expecting these more. There are more changes down the road, but 
all of them look to be with things that can appear or vanish at any time 
with the user _expecting_ things to just keep working. Pulse has done a 
good job at doing this... but Pulse is not stable enough for pro audio, it 
is prone to drop outs and media clock oddness. Pulse is a good front end 
to make desktop audio just work though. We need to work on the jack end of 
things so that audio just works even in odd situations.

Windows and OSX just resample to keep all IFs in sync without asking the 
user if there is one of those devices they want to be non-resampled. We 
can do better than that, but still offer the user the ability to see all 
the devices in jack.

I think AoIP is one of the next things coming... where your computer knows 
there is an audio input out there but it does not get connected until you 
need it. But that is tomorrow's problem  ;)


--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net