Linux...anybody using it?

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stanlea wrote:
ret wrote:Now majority of people saying they use linux for making music actually use windows software with wine because native linux audio sofware still misses lots of even the most basic features needed for the platform to be usable. It's sad but it's the ugly truth of how things are.
People on KVR, maybe. Majority, certainly not : see (and hear) GPLed music sites.
With the new Hexter, Yoshimi/zynaddsubfx, and Calf-MonoSynth releases,
The average joe would be hard-pressed to get the same sonic potential
from any three non-linux apps, for under $300.
Perhaps more $$$ if one has an old
computer setup, and needed/wanted the great U-he Diva,
forcing a hardware upgrade.

While linux is utterly usable, and a delight, for many,
(and I have no 'Masters' wallpaper to brag on) there is no
industrial strength reason for a musician to refuse using windows
(make that Intel/AMD) instruments/apps in wine.
People are free to go 'linux only', whether as a proof of concept,
as a discipline, out of some peculiar or temporary necessity, or simply for
'The Love Of The Game'.

It's not like wealthy 0S-ex owners (or formerly wealthy :hihi: )
don't come around every Tuesday, crying about 'no Mac version of a-z'.
Although since Synth1 is ported to Mac, the STN ratio is better.
Cheers

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Just to comment on the plugins.

To date, I'm only aware of a small number of major standards in Linux: For audio filtering plugins, we have LADSPA versions 1 and 2 (the latter is known as "LV2"), as well as VST, and for instrument plugins, we have DSSI and VSTi. In both cases, we have a open-source standard, and a popular standard. What other forms of major plug-in standards are out there that I'm missing?
Lampros Liontos (aka. Reteo Varala)

The Penguin Producer - Tips, tricks and techniques for producing multimedia using the Linux operating system.

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reteo wrote:Just to comment on the plugins.

To date, I'm only aware of a small number of major standards in Linux:
I'm only aware of a small number of major standards in...anything :)

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ret wrote:
Come on, you're making a point with vaporware, what's to have faith in ? Like I said, the crews at Pianoteq and Renoise got it right.
I'm sure Bitwig gets released someday. Maybe. Do I have massive faith for it changing linux audio as we know it? No.
But wrt Linux plugins: "Too little too late" for what ?
For linux being interesting enough platform for plug-in developers to start releasing their commercial plug-ins in linux. That is crucial if we want more users and especially pro users to linux.

Anyway... I think I've had my 15 seconds of xruns in this topic so I think it's better I crawl back to my cave waiting for the next time this same conversation starts. It' been going on as long as I remember and most likely will go on years to come. Why? Simply because most linux audio developers and big name gurus stay self-absorbed in their very own bubbles and dont take a hint when users say what sucks and what could be done to make it better.

Now majority of people saying they use linux for making music actually use windows software with wine because native linux audio sofware still misses lots of even the most basic features needed for the platform to be usable. It's sad but it's the ugly truth of how things are.
FWIW, as a Linux audio developer who actually has the ability to step back and look at the situation objectively, I pretty much have to agree with you on (almost) all points...

Hell, my project was only supposed to be a DSP library for writing plugins back when I started it. Then, because of the experiences of people like you and myself, it snowballed into actual plugins, then a DAW + plugins, and then into a full distro + DAW + plugins + plugin-standard, all because the rest of the ecosystem is such a clusterf_ck of may-or-may-not-work-reliably-or-do-what-you-need-it-to-without-resorting-to-WINE-and-Windoze-software...

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Downloading http://pydaw.org/ to a VM

Thanks for the effort in advance.

Anyway I do agree with you guys, that is why I want to see the windows software running on Linux, natively.

There is a few god things like Hydrogen, but on its own is to little, or qTracktor but still not good enough and needing to go with jack and a lot of trouble to just insert a synth.

LMMS is the best thing and it is relatively weak.

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pc999 wrote:Downloading http://pydaw.org/ to a VM
Actually, I would strongly encourage you to make a live USB flash drive out of it and boot the PC from that, rather than using a VM. Most VM hypervisors (like Virtualbox) perform terribly. It will probably work in a VM(I've done it before), but it will use way too much CPU to be useful, since a virtual soundcard is being emulated before being passed to the real soundcard...

I've created instructions for how to create a live USB flash drive here:

http://pydaw.org/wiki/index.php?title=PyDAW_OS

Also be sure to read the readme.txt file on the live desktop, it has useful information about how to use and configure it when running live...

EDIT: and BTW, if you do decide to go with a Virtualbox(I assume) VM anyways, you should install the guest additions, otherwise PyDAW won't fit on that 800x600 default screen that Virtualbox gives to VMs without the guest additions installed. But, like I said, I wouldn't expect very good performance in a VM, unless you've figured out a pass-through setup for your soundcard that actually works well...
Last edited by jeffh on Sat Jan 26, 2013 4:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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I forgot that Ubuntu always runs slow on the VM (and gnome 3 like stuff), I will try it latter on the USB pen.

But I really like the concept of ubuntu+the DAW without much more stuff.

Anyway of installing just the DAW if I have trouble with the USB install (although not usual):?:

Edit: hadn't see your reply, thanks I will try later.

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LOL, you posted that right as I was editing :hihi:

Please read the "EDIT:" section post for how it *could* possibly work in a VM.... Pass-through USB devices don't always work properly, but if they do, then that's a viable way to run it in VM, because the CPU overhead actually isn't that high, it's just emulating the soundcard that sucks...

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First (very quick) impressions: very nice, fast and seems stable, also quite a good package, but the lack of something like a piano roll will probably mean that will be very little used. Nice sound for the instruments too. Seems like a great start.

BTW I used this http://www.linuxliveusb.com/en/home and worked fine.

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pc999 wrote:First (very quick) impressions: very nice, fast and seems stable, also quite a good package, but the lack of something like a piano roll will probably mean that will be very little used. Nice sound for the instruments too. Seems like a great start.

BTW I used this http://www.linuxliveusb.com/en/home and worked fine.
First off, thank you for the kind words(and even for the lesser kind words), I appreciate you taking the time to provide honest feedback...

As far as the lack of a piano roll(yet), it's probably worth giving the project history timeline:

1 year ago: None of it exists, I've just started the library that I'll eventually write the plugins with

4(?) months ago: I decide to write the DAW part, in Python, which I've never used before much less...

1 month ago: Why not make it a full live distro while I'm at it :D

But, given the incredibly short history of the software, the piano roll wasn't a huge priority yet compared to just getting it all stable and working well.

I intend to have a piano roll sometime soon (maybe the next 3-6 months?), but it's going to be a unique concept a lot like the rest of PyDAW, I'm trying to change the game by taking chances, trying new things, and redesigning a better way to DAW... rather than another Cubase clone trying to offer 90% of the Cubase experience at a fraction of the price....

I'll probably release a new version of PyDAW-OS once a month, with several smaller releases of just the Ubuntu packages inbetween. Kind of like the frequent-updates-rolling-release model Reaper used to follow when it was younger...

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I didnt mean any lesser kind words, it seems a amazing work (even more on those conditions), just that is an unusual way of doing stuff at the moment (I still hadnt much time with it anyway), although the tabs above seems quite practical.

I think it is great that you are doing stuff your way and it is how it should be, it is definitively a project to keep watching, with a nice plan too.


If you don't mind the suggestion, let users install on their existing Ubuntu installs to increase reach and feedback.




BTW I did some translations (using launchpad) in the past I may find the time to do some on the future for this, when the project matures.

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Hey, this Pydaw looks interesting. I hope you continue developing it. It seems like so much Linux software gets half-baked, especially on the video and audio front.

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jeffh wrote:
4(?) months ago: I decide to write the DAW part, in Python, which I've never used before much less...
The way new python projects keep popping up, it will be a nice
extra feather in your resume'. Must be an ace of a language.
One can't have too many of them, these days!
Cheers
Last edited by glokraw on Sun Jan 27, 2013 9:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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pc999 wrote:I didnt mean any lesser kind words,
Relax brother, I wasn't trying to say you were being mean or anything, just trying to acknowledge that I also appreciate the criticisms rather than just yes-men and fanboys who always tell me that everything I do is perfect :wink:
pc999 wrote:just that is an unusual way of doing stuff at the moment (I still hadnt much time with it anyway), although the tabs above seems quite practical.
I realize that it won't be the most obvious workflow for long time users of traditional DAWs. I tried to combine the concepts that really work in the so-called "trackers", with a conventional DAW... Probably the best way to look at PyDAW is a "tracker done right", and if you've never used a tracker, try one and see how PyDAW refines a lot of the concepts and makes them more suitable for mainstream use rather than just a toy for uber-geeks that they have traditionally been.

pc999 wrote:I think it is great that you are doing stuff your way and it is how it should be, it is definitively a project to keep watching, with a nice plan too.
Thanks, it's good to hear that people appreciate what I'm trying to accomplish :D

pc999 wrote:If you don't mind the suggestion, let users install on their existing Ubuntu installs to increase reach and feedback.

I've always had Ubuntu .deb packages and source-code-tarballs available here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmodsynth/files/
pc999 wrote:BTW I did some translations (using launchpad) in the past I may find the time to do some on the future for this, when the project matures.
Thanks, I really appreciate that... I didn't have any support for internationalization yet because I didnt have anybody to do the translations, so now I can start planning for that...[/url]

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sellyoursoul wrote:Hey, this Pydaw looks interesting. I hope you continue developing it. It seems like so much Linux software gets half-baked, especially on the video and audio front.
You're absolutely correct, and there's reasons for that... The long time standard Linux DAWs are just incredibly unstable and crashy in general, which makes it impossible to develop anything against them. To make matters worse, LV2 is a complete turd of a standard that's going to lead Linux audio to nowhere... It's bloated and unnecessarily complicated, and even though it's 7 years in the making, still changes frequently.

Here's another Linux audio developer with a once very promising project that was eventually abandoned, pretty much repeating what I've been saying about the situation for a long time:

http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php ... =15#p33606

However, PyDAW is completely immune from the normal factors that cause Linux audio projects to be abandoned. Being an integrated all-in-one solution not unlike Reason for Windows means that I'll never be dependent on another project to fix their part(or refuse/fail to fix their part) , and I'll never be in the position of having to abandon it because I couldn't make it work reliably in someone else's unreliable application.

...and, like pc999 said, he got the impression that PyDAW is quite stable. It IS quite stable, and that's because I do far more stringent QA and testing than any of the competing projects(a fairly epic regimen of manual testing, automated testing, and unit testing through Valgrind, GDB and GProf). I'll never be in the position of abandoning PyDAW because it's buggy, because it will never become buggy. Hell, it was usable and pretty gosh-darn stable 2.5 months into development, what other DAW on the planet, Window, OSX, Linux or other, could make that claim?

So in the past 12 months, I've written an entire stack of audio applications from scratch. In the next 12 months, I should be able to focus on just refining and improving what's already there, and creating a brand that's seen as a viable competitor to Windows and OSX solutions, not just "the best Linux DAW", which IMHO is hardly an accomplishment when Linux is currently like 0.000001% of the pro audio market... I intend to take the entire Linux pie, and then grow it exponentially by stealing users away from Windoze and OSX...

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