[ubuntu-studio-devel] Ubuntu Studio Controls

[Len Ovens]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2017, Ross Gammon wrote:

> Hi Len,
>
> I just successfully installed an Artful 1704 VirtualBox VM this
> afternoon, and installed the daily build of ubuntustudio-controls
> (https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntustudio-dev/+archive/ubuntu/autobuild/+build/12643119)
> to test out the graphical bits.
>
> It is all looking great!
>
> Some comments:
>
> 1. In the "help", I am not sure of the "if requested" wording for the
> realtime setting.

I have not yet redone the help dialogs. I have removed someout of date 
things and that is about it.

> 2. To test out what might be meant by that, I thought I would fiddle
> with the realtime setting. But it is no longer there! us-controls tells
> me that RealTime is enabled. If I fire up QJackCtl, and untick RT there,

Two different things completely. The RT setting in -controls only shows up 
if jackd2 has not been properly installed. So it would not show up on a 
UbuntuStudio install (unless it is broken). it is there for people who 
install jackd2 or the Studio metas into another flavour and it ends up not 
installed correctly. clicking on the button corrects the install so that 
audio applications have RT access. The button in qjackctl only tells jackd 
if it should try to use RT mode when it runs. You should not have to use 
qjackctl to start jack if you use -controls. However qjackctl when started 
will show jack as already running and will allow connecting jack clients 
together.

> and closing QJackCtl & us-controls). I see from the README that I
> probably should have logged out. Should the help dialogue mention this?

If you need to log out and back in, -controls should have a red message 
suggesting this.

> Note: all of this is done without Jack actually started (as I was too
> lazy to choose higher later latency settings in the VM & to test a reboot).

unless you changed some -controls settings it is possible jack was 
running... not sure how VMs deal with reboots. The default is to use jack 
as the audio server with pulse as a frontend. On my system (and my wife's) 
this is invisible to the user. ie. it just works. It does not seem to use 
extra CPU, pulse uses a bit less in some cases.

> 3. As you can tell, after all this time I am still a bit of a Linux
> Audio noob. Which brings me to documentation. I assume the README &

documentation, aside from being one of my weak points, has not been 
started. (packaging is also a weak point for me, but I should learn at 
least enough to package my own SW) So yes:

> ROADMAP files need updating. You should probably add yourself to the
> AUTHORS too! https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudioControls has
> needed an update for a long time. There used to be a manpage
> (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man1/ubuntustudio-controls.1.html)
> which references https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/SettingsApp which
> is wildly out of date. I suppose the manpage is only really needed if
> users might try and run the scripts from the terminal. The us-controls
> launchpad page has a link to a wiki which doesn't exist
> (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/UbuntuStudioControls). There is a
> useful links section at the bottom of
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/ControlsRedesign which probably
> contains some documentation to assist with producing a new wiki page.
> Are there any others?

I don't know.

> Next I will upgrade the real hardware machine in the basement, and give
> it a proper spin.
  Cool

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net