AV Linux 5.0 Released

[GMaq]

Hi LM's

Just wanted to pass along the release of AV Linux 5.0. This release is intended to provide a 'plateau of productivity' and provide a stable state-of-the-art production environment. AV 5.0 features Kernel 2.6.39.1 with IRQ threading/rtirq-init and JACK1 0.120.2 along with the latest versions of most common FLOSS A/V Applications and of course the latest Commercial Linux software demos right there on the LiveDVD.

For more info please visit the AV Linux forum and read the complete Release Announcement:
http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index ... pic=1469.0

[GMaq]

falkTX,

Very nice to hear from you

Actually I'm glad you don't have an ISO right now or nobody would want to try AV Linux...lol

Seriously though, what you are working on with KXStudio is looking fantastic and the plugin hosts like Carla etc. look phenomenal. To be honest I do try to not duplicate what you are doing with KXStudio, you are doing such a great job with JACK2 and advanced session management that I leave that up to you and try to provide a good environment with JACK1, more basic session management and gear things to keeping older machines productive. If we consciously try to complement each others efforts rather than copy or compete I think it gives better variety of choice to the users. No need for us to 'play the same tune' so to speak.

We began testing 2.6.39 at rc1 and it already showed better performance than 2.6.33 on the average, now that it has been refined a bit it really seems to be a viable complete replacement for -rt. We decided on 2.6.39.1 because it was much better with CPU power consumption than 2.6.39 was. Of course the best thing is to try it for yourself but I think with IRQ Threading and rtirq-init activated you will not be disappointed.

When the dust settles on the AV 5.0 release I really look forward to installing KXStudio on a second machine here and digging into it as well. My sincerest encouragement for your continued efforts!

[i2productions]

It's so nice to see that the heads of the two best, and most current, Linux studio efforts out there work together and not against each other. You guys are really there for your users, and don't discourage people from trying other things! Kudos to you both! Both distros are amazing for music production, for different reasons, and with different philosophies. Now, that being said, I really hope we don't end up with a distrowatch, just for studio distros. I hope the community starts rallying behind just a few projects, to have a couple of great projects, rather than a bunch of ubuntu studio clones with one or two minor changes! Keep up the great work, both of you!

P.S.(I think I overused the exclamation point!!!!)

[paldepind]

Diversity is not only a good thing

[studio32]

It's so nice to see that the heads of the two best, and most current, Linux studio efforts

Don't forget Tango Studio http://tangostudio.tuxfamily.org/en/tangostudio a very stable and fast distro for proaudio (no pulseaudio), busy implementing new menus, JackSession, new LV2 and *.39 lowlatency kernel atm.

[GMaq]

Hi,

I would agree that there are too many distros doing the same thing especially when so many are based on Ubuntu, Some consolidation of projects would take the pressure off of everyone and allow more time for each developer to specialize on their area of expertise, for instance since falkTX is obviously a talented coder I'm guessing he would like the freedom to code more and package less and have someone else specialize in that.

I got into this when JackLAB, 64 Studio and MusiX were all starting to fade and it seemed at the time that some new blood was needed especially for Debian users. It hasn't been until the last year and a half that Debian within itself has been taking multimedia packaging seriously and now that they are it is amazing what is currently available for Debian Sid and Wheezy users.

I'm in a similar duplication situation but not by choice, because I need compatibility and reliability of Debian Stable with the Remastersys Tools I basically have to do my own custom packaging for Squeeze. The Debian pkg-multimedia team is doing an incredible job of packaging most applications the problem is because of how Debian is set up I am unable use them because none of their current work is allowed into Squeeze (unless legitimately backported), it is all understandably in Sid and Wheezy/Testing. Although Sid and Testing are reasonably usable for an experienced end-user they are a nightmare from a distribution viewpoint because of the constant barrage of changes to Xorg, Udev, HAL, etc. etc. basically Sid is the sandbox where they try all the new stuff. As one guy I personally can not take the time and responsibility of going through the stict Debian channels and properly packaging backports for generic Squeeze, at this point that would be more than a full time job, and I already have one of those....

I certainly am not critical of Debian's way of doing things, it was around long before I was and has worked amazingly well for them. My point is that sometimes there are other obstacles that require some duplication and I'm sure no matter what it wouldn't be possible to narrow things down to one Ubuntu multimedia variant but it would be nice if the developers of new Ubuntu variants would think twice about contributing to one of the existing ones (KXStudio, Tango Studio, Dream Studio OS, etc. etc.)

Just an opinion based on what I've read here... as always take it or leave it.

[studio32]

For Debian / Ubuntu based distros I see it this way:

The core of everything is the Debian Multimedia Team http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia

Packages from the Debian Multimedia Team will hit Debian, Ubuntu, AVLinux, KXstudio, Tango Studio, OpenDaw etc. at some point.

THE way to work out your own vision AND to work together, is to work with the Debian Multimedia Team as core. This means:

- Join the Debian Multimedia Team mailinglist, to give feedback and join discussions about which way to go with Linuxaudio in Debian (and so also in Ubuntu) http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia#Get_involved
- Backport packages from the Debian Multimedia Team to your distro
- Report bugs to those packages
- Do request for packaging for packages which aren't in Debian yet
- Package packages which are not yet in your distro / Debian for the Debian Multimedia Team and then backport it to your repo/ PPA.

This way you get a very good state of Linuxaudio in Debian and in Ubuntu. Not only now, but especially in the long run.

As far as I know Tango Studio, AVLinux and OpenDAW are taking this approach more or less. All though my opinion is that those projects (and maybe especially their users) can do a little more when it comes to contributing to the Debian Multimedia Team.

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia#Get_involved

[GMaq]

For Debian / Ubuntu based distros I see it this way:

The core of everything is the Debian Multimedia Team http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia

Packages from the Debian Multimedia Team will hit Debian, Ubuntu, AVLinux, KXstudio, Tango Studio, OpenDaw etc. at some point.

THE way to work out your own vision AND to work together, is to work with the Debian Multimedia Team as core. This means:

- Join the Debian Multimedia Team mailinglist, to give feedback and join discussions about which way to go with Linuxaudio in Debian (and so also in Ubuntu) http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia#Get_involved
- Backport packages from the Debian Multimedia Team to your distro
- Report bugs to those packages
- Do request for packaging for packages which aren't in Debian yet
- Package packages which are not yet in your distro / Debian for the Debian Multimedia Team and then backport it to your repo/ PPA.

This way you get a very good state of Linuxaudio in Debian and in Ubuntu. Not only now, but especially in the long run.

As far as I know Tango Studio, AVLinux and OpenDAW are taking this approach more or less. All though my opinion is that those projects (and maybe especially their users) can do a little more when it comes to contributing to the Debian Multimedia Team.

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia#Get_involved

studio32

I completely agree with you in principle, but the fact remains that Debian's current policies (which I understand the reasons for) do not really translate well into the multimedia world. The base of any Debian-based audio/video production distribution should always be Stable, that is the only way to guarantee a continuous reliable environment for the user... this is the philosophy that 64 Studio seemed to use when they were pure Debian Etch, one of their problems at the time was pretty much non-existent multimedia packaging support within Debian itself which left all the packaging weight on the few 64 Studio developers themselves and therefore became too much of a burden hence the later move to Ubuntu which had better current multimedia resources to work from at the time.

Now we have the opposite issue, there is an amazing number of new maintainers in pkg-multimedia in Debian and almost every package you can think of, however no official backport facilities to make them available to users of Debian Stable. Sid and Testing are vitally important pieces of the Debian system but they should be left as research and development NOT distribution with better support for Squeeze as the real world alternative for actually professional deployment under a rock solid environment. If Linux multimedia as a concerted movement want to ever make serious inroads into professional Studio environments then Squeeze needs to see a much higher prioritization for multimedia backports. This is essentially what I am trying to achieve with AV Linux. I would like to work MUCH closer with pkg-multimedia but my hands are somewhat tied by lack of time, supporting a large and rapidly growing user-base and the lack of Debian sanctioned and organized backports. I've heard talk of the possibility of pkg-multimedia backports and allotted servers for them but as time moves on through the Squeeze release it will quickly become too little too late. I myself am not looking at being able to support Squeeze for longer than a year without some outside help.

I love Debian, I respect their time-honored ways, however in the multimedia situation I think there is a major gap that should at least be examined.

[brummer]

For Debian / Ubuntu based distros I see it this way:

The core of everything is the Debian Multimedia Team http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia

Packages from the Debian Multimedia Team will hit Debian, Ubuntu, AVLinux, KXstudio, Tango Studio, OpenDaw etc. at some point.

THE way to work out your own vision AND to work together, is to work with the Debian Multimedia Team as core. This means:
. . .

Well, I mean it is worth to mention that the debian multimedia project isn't a official part of the debian project.
So your conclusions are a bit misleading. If, you really wont to improve Debian and there derivations, and make them fit better into the Multimedia World, you need to do the work in a official debian group :
http://www.debian.org/devel/join/

But yea, most members of the Debian Multimedia Project are also Members of the Debian Project so it's a bit Hair splitting, but again, it is worth to mention somewhere.

So in that sense, GMaq and falkTX do likely the same as the Debian Multimedia Team do, and yea, they do it well.

[studio32]

Well, I mean it is worth to mention that the debian multimedia project isn't a official part of the debian project.

@brummer, Shame on you as a Debian Linuxaudio user! You must be confusing this http://debian-multimedia.org/ with this http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia

The latter is an official Debian team with git repo's on Alioth etc.

So you're wrong here, and you can't compare AVLinux or Kxstudio at all with the Debian Multimedia Team in this sense, sorry.

[brummer]

Ups, well you are right.

[studio32]

TangoStudio is no longer being developed, but the ISO will be quite good for a long time.
Their realtime kernel (2.6.33) has some custom patches, very useful stuff...

This is not right (true, the maintainers could use some more donations ...) but Tango Studio 1.2 will be out pretty soon, with new menus, JackSession, Ladish, *.39 kernel and pretty some new apps!

@Brummer, Even your nice Guitarix (with JackSession!) is packaged by a member of the Debian Multimedia Team and it will be maintained under the umbrella of the Debian Multimedia Team soon

[brummer]

well, I'm in contact with Roland for maintainer questions/suggestions, like with the fedora maintainers to, . .
and like it was, before guitarix becomes official a debian package, with GMaq and others how distribute guitarix binary packages.
I'm simply mix up debain multimedia with debian multimedia.org, my foul.

[GMaq]

@brummer

I wish everyone was like you and supplied Debianized source code, Even if you are 'officially' in the Debian repos I really appreciate that I can grab your latest upstream code and have a nice binary with a single terminal command, I hope you continue with this in future releases! Keep up the great work

[i2productions]

TangoStudio is no longer being developed, but the ISO will be quite good for a long time.
Their realtime kernel (2.6.33) has some custom patches, very useful stuff...

This is not right (true, the maintainers could use some more donations ...) but Tango Studio 1.2 will be out pretty soon, with new menus, JackSession, Ladish, *.39 kernel and pretty some new apps!

So Tango is still in development? I had a request to review it on my request list, but when I went to the website, it's confusing, with no apparent updates. I realise the world is not all english speaking, but I didn't see any posts in english on the forums. And it doesn't even seem to be one consistent language in there, and mostly old posts. Is there a better discussion spot to check out? I always want to check out and review a good studio distro, but I'm commited to only reviewing currently delevoped projects.