[ubuntu-studio-devel] US still alive !

[Len Ovens]

On Mon, 2 Apr 2018, Thomas Pfundt wrote:

> On April 2, 2018 1:15 PM, Set Hallstrom <set at ubuntustudio.org> wrote: 
>> if you feel you want to set-up a meeting you should feel 
>> free to go ahead and do so by inviting everyone to attend on a given 
>> date in a given chat room. :) 
> 
> I have no problem with setting up a meeting, but I don't really feel 
> qualified enough to curate it. I suppose it would be beneficial to have 
> someone with a clear vision on where to pick things up, in a sense.

Just think like you are starting over. Don't be afraid of stepping on 
people's toes.

While I also don't like Cadence that much (last time I tried it was a long 
time ago), I am picky and don't use qjackctl for anything other the 
connections window. I have my own script that does what I happen to want. 
I had started to mangle ubuntustudio-controls in a way that I thought 
would work best for beginners. It allowed using a USB mic (one of the most 
common causes of problems these days) by just plugging it in. It handles 
hot plugged USB audio devices as well as using the internal MB audio along 
with PCI(e) interfaces. It also allows using the pulse-jack bridge even 
when jack is set to freerunning. However, I have been too busy to finish 
it.

In short, the things that (so far as I know) keep cadence from being 
better are:

  - it does not unload module-udev-detect and module-alsa-card from pulse
 	(required for reliable pulse-jack bridging)
  - does not deal with hotpluged USB audio
  - it does not deal with two or more audio devices

Another project that would be great to see added to US is 
https://github.com/jhernberg/udev-rtirq to replace the standard rtirq.
The standard rtirq only works at startup and only with devices that are 
ready before it runs. udev-rtirq gives hot plugged audio interfaces raised 
priority as well.

To add to all that there is something new that will be facing us called 
pipewire. How well that will work remains to be seen, but the auther at 
least seems to be talking to the right people and it seems it will not be 
another pulseaudio replacement that doesn't meet pro-audio needs. (one 
hopes)

Some people have asked about DE. We have since Gnome2 was depricated, used 
xfce as being the best replacement so far as usablility, stability, light 
on CPU. Unity has come and gone \o/ and Gnome session has settled down and 
will likely become the next ubuntu de (? anyone know?) Also, the average 
used computer has changed in this time as well (the P$ is not common any 
more) and ubuntu is even thinking of dropping 32bit CPU support. The 
purpose for sticking to xfce is perhaps no longer there (though it is stil 
my personal favourite) and moving to something more standard my be 
something to look at for the next lts (in two more years). Please remember 
US is a working flavour, not a casual desktop that needs to work the same 
as a phone. It has many more applications than an email client and a 
browser and needs easy ways of discovering them all. I personally have not 
yet found anything as good the old win95 style dropdown menu (which was 
designed for the work environment).

However, also remember that with only a few people helping out, being able 
to use somebody else to do most of the DE stuff and only add the 
applications and tweaks on top (in the same way we have been building on 
xubuntu) is an easy way to go. The DE stuff gets tested by someone else so 
US can concentrate on the audio/video/graphic parts.

Anyway, lots of ideas, not sure which are good or bad...

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net