Last version of Jack?

[Blindekinder]

Hi!!
I've just noticed the last version is 1.9.19, and I have 1.9.12 installed, from Kubuntu repositories (20.04)
Should we install the last version?
How? (I mean from which repositories?)

thank you!

[Linuxmusician01]

If it ain't broken don't try to fix it. So: no. You don't have to upgrade. You never have to upgrade anything if you don't have troubles. Updating is for Windows users because of viruses. Let's all pray virus programmers never "discover" Linux as a nice platform to attack.

[Blindekinder]

If it ain't broken don't try to fix it.

yes and no:
I really love Linux/Jack for sound production, I use it, professionally, since 2006 for live shows and performances, recording sessions, mix and mastering, sound design, etc... The improvements throughout this period are incredible, and I'd prefer to stop digital sound production rather than change to certain well known proprietary OS.
Just, why when somebody accidentally unplug my sound device, when I put my computer in sleep mode by mistake, or when anything goes wrong with Jack do my computer finally freeze, forcing me to hard-reboot? Or why some class-compliant devices, even pro ones, give me so many xruns and some not?

I still expect some more stability and user-friendliness of the system (I know it also has to do with ALSA).
I noticed things are moving in Jack (see FalkTX post), and I wanted to enjoy the improvements.
I also was wondering why is Jack not present in KX repositories?

[Linuxmusician01]

[...] Just, why when somebody accidentally unplug my sound device, when I put my computer in sleep mode by mistake, or when anything goes wrong with Jack do my computer finally freeze, forcing me to hard-reboot? Or why some class-compliant devices, even pro ones, give me so many xruns and some not?

I still expect some more stability and user-friendliness of the system (I know it also has to do with ALSA).
I noticed things are moving in Jack (see FalkTX post), and I wanted to enjoy the improvements.
I also was wondering why is Jack not present in KX repositories?

If I'm not mistaken then Jack is a "layer" on top of Alsa. Alsa actually provides the drivers. I don't think that a newer Jack version is gonna improve hardware/driver/Alsa stability. I might be wrong tho.

As for KXStudio and what it supports and what not that's up to FalkTX who, if I'm not mistaken, left this forum a while ago. He doesn't provide a complete KXStudio distribution anymore. And the software that's in his repo's are more or less what he is the developer of himself. So no way he's gonna provide us w/ a compiled version of Jack. Unfortunately.

Cheers.

[Blindekinder]

If I'm not mistaken then Jack is a "layer" on top of Alsa. Alsa actually provides the drivers. I don't think that a newer Jack version is gonna improve hardware/driver/Alsa stability. I might be wrong tho.

When I use ALSA/Pulseaudio, I can hard-(un)plug any devices with no issue. So maybe I'll have to dig the xrun-issue in ALSA, but the freeze is related to Jack.

I mainly use KX-repositories for it's nice tools, and some up to date apps. But right, I miss the real distribution, and FalkTX here!!!

[milkii]

it's in the kx extras repo; https://kx.studio/Repositories:Extras

[Blindekinder]

excellent, I'll try!!

[Blindekinder]

It works fine, better than I expected: I can now hard-unplug and use sleep mode without freeze the system. Jack simply restarts, or in case of unplugging device, I just did a "switch master" (Cadence) and everything was working again...

[Blindekinder]

Just to say:
I agree one should better not update the system as long as it's working. I used KX on Kubuntu 14 (since 2014 then) until last year, and now I'll stay as long as possible with 20.04.
But for some apps it's nice to enjoy enhancements and bug fixes...

[folderol]

As for KXStudio and what it supports and what not that's up to FalkTX who, if I'm not mistaken, left this forum a while ago. He doesn't provide a complete KXStudio distribution anymore. And the software that's in his repo's are more or less what he is the developer of himself. So no way he's gonna provide us w/ a compiled version of Jack. Unfortunately.

Cheers.

Ummm, FalkTX is the main developer of Jack these days

[Linuxmusician01]

As for KXStudio and what it supports and what not that's up to FalkTX who, if I'm not mistaken, left this forum a while ago. He doesn't provide a complete KXStudio distribution anymore. And the software that's in his repo's are more or less what he is the developer of himself. So no way he's gonna provide us w/ a compiled version of Jack. Unfortunately.

Cheers.

Ummm, FalkTX is the main developer of Jack these days

Ha ha, I didn't know that. Thought is was a separate team. QJackctl is developed by Rui Nuno Capela (aka RNCBC, https://www.rncbc.org/drupal/) isn't it? Let's hope those two never stop their support.

[j_e_f_f_g]

Forget about jack. Distros are already replacing it with pipewire.

It's a linux tradition that, as soon as something is stable and supported, it must be replaced with something new and buggy.

[skei]

It's a linux tradition that, as soon as something is stable and supported, it must be replaced with something new and buggy.

so true!

[Blindekinder]

KX Studio News :

October 21

...
Separating JACK tools from JACK1 and JACK2

For a very long time I have been meaning to merge back the changes done in JACK examples and tools from JACK2 back to JACK1.
Back in JACK2 v1.9.15 release I stated that help on this would be appreciated, but not much has happened since then.
Now that PipeWire is slowly becoming a thing, this is becoming crucial.

For distributions like Arch that do not typically split packages (hypothetically) installing pipewire-jack would remove jack2 and replace it with PipeWire's version.
But the tools like jack_connect, jack_wait, etc are part of the jack2 package, not pipewire-jack.
Installing pipewire-jack would (hypothetically) remove these tools.
There are quite a few set ups out there that rely on them, so a solution is needed here.

David Runge has started the effort of splitting these tools from the JACK repositories into a new one.
The idea is that JACK will no longer ship with them, and they become an extra set of tools to install separately.
This allows to switch between JACK versions (JACK1, JACK2 or PipeWire) and keep the same exact set of tools.

We will need to have new JACK1 and JACK2 versions that remove these tools before the new project can be officially tagged and released.
More news on this soon.
...

November+December 21

...
Continuing: Separating JACK tools from JACK1 and JACK2

Mentioned last time was the effort of splitting the example-clients and tools from the JACK repositories into a new repository/project.
I have been working with David Runge on this (or better said, he has been doing most of the work) with me reviewing each set of changes to each file one by one.
We are nearly finished, with only 1 file remaining.

Afterwards there is still some work to be done on the build setup and testing the whole thing, but it is good to see things progressing on this area that was being sadly neglected for many years.
If everything goes well, no one will notice a thing!
Maintenance is a lot of work that goes unnoticed, fun stuff..
...

[folderol]

Thanks for the heads up. It's good to know these changes are being made.