[ubuntu-studio-devel] US still alive !

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Hi Len,

> On Apr 2, 2018, at 1:22 PM, Len Ovens <len at ovenwerks.net> wrote:
> 
> 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.

There are some that are already taking that attitude, unfortunately. Set is helping me with quite a bit with the handoff, but it seems as though I’m meeting resistance from some.

> 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.

This would be amazing. I’m not much of a coder, but if you can find someone to hand that off to, or if you could find the time to finish it (at lest to an alpha stage) that would be great.

> 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
> 

I totally get that. My goal is to lower the barrier-to-entry. I can’t tell you how long it took me to figure out Jack. In all honesty, Cadence made it easy, especially with the Catia patchbay (much like patchage, but actually maintained).

> 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.

Good to know.

> 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)

I’ve personally spoken to the developer of Pipewire, and it seems to be a decent replacement and/or augmentation to Jack or to replace Pulseaudio. It’s something that my friend Noah Chelliah (Noah of the Ask Noah Show and formerly of the Linux Action Show) has been watching closely. With my new role here with Ubuntu Studio, I plan on watching Pipewire closely. It has potential to be really good.

> 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.
> 

At one point in time, there was a project to give the UbuStu installer a choice of DEs. However, I believe nothing ever came of that. With that said, a change in DE is one thing I have been considering proposing. Ubuntu (proper) has transitioned to the GNOME desktop environment from Unity as of 17.10.

IIRC, the main reason Ubuntu Studio went to Xfce at the time was to keep the DE familiar for existing users, and that Unity was a bit too buggy and not resource-friendly enough. Additionally, MATE wasn’t in the repos at the time, having been forked from Gnome2 at a later time.. It has been nearly 8 years since that decision. In that time, GNOME 2’s fork (MATE) has matured greatly, even to the point of being ported to GTK3 while becoming more resource-friendly. My acquaintance Martin Wimpress has done an amazing job with the Ubuntu MATE flavor (I helped in the very early beginnings with testing and feedback).

My proposal would be to move from Xfce to MATE, or even to KDE Plasma now that Plasma 5 has reduced resources compared to the way it was historically. Ideally, we’d present the user with the option at install, but I’m not sure how technically feasible that would be. Either way, it’s worthy of discussion, and perhaps even a survey.

Either way, one could possibly simply create a meta package with theming defaults for any of the DEs, which would be another way of giving user choice, but at this point I’m getting ahead of myself. :)

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

As I’ve said before, there are no good or bad ideas. All ideas are welcome. We’ll figure it out in due time. Right now, the focus should be moved to getting 18.04 out the door, and any major changes should be only considered for 18.10. That said, posting ideas is never bad. :)


Erich


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