[ubuntu-studio-devel] Elementary OS

[ttoine]

*Audio:*
 - I agree that if you are working with midi stuff and virtual instruments,
there is not a lot of great stuff at the moment, and it is difficult to
have a good performance.
 - However, I know many sound engineers that are using Mixbus and switched
to Ubuntu Studio: for recording and mixing you don't need ultra low latency
if the monitoring is external. You need a very stable OS, and we can
provide that.
 - Harrison, one of the most important large format audio console for
broadcast and studios, are using Linux as the operating system of their
digital consoles and other media systems (Debian based). There choice is
not a custom OS nor Windows for embedded systems.
 - Harrison and Waves based their product (respectively Mixbus and Tracks
live) on Ardour, and made it to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux ! Mixbus was
even released for Linux before being available for the other OS
 - Bitwig, a very good alternative to Ableton Live, is designed for Linux,
Mac, and Windows
 - IRCAM, the french famous audio research laboratory, are one of the main
contributor to Jackd and are using it mainly with Linux for their
installations
 - once, I met at an event a former engineer at Thales, who developed
missiles... and guess what ? they are using Linux RT because this is the
faster operating system for I/O and driving.

*Video:*
 - Kdenlive, OpenShot or Pitivi are not usable in a professional
environment, for they don't meet the needs and standards. However, I know
many people using them to create and edit interviews, documentaries or
shorts.
 - Blender, with Blender Velvets plugins, is used to produce long motion
pictures (and animations or effects, also)
 - Lightworks from Redshark is available for Linux, and is working great (I
use it to edit the video tutorials for my company)
 - Cinelerra is also an interesting project
 - Just take some time to read what professionals think about Final Cut pro
X, and you will see that the industry is looking for serious alternatives,
no matter what is the operating system as long as it is possible to access
data on a NAS

*Hardware*:
 - Most of Blackmagic hardware work great with Linux for video
 - I would recommand to avoid PCI sound card now, and use USB2 compliant
sound card instead: I can work at 3ms of latency without issues with
Focusrite, Presonus or Allen & Heath devices, and we can expect to have
less with Arturia's Audiofuse (can't wait to test it)
 - RME audio sound card miss the most recent mixer, you are right, but I
work with a studio who records 16 adat tracks at a time with Ardour or
Mixbus, on Ubuntu Studio, without any issue, and they love it for the
overall stability. They even dropped Mac OS X from the workflow. They own a
9652 if my memory is good.

*Print and graphic:*
 - I have in my professional content graphic designers who use Open Source
software like Scribus and Inkscape to produce beautiful prints, roll'up and
communication content
 - Scribus is the only software at the moment who can generate a fully PDF
specs compliant, even Illustrator and InDesign can't
 - Send a pre-print cmyk pdf created with Scribus to a printing company,
and be sure that the guy on the printer will love you !
 - most of framework to publish content on the web are open source. Dev I
know are still using Photoshop because they don't want to change, but agree
that Gimp and Inkscape would fit their need. (This the same for Pro-Tools
versus Ardour or Mixbus)

I am also a teacher at Lyon, FR, Communication University were they have a
"Bachelor in Communication with free software". I am teaching multimedia
production with free software. If the students don't need high skills, what
they achieve is the same than other in the classic "Bachelor in
communication" where Adobe tools are used.

And you know why ? because the methodology, the workflow, the preparation,
the story/content are the most important. If you do that well, the tool you
choose is secondary. And if you are using a different tool, what you do
will be different, and seen as more creative (of course if it is good ;-) )

I am a cofounder of Ubuntu Studio, and I don't even know how to build a
package... (or I knew it a long time ago). Does that really matter? not at
all: when I needed to improve of fix stuff, I just contacted the
developers, did the tests with them, helped them by contacting other devs
to fix other issues... and eventually, after some months, it worked
together. Improvement (features, bug fix, performance) will always come
from upstream if we help the developers and if they can see what users
really needs.

And now with crowdfunding, it is possible to achieve more important ideas,
like Pitivi did last year with the help of the Gnome foundation.

In conclusion, I can tall that, yes, it is possible to compete with other
more common solution in many fields of multimedia production. I just feel
that Ubuntu Studio is not anymore the best way to attract users. We need
something new, fresh and elegant for curious people ;-)



Antoine THOMAS
Tél: 0663137906

2015-09-01 16:01 GMT+02:00 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net>:

> On Tue, 1 Sep 2015 14:29:01 +0200, ttoine wrote:
> >Ralf, I truly believe that when it will be possible to use a Linux
> >distribution without the terminal at all, Linux will become popular.
>
> At least for audio Linux can't compare to Mac or Windows.
> You need to use the terminal to get an audio tuned Linux and even then
> you should be aware, that you never ever will reach the quality of a Mac
> or Windows workstation.
>
> I'm a RME card user and the RME card driver for Linux is pure crap! I
> installed Windows and FreeBSD to test my card, to ensure that the card
> isn't broken.
>
> On my iPad I use a sequencer that in some important features is better
> than Qtractor, Ardour and Co and other than the Linux applications it's
> stable and this is just on a tablet PC.
>
> IOW if we decide to use Linux, the reason is of philosophically nature.
> Linux for creative work, audio, video, painting and publishing can't
> competed with proprietary, restricted operating systems and software
> programmed with more manpower.
>
> Even if the software should be able to competed, were is the FLOSS
> hardware? Or were are at least good drivers for known hardware.
>
> The RME PCIe card I bought, recommended by the Linux audio
> community, does provide only 2 of 8 ADAT I/Os by jackd, let alone
> missing special features and even a complete and current version of
> total mix, aka hdspmixer is missing for Linux.
>
> Linux already was popular, many European offices switched to Linux and
> for good reasons they switched back to Windows.
>
> Linux comes with pitfalls, faking Windows and Mac abilities isn't
> helpful, it's better to get users used to terminal usage, than
> providing crappy GUIs, that anyway can't replace the terminal.
>
> Regards,
> Ralf
>
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