[ubuntu-studio-devel] US still alive !

[lukefromdc at hushmail.com]

Moving to MATE would be a great idea., would in my judgement go a long way
to restore the UbuntuStudio of old. Rather close in fact to what ended up doing 
with Debian, with my video and audio programs running over MATE (which I am
a developer at these days) and my updated forks of the old GTK and icon themes.

On 4/2/2018 at 7:09 PM, "Erich Eickmeyer" <erich at ericheickmeyer.com> wrote:
>
>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