Hey all,
Where to next? (ha ha Fedora next - we will see)
A few points:
- we have had the same wallpaper for 3 spins now (yes I created it and it is awesome but could be better - should change with every release)
- there is a legal issue with the icons we are using - there is a bug raised but not actioned. We really need the offending icons removed or choose a new set. Maintainer is AWOL
- we still haven't solved the problem of seamlessly integrating pulse and jack
I'm starting to think that there is little point having a spin at all. My original idea was that having the spin would encourage more users to use Fedora and as a result create some kind of community (and hopefully attract more upstream developers).
This hasn't happened. I'm too busy to blog, promote, berate the goodness of the Jam etc. Maybe someone else is. Maybe we are not promoting ourselves enough? I don't know. Maybe we are being lazy.
In any case, I will not be taking on any more packages, unless explicitly asked by someone who actually gives a damn.
Brendan
Brendan,
On 2014-01-18 05:21, Brendan Jones wrote:
Hey all,
Where to next? (ha ha Fedora next - we will see)
A few points:
- we have had the same wallpaper for 3 spins now (yes I created it
and it is awesome but could be better - should change with every release)
- there is a legal issue with the icons we are using - there is a bug
raised but not actioned. We really need the offending icons removed or choose a new set. Maintainer is AWOL
- we still haven't solved the problem of seamlessly integrating pulse
and jack
I'm starting to think that there is little point having a spin at all. My original idea was that having the spin would encourage more users to use Fedora and as a result create some kind of community (and hopefully attract more upstream developers).
This hasn't happened. I'm too busy to blog, promote, berate the goodness of the Jam etc. Maybe someone else is. Maybe we are not promoting ourselves enough? I don't know. Maybe we are being lazy.
In any case, I will not be taking on any more packages, unless explicitly asked by someone who actually gives a damn.
I have been subscribed to this list from the beginning - I don't own have a background in music (it was BioMedical Research and later IT) - but now that I am sort of retired I wanted to renew my teen years interest in music. The issue for me with the list is that I would not install a music spin - I have my server, my laptop and my VMs and it is not appropriate to install the music spin on any of them (the VM probably wouldn't work with sound anyway - I have enough problems with sound on the real hardware). I guess what would be nice for me is to be able install a suite of well integrated music apps on to one of my existing machines - a set of apps that would all "just work" would be great. For example see below for a note I posted to the Denemo list (no responses yet). Maybe this list could branch out to the "Suite Install" idea as well as being a general forum for Fedoraists to discuss their music stuff?
Regards,
Phil.
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 02:48:15 +1100 From: Philip Rhoades phil@pricom.com.au To: Denemo Devel denemo-devel@gnu.org Subject: Newbie getting MIDI K/B to work with ALSA and qjackctl
People,
Googling found some previous posts trying to get this to work with earlier versions of Denemo but they were no help for me so I hope it is OK to request help here. Prior to this exercise I have been able to set timidity up as a daemon and play sounds and record stuff from the MIDI K/B but qjackctl won't run with timidity running in daemon mode. So this is what I have now:
"aconnect -i -o" gives:
client 0: 'System' [type=kernel] 0 'Timer ' 1 'Announce ' client 14: 'Midi Through' [type=kernel] 0 'Midi Through Port-0' client 20: 'AXIS-49 2A' [type=kernel] 0 'AXIS-49 2A MIDI 1' client 130: 'denemo' [type=user] 0 'midi_in ' 1 'midi_out '
In Denemo Preferences - Audio/MIDI I have:
Audio Backend - Portaudio
Output device - ALSA: HDA Intel: 92HD73E1X5 Digital (hw:0,1)
MIDI Backend - ALSA
Rhythm entry for MIDI - checked
In the qjackctl connections dialog there are:
- System entries under the Audio tab
- No entries under the MIDI tab
- All the stuff that aconnect listed above under the ALSA tab
But:
- I still can't select "MIDI Input" from the Input menu
- From the qjackctl connection dialog I can connect the "AXIS-49 2A MIDI out" to the "Denemo MIDI in" - but nothing shows up in Denemo when hitting the keys
- If I try and select "MIDI Input" from the Input menu again - it disconnects the link in the qjackctl dialog box
I've run out of ideas . . suggestions?
Thanks,
Phil.
On 2014-01-18 05:21, Brendan Jones wrote:
I'm starting to think that there is little point having a spin at all. My original idea was that having the spin would encourage more users to use Fedora and as a result create some kind of community (and hopefully attract more upstream developers).
This hasn't happened. I'm too busy to blog, promote, berate the goodness of the Jam etc. Maybe someone else is. Maybe we are not promoting ourselves enough? I don't know. Maybe we are being lazy.
I am a Fedora user, and I use Fedora to make music. But for me personally the Fedora Jam spin is not my choice. On my main computer I use the standard Fedora desktop distribution with Gnome3, on my EeePC netbook I use a lightweight LXDE spin. Then on top of these I install all the music related packages that I need from the official Fedora, RPMFusion and PlanetCCRMA repositories, including the kernel-rt package.
Why would I use Fedora Jam? I don't even like KDE.
The good thing is that, from the moment people started to think about a special Musicians Spin several interesting packages, requested by members of this mailinglist, have been added to the official Fedora repositories.
What I would like to see is that I could do something like:
# sudo yum groupinstall "Fedora Jam"
to install a nice selection of must-have music production software, like what is now in the Fedora Jam spin, after installing the Fedora version of my choice.
Well, I know, it's really easy for me to write down wishes and feature requests. The real heroes are people like Brendan and others who have done so much of the hard work.
On 18 January 2014 at 16:15, Martin Tarenskeen m.tarenskeen@zonnet.nl wrote:
The good thing is that, from the moment people started to think about a special Musicians Spin several interesting packages, requested by members of this mailinglist, have been added to the official Fedora repositories.
Yes, getting packages to move from the side current of a Fedora spin and into the mainstream Fedora is a wonderful thing. Working oneself out of a job, serves to get people back to using Fedora to make music, rather than building Fedora to allow it to be used to make music. I for one am quite happy using Fedora to make music.
What I would like to see is that I could do something like:
# sudo yum groupinstall "Fedora Jam"
to install a nice selection of must-have music production software, like what is now in the Fedora Jam spin, after installing the Fedora version of my choice.
I like the groupinstall idea. I wonder if it is less work than a complete spin?
Well, I know, it's really easy for me to write down wishes and feature requests. The real heroes are people like Brendan and others who have done so much of the hard work.
Queue applause... Yes, anyone who has worked on the Jam spin has my complete thanks.
-- Kevin
On 01/18/2014 05:15 PM, Martin Tarenskeen wrote:
On 2014-01-18 05:21, Brendan Jones wrote:
I'm starting to think that there is little point having a spin at all. My original idea was that having the spin would encourage more users to use Fedora and as a result create some kind of community (and hopefully attract more upstream developers).
This hasn't happened. I'm too busy to blog, promote, berate the goodness of the Jam etc. Maybe someone else is. Maybe we are not promoting ourselves enough? I don't know. Maybe we are being lazy.
I am a Fedora user, and I use Fedora to make music. But for me personally the Fedora Jam spin is not my choice. On my main computer I use the standard Fedora desktop distribution with Gnome3, on my EeePC netbook I use a lightweight LXDE spin. Then on top of these I install all the music related packages that I need from the official Fedora, RPMFusion and PlanetCCRMA repositories, including the kernel-rt package.
Why would I use Fedora Jam? I don't even like KDE.
Pretty much the same here - I always just install standard Fedora desktop "spin" and add XFCE (+ bunch of individual packages on top). Which is utterly trivial because its just a matter of "yum groupinstall xfce-desktop". And then on the two computers I use for making music, hunt down all the individual bits and pieces required.
The good thing is that, from the moment people started to think about a special Musicians Spin several interesting packages, requested by members of this mailinglist, have been added to the official Fedora repositories.
What I would like to see is that I could do something like:
# sudo yum groupinstall "Fedora Jam"
to install a nice selection of must-have music production software, like what is now in the Fedora Jam spin, after installing the Fedora version of my choice.
+100 for that, except perhaps a more descriptive name like "music-production" or "audio-production" for the group name. It'll require maintaining two different places (comps + kickstart) instead of just the spin-kickstart, but it'll make the result of that bit of extra work far more widely usable. That's how other spins are constructed as well, AFAIK.
- Panu -
On 19 January 2014 04:34, Kevin Cosgrove kevinc@cosgroves.us wrote:
On 18 January 2014 at 16:15, Martin Tarenskeen m.tarenskeen@zonnet.nl wrote:
The good thing is that, from the moment people started to think about a special Musicians Spin several interesting packages, requested by members of this mailinglist, have been added to the official Fedora repositories.
Yes, getting packages to move from the side current of a Fedora spin and into the mainstream Fedora is a wonderful thing. Working oneself out of a job, serves to get people back to using Fedora to make music, rather than building Fedora to allow it to be used to make music. I for one am quite happy using Fedora to make music.
What I would like to see is that I could do something like:
# sudo yum groupinstall "Fedora Jam"
to install a nice selection of must-have music production software, like what is now in the Fedora Jam spin, after installing the Fedora version of my choice.
I like the groupinstall idea. I wonder if it is less work than a complete spin?
Slightly, but the vast majority of the work is all the packaging being done, and the majority of that is being done by Brendan right now. I'm still meaning to see if I can get onto some of that, but have been meaning to do that for months now. I think the actual intention behind the current spin was to promote the available tools, you can of course install all the packages on any Fedora system (though from my point of view there was the bonus that I got to try out recent KDE...). The fact there's a limit to how much spins can be customised (not much) and still be 'official' means a few things that would have made the spin a bit more useful than just a collection of packages couldn't be done. On the other hand if you like synths and things along those lines (rather than just being interested in having a DAW), then having the spin is good because when browsing plugins you see things that you otherwise wouldn't have known about. A groupinstall could do that too of course.
I've just skimmed the minutes from a recent FESCO meeting and it looks like how spins are dealt with may be changing again anyway.
On 01/18/2014 07:15 AM, Martin Tarenskeen wrote:
On 2014-01-18 05:21, Brendan Jones wrote:
This hasn't happened. I'm too busy to blog, promote, berate the goodness of the Jam etc. Maybe someone else is. Maybe we are not promoting ourselves enough? I don't know. Maybe we are being lazy.
Well, there are several other options out there now. There used to be more audio/music/sound users in the (RedHat first, then) Fedora land a while back. My guess is that many migrated away (many reasons), and once in a different distribution it would be next to impossible to bring them back.
How to attract new users? I don't know. What worked for me when Planet CCRMA started was just word of mouth, that is, happy users telling others it was working for them. I don't see many posts that mention Fedora when somebody asks in the lau/lad lists (Brendan is an exception, of course)...
[MUNCH]
What I would like to see is that I could do something like:
# sudo yum groupinstall "Fedora Jam"
to install a nice selection of must-have music production software, like what is now in the Fedora Jam spin, after installing the Fedora version of my choice.
That would be very useful. I used to do something like that in my Planet CCRMA repository but I used a meta package (so, installing planetccrma-apps would bring in all the goodies, at least the ones I deemed "important"). A group (or groups) would be the right way to do it.
Anyway, as usual, kudos to Brendan and the others that put so much effort in the spin. Don't get discouraged! -- Fernando
[*] BTW, a very long time ago (Fedora 3 & 4) I did create a set of Planet CCRMA installer disks which included all of Fedora and the most important audio and music packages (it even installed and booted the rt patched kernel!). It was something very similar to a spin, but it was not official and was outside of the Fedora world. I admit that I did not advertise its existence a lot, but it did not prove to be popular and I stopped after those two releases - it was a LOT of work...
Yes ... long, long ago there was Agnula, DeMuDi and ReMuDi based on Debian and Red Hat. Then there was JAD (Jack Audio Distribution) based on openSUSE. JAD died, but there are still three or four Debian/Ubuntu based audio distros and Fedora Jam + Planet CCRMA.
I went with Fedora (Jam) because of Planet CCRMA, mostly the Lisp-based tools. I don't think in this day and age I need the real-time kernel, but it's nice to know it's there. And I prefer not to invoke non-free repositories like RPM Fusion (Fedora) or Packman (openSUSE).
This may all be moot - where I see the action these days is Web Audio and the battle for hearts and minds of JavaScript programmers between Firefox and Chrome. I've looked at Web Audio and Mozilla's asm.js and it seems to me that I could do just about everything I can do in CSound, PureData, ChucK or the Planet CCRMA synthesis tools in JavaScript in either browser.
On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 6:38 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano nando@ccrma.stanford.edu wrote:
On 01/18/2014 07:15 AM, Martin Tarenskeen wrote:
On 2014-01-18 05:21, Brendan Jones wrote:
This hasn't happened. I'm too busy to blog, promote, berate the goodness of the Jam etc. Maybe someone else is. Maybe we are not promoting ourselves enough? I don't know. Maybe we are being lazy.
Well, there are several other options out there now. There used to be more audio/music/sound users in the (RedHat first, then) Fedora land a while back. My guess is that many migrated away (many reasons), and once in a different distribution it would be next to impossible to bring them back.
How to attract new users? I don't know. What worked for me when Planet CCRMA started was just word of mouth, that is, happy users telling others it was working for them. I don't see many posts that mention Fedora when somebody asks in the lau/lad lists (Brendan is an exception, of course)...
[MUNCH]
What I would like to see is that I could do something like:
# sudo yum groupinstall "Fedora Jam"
to install a nice selection of must-have music production software, like what is now in the Fedora Jam spin, after installing the Fedora version of my choice.
That would be very useful. I used to do something like that in my Planet CCRMA repository but I used a meta package (so, installing planetccrma-apps would bring in all the goodies, at least the ones I deemed "important"). A group (or groups) would be the right way to do it.
Anyway, as usual, kudos to Brendan and the others that put so much effort in the spin. Don't get discouraged! -- Fernando
[*] BTW, a very long time ago (Fedora 3 & 4) I did create a set of Planet CCRMA installer disks which included all of Fedora and the most important audio and music packages (it even installed and booted the rt patched kernel!). It was something very similar to a spin, but it was not official and was outside of the Fedora world. I admit that I did not advertise its existence a lot, but it did not prove to be popular and I stopped after those two releases - it was a LOT of work...
music mailing list music@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/music
Why would I use Fedora Jam? I don't even like KDE.
The good thing is that, from the moment people started to think about a special Musicians Spin several interesting packages, requested by members of this mailinglist, have been added to the official Fedora repositories
I do think that's a valid point. The state of Gnome has greatly improved over the last two years. I was a KDE user back then, and have since moved back to Gnome after it became more usable/stable. Should we take a new "vote" on switching the desktop?
Most of the other audio distros use a 'lighter' desktop than either GNOME or KDE - I think XFCE is in most of them, but there may be one with LXDE. IIRC F21 will have the merged LXDE / Razor-Qt desktop as an option, and that's the way I'd go.
IMHO the 'desktop' is irrelevant - even OpenBox + FBPanel will start applications, and the browser is the desktop for many people these days. It only takes me a week or so to customize any Linux desktop to my workflow, so we might as well pick something that looks good and doesn't use much RAM. KDE and GNOME are fine for a 'Windows/Mac' replacement, as are Cinnamon, MATE and Unity. But for audio, I'd go with something less RAM-grabbing.
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 10:09 AM, Brian Monroe briancmonroe@gmail.com wrote:
Why would I use Fedora Jam? I don't even like KDE.
The good thing is that, from the moment people started to think about a special Musicians Spin several interesting packages, requested by members of this mailinglist, have been added to the official Fedora repositories
I do think that's a valid point. The state of Gnome has greatly improved over the last two years. I was a KDE user back then, and have since moved back to Gnome after it became more usable/stable. Should we take a new "vote" on switching the desktop?
music mailing list music@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/music
-
Brendan Jones -
Brian Monroe -
Fernando Lopez-Lezcano -
Ian Malone -
Kevin Cosgrove -
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky -
Martin Tarenskeen -
Panu Matilainen -
Philip Rhoades