[Fedora-music-list] Call to arms - Fedora Audio Spin

[Brian Monroe]

I'm in, but is there a IRC channel you all hang out in? I join
#fedora-audio but there's not much going on there it seems, but maybe I'm
just on at the wrong times.

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:24 AM, Brendan Jones
<brendan.jones.it at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Traditionally Fedora has been known to walk the bleeding edge in free and
> open source software development but for some reason this has never been
> realised in the realms of pro-audio/music creation.
>
> Fedora has never really attracted the support of the audio development
> community, and as a direct result has only flagging support from audio
> users, enthusiasts and professionals alike.
>
> I think there are a number of reasons for this:
>  1) Strict packaging and licensing guidelines,
>  2) relatively short release support cycles
>  3) the absence of an stock RT kernel
>  4) the effort required to tailor an installation for audio use
>
> Distributions like Debian/Ubuntu/Arch (and others like AVLinux) have
> garnered strong support because they in some way address all of these
> issues. Fedora however...
>
> 1) and 2) we can't change. In fact at the end of the day these strengthen
> the distribution by making the packages we ship more robust and closer to
> upstream. It also demands a certain amount of love to ensure that
> updates/ABI bumps/breakages are dealt with decisively and swiftly. It also
> means that audio developers are more unlikely to maintain their own
> packages in Fedora (we need more maintainers)
>
> 3) I can't see happening any time soon. The kernel team maintain so many
> out of tree patches already that I don't think they really have the time
> nor desire to maintain the realtime kernel as well. I don't see this as a
> problem - recent kernels have incorporated much of the the rt kernel
> patches of old and should satisfy most users. For those with more stringent
> requirements can rely on the CCRMA patched kernels
>
> 4) is where I think an audio spin comes into play. If we can
> collate/automate all of the steps involved in setting up Fedora for audio
> production we will attract both users and maintainers alike alleviating the
> problems caused by 1 and 2.
>
> I'm proposing to formally revive the past Fedora Audio Spin / Music
> Creation efforts of a couple of years ago in time for an F18 Audio spin
> release. This means we have one whole release cycle to get all of the
> packages we require into stable so they can be available for Live composes
> for the F18 release cycle.
>
> Apart from packaging efforts, the last few weeks for me has been an
> information gathering exercise. More on this soon, but briefly, the current
> to do list is:
>  - pulling in all of the must have packages from CCRMA
>  - determining the package list
>  - packaging the Fedora Musician's guide
>  - repackaging/patching rpmfusion packages for Fedora (qtractor and
>   others if required)
>  - developing sane RT priorities for the stock kernels (threadirqs)
>  - consensus on distribution media, default desktop/supported desktops
>  - default systemd enabled services
>  - themes and artwork
>  - resubmit the Spin proposal for F18
>
> If you want to contribute, here's how:
>  - become a contributor/get a FAS account [1] and join the
>   music-creation group
>  - help maintain the audio creation wiki's  (formalize the to do
>   list)[2][3] - this is really out of date. Many packages have been
>   orphaned or are already in Fedora. Needs to be brought in line
>   with the package database [5]. I'm not convinced that this page
>   really needs to be so detailed. Wish lsit is probably the most
>   important
>  - register your interest in the contributor section of the audio
>   spin wiki [3]
>  - help test new packages - I will be listing all upcoming changes on
>   this list and I encourage other package maintainers to do the same
>   [3]
>  - become a tester or packager of audio packages [4][5]
>  - help test the new spins as we make them available.
>  - join Chris in his documentation efforts [7]
>  - volunteer desktop artwork
>  - and most importantly, voice your opinion on how this project
>   should be realized! Choice of media/desktop/applications
>   /configuration etc. More proposals on this coming soon.
>
> Packaging the software and building the media constitutes less than a
> quarter of the effort required here. What we need most is strong community
> support so please respond to this email if you are interested!
>
> Lets do it
>
> Brendan
>
> [1] https://admin.fedoraproject.**org/accounts/<https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/>
> [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/**Audio_Creation<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Audio_Creation>
> [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/**AudioCreationSpinDevelopment<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AudioCreationSpinDevelopment>
> [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/**QA <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA>
> [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/**Join_the_package_collection_**
> maintainers<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers>
> [6] https://admin.fedoraproject.**org/pkgdb/<https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/>
> [7] http://docs.fedoraproject.org/**en-US/Fedora/15/html/**
> Musicians_Guide/index.html<http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/15/html/Musicians_Guide/index.html>
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