[Fedora-music-list] Audio spin media

Fri May 25 16:05:09 UTC 2012

On 05/25/2012 02:02 PM, Brendan Jones wrote:
> On 05/25/2012 12:37 PM, Jørn Lomax wrote:
>> On Thu, 2012-05-24 at 22:19 -0400, Christopher R. Antila wrote:
>>> On 05/24/2012 09:25 PM, Brendan Jones wrote:
>>>> Jorn's posts this week have got me thinking about what we should
>>>> be aiming for in terms of install media. As others have noted
>>>> before a CD sized spin is kind of outdated, and I wondered whether
>>>> we were in fact bound by this. So I raised it with releng on IRC
>>>> and we are not.
>>> Thinking is dangerous. That's why we do it!
>>>
>>>> In light of this I propose that we abandon the idea of a 'lite'
>>>> spin complemented by a larger DVD version, and just focus on one
>>>> Live image.
>>>>
>>>> It would be nice if its under 1G but that again should not be a
>>>> boundary that we need adhere to?
>>>>
>>>> Raising here for comment.
>>> This is a serious issue, and it's related to "who will be using the
>>> spin?" Actually, it's "who wants to use the spin?" and the related
>>> question of whether we're okay with disallowing some of them.
>>>
>>> And here's the potentially offensive part...
>>>
>>> If we're just going to be stodgy old white men with lots of resources,
>>> then we can forget about a media requirement at all, because everybody
>>> has a 16GB USB drive and high-speed cable Internet nowadays, so why do
>>> we still make CDs?
>>>
>>> Of course I'm exaggerating--nobody said it, or was even implying it
>>> (even Brendan's more-than-CD spin was suggested at 1GB, which is
>>> modest compared to the 3.5GiB of Mageia I downloaded yesterday). So
>>> the reality of this is that we have the power and we can do whatever
>>> we want. Because we're The Fedora Project, we have a responsibility to
>>> ensure accessibility for as wide an audience as possible.
>>>
>>> But let's take this further. We don't just want to ensure everybody
>>> has access to our spin, we want to ensure everybody has an equally
>>> rich, first-class experience. Especially if we call the CD version
>>> "Lite," it's not going to give that impression, whatever the actual
>>> experience would be.
>>>
>>> So... let's have only one version, make it as small as possible, and
>>> certainly ensure it fits on one CD! This obviously means we won't have
>>> many applications installed by default, but I don't see that as a
>>> problem for two reasons:
>>> 1.) the applications aren't the reason for the Spin, it's the
>>> integration.
>>> 2.) I don't know about you, but I don't use everything we've been
>>> thinking of putting on the spin, so why should everybody have to
>>> download everything?
>>>
>>> It's always a question of compromise and balance.
>>>
>>>> For the sake of argument, lets say size doesn't matter, what then
>>>> should we use as the default desktop environment? To me its a
>>>> choice between Qt v. GTK environments - personally I'm yet to find
>>>> a gnome 3 workflow that works for me, however others may have
>>>> different opinions.
>>>>
>>>> XFCE or KDE I think gives us a little more freedom in how we govern
>>>> the whole look and feel of the spin (and packaging something like
>>>> a customized fedora-audio-panel for example), but that's not to say
>>>> we can't write a gnome extension to do the same.
>>> In this case, and because of what I said previously, we might be best
>>> off choosing a GUI toolkit first (Qt, like most of the audio
>>> applications) and the smallest desktop environment next (Qt Razor or
>>> Razor Qt).
>>>
>>> Again, it's about access for everybody. Sure thing my computer can run
>>> GNOME 3 and KDE-based applications at the same time while still making
>>> good-quality recordings, but not everybody has my computer.
>>>
>>>> And while I'm at it, what are we going to call this thing? Fedora
>>>> (Audio) studio / Fedora Audio / Free Audio (I'm reaching now)
>>> Let's call it "The Spin." It sounds misguidedly epic.
>>>
>>>
>>> Christopher.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> music mailing list
>>> music at lists.fedoraproject.org
>>> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/music
>>
>> I have to say i agree with Brendon. I don't think there is anything
>> wrong by not making the spin fit onto a CD. If you have a computer that
>> is capable of running realtime audio processing, chances are that you
>> have a DVD drive. I actually find it hard to even find blank CDs in the
>> store, so I always en up using a DVD as media (more often usb now).
>>
>> But what i think is the best solution is to first create a spin that is
>> focused on the user experience. Make sure it's simple, intuitive, is
>> easy to use and has the software we all feel it needs in there. For all
>> we know, it might actually fit onto a CD while still meeting those
>> criteria. Once we have done that, we can look at it and see, "what can
>> we drop", or "does it need more", all depending in it's size. But i
>> think the user experience should come first. But yes, *one* version :)
>
> OK, maybe that's a better approach - select the DE, the applications and
> see how big it is and decide later on the size.
>
> Have a look here
> http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=music-creation.git;a=summary to see
> some kickstarts already in place. The last one I did (based on LXDE) I
> think blew it out about 90M over a CD and that was based on LXDE.
> However, Frescobaldi has since been written in python and doesn't pull
> in all the KDE packages so now it probably is under that size. I
> included all the applications/plugins I could think of so there's a
> still a fair bit of room to move (As Chris said some of the sound fonts
> are huge)
>
>>
>> That's my two cents at least
>>
>> Please keep the discussion of which desktop environment we need going. I
>> think this is something we should settle on soon. I'm a partial to gnome
>> and xfce (I actually love gnome 3). But i do see the argument that most
>> applications use Qt. Is there a distro where i can try razor Qt?
>>
>> -Jørn
>
> There's actual a repo maintained by the developers of Razor that you can
> use in Fedora 16. Going down this path would be awesome (I love razor)
> however its a lot of work as you'd have to package all of this in Fedora
> (Qastools is already packaged). Even though upstream have done all the
> work here it might be dangerous to go down this path - we could spend
> too much time tailoring the DE rather than concentrating on Audio
> configuration etc. But check it out
>
> http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/QtDesktop/Fedora_16/
>

Further to this, I found this: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Razor-qt_Spin

I remember trying to contact the poster of this a while ago but haven't 
got a response yet so maybe its dead in the water. It can't hurt to try 
and contact them and see if they have a timeframe to get the razor-qt 
packages reviewed and approved