Archlinux audio subforum

[Joermungand]

You're right because they are many of them in the audio group on Facebook for Linux. They ask a lot of questions on there and I will send them over to this site but not too many ventured over yet because a lot of these guys didn't know too much about the audio capabilities of Linux until recently.

Facebook wearies the living crap out of me. That’s one thing I’ll stop short of.

[funkmuscle]

You're right because they are many of them in the audio group on Facebook for Linux. They ask a lot of questions on there and I will send them over to this site but not too many ventured over yet because a lot of these guys didn't know too much about the audio capabilities of Linux until recently.

Facebook wearies the living crap out of me. That’s one thing I’ll stop short of.

Haha!
If we can get the audio repo going for Arch would be awesome. We've gotten this far without a sub forum and without an up-to-date repo that I figure we can survive. Just need to have that repo up and running and up to date and we should be fine I think.

[Joermungand]

If we can get the audio repo going for Arch would be awesome. We've gotten this far without a sub forum and without an up-to-date repo that I figure we can survive. Just need to have that repo up and running and up to date and we should be fine I think.

Right!

[asbak]

Would be useful to have a section on how to create an audio environment from scratch on any distro by compiling from source and then perhaps a packaging section with subsections for the main distros ie Debian/Ubuntu/Mint, Fedora/CentOS, Arch, OpenSuse and FreeBSD (even though technically it isn't Linux)?

I think a lot of the problems people typically have is that there are just too many knowledge gaps in understanding how the different subcomponents work and interact with one another. The information is out there but it's difficult for the average non-specialist to assemble and navigate. (Much of it is deprecated or vague.)

[CrocoDuck]

Hey there, another Arch enthusiast here!

Guys, I am kinda noob and for sure I miss the "big picture", so probably I will say some naive things... Archaudio is nice for rt kernels and few other packages, but feels so sleepy for all the rest and forums feel kinda dead. Also, quite a lot of packages that were in the AUR went missing lately. I was thinking to start learning something to (slowly) package them back in the AUR (like disthro plugins for example). I was also thinking to make some package like the parabula-proaudio packages mentioned in this thread. AUR is for sure cool but building from source every time takes time and it is not always smooth... I think it would be cool to bring new life to Archaudio by trying to collect the individual AUR packagers under one roof... the Archaudio forums would be then the natural place for related discussions. It would feel like a Simple and neat solution, like "one resource for one purpose" sort of thing. Do you think it could work?

[funkmuscle]

Hey there, another Arch enthusiast here!

Guys, I am kinda noob and for sure I miss the "big picture", so probably I will say some naive things... Archaudio is nice for rt kernels and few other packages, but feels so sleepy for all the rest and forums feel kinda dead. Also, quite a lot of packages that were in the AUR went missing lately. I was thinking to start learning something to (slowly) package them back in the AUR (like disthro plugins for example). I was also thinking to make some package like the parabula-proaudio packages mentioned in this thread. AUR is for sure cool but building from source every time takes time and it is not always smooth... I think it would be cool to bring new life to Archaudio by trying to collect the individual AUR packagers under one roof... the Archaudio forums would be then the natural place for related discussions. It would feel like a Simple and neat solution, like "one resource for one purpose" sort of thing. Do you think it could work?

dude I like that!
we do have somewhat of a repo that Joermungand mentioned. this one I think:
http://www.xsounds.org/~archstudio/

the last thing done at archaudio was an interview with you right CrocoDuck?
let's bring life to that site but how? I'm very short for time and clueless on PKGBUILDs..

[Joermungand]

we do have somewhat of a repo that Joermungand mentioned. this one I think:
http://www.xsounds.org/~archstudio/

Er…, no, I meant the one over at http://repos.archaudio.org/production/. That’s where I get my rt kernel and wine-rt. I’ll look into that one, as well, as I see they have a lot more packages – although ‘optimized for Intel corei7’ is way out of my league.

[funkmuscle]

‘optimized for Intel corei7’ is way out of my league.

dunno what that's about either but I run those programs on my AMD64.. no issues. Site's a bit dated as you can see. Once in a while I'd get an update when I run the pacman update.

I've also been using the lqx kernel from AUR.. Seems to be tweaked better that the rt kernels.
http://liquorix.net/
Also every RT kernel I've tried lately freezes my system. If I launched an app from the cairo-dock or docky, it would freeze my system for about 2 minutes.

[CrocoDuck]

the last thing done at archaudio was an interview with you right CrocoDuck?

QUACK! Seems so.

let's bring life to that site but how? I'm very short for time and clueless on PKGBUILDs..

Feeling in the same way right now. I have been looking at some simple PKGBUILD and understood pretty much all the code already. I think that one can start packaging stuff which is simple to build and install (like plugins, some obscure but nice piece of software) and learn in the meanwhile. We have ArchWIki mum that can help us a lot. The most useful packages (Ardour, jack, etc...) are already in the main repos, so I think that the goal should be to "complement" the main repo with all the juice that is missing, without overlapping packages with same functionalities. As how to do it... kinda clueless as well. I think we could start to contact Archaudio guys first. Maybe there is a reason why the site is such a sloth: could be that the Arch user base privileges the AUR anyway. If so we would be better contributing through the AUR. Or maybe not. If we see that Archaudio can work again we could start contacting the audio packages maintainers on the AUR and ask what they think about migrating to Archaudio... maybe keep the AUR for git stuff... dunno.

[gimmeapill]

Hey guys,

Just chiming in as I also have a few pkgbuilds in AUR (and of course lacking time to properly test stuff).
The archaudio repo, is nowadays limited to Joakim Hernberg (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?K=jhernberg&SeB=m) putting binaries of his pkgbuilds - very handy for the latest RT kernel, but yeah, quite stalled otherwise. Most of the useful things there have been moved to Community over the years, so maintaining a separate binary repository makes less sense than it did 5 years ago.
I'd also like to highlight that maintaining binary packages can be a royal pain, especially when you build for several architectures - much easier to provide a single PKGBUILD and do a git push to the AUR. Then let the official packagers pick up the good stuff and move it to Community as needed.
The problem is more that there is at the moment a packaging gap in Arch for audio apps (it looks like a few key packagers are short handed), but I'm not sure if the archaudio repo would be the best solution. It might be easier to help out by picking up some of the pkgbuilds that have not made it yet to aur4 from the aur3 git archive and update them.

I like however the idea of an arch subforum, we could possibly help each other better here than on the official Arch forums (could be useful also to redirect questions raised in the AUR comments).

Cheers,

LX

[briandc]

My 2c..

although I have never used Arch. Well, I once tried and when I asked for help on their forum I got accused of being a troll...

Anyway, there is a crowd of people who swear by Arch as their OS of choice, and as such, I don't think it's a bad idea to have a sub-forum dedicated to a specific branch if it's different enough from Debian-based systems (I suppose RedHat and Slackware should get theirs then, too, if there are users that desire it...).
After all, some people might feel "at home" by having a sub-forum where others that use their same "branch" are available for help. I always click on the "unread posts" link when I check in, so if there was something of use in a different sub-forum I think I'd see it.

As with all things linux-- the more, the merrier!


brian

[funkmuscle]

My 2c..

although I have never used Arch. Well, I once tried and when I asked for help on their forum I got accused of being a troll...

hahaha, that sounds like the forum alright.. Anyhow yeah, it's different from the debs, redhats and others.. I swear by Arch.. Would never change because I've tried the others and Arch lets me customize the way I want my OS to be. That being so, yeah we have audio needs that maybe only Archers can deal with so I'm for it or something to help. Arch use to be ahead of it all with audio too.. Just the PKGBUILD packages are quite busy with family, work etc.
Many folks coming from windows or apple first go to Ubuntu for ease and popularity so everything seems to be Ubuntu/Deb first.

[gimmeapill]

although I have never used Arch. Well, I once tried and when I asked for help on their forum I got accused of being a troll...

Yeah, I was hesitant to put it this way, but people on the Arch forums can be needlessly abrasive. A sub forum here could be more welcoming.
On the other hand, diverting content from the Arch forums could maybe in turn hurt the Arch wiki, don't you think?

[funkmuscle]

although I have never used Arch. Well, I once tried and when I asked for help on their forum I got accused of being a troll...

Yeah, I was hesitant to put it this way, but people on the Arch forums can be needlessly abrasive. A sub forum here could be more welcoming.

It feels like if the forum is run by Sheldon from Big Bang Theory but I think from their point of view, they've warned folks that Arch is not for beginners or the faint-hearted and my feel is that Arch was not there for audio.. In fact that was a comment in the forum.

On the other hand, diverting content from the Arch forums could maybe in turn hurt the Arch wiki, don't you think?

About the wiki, maybe we should look after that. What about a sub-forum at the Arch site? On FaceBook, they are many Linux audio groups and many Arch users. They keep asking questions there and I keep telling them to come here. Most have mentioned no help at the Arch forums.

That's why I'm saying maybe set the sub-forum up there at Arch.

[gimmeapill]

That's why I'm saying maybe set the sub-forum up there at Arch.

We would then lose the knowledge accumulated here, which would be a bigger loss. Most of the audio stuff is not particularly specific to arch (plugins, applications etc...)
But I just had a look at the arch forums and it's indeed a desert when it comes to pro-audio. People ask questions there and end up here
The typical paths seems to be: arch wiki -> arch forums -> LM forums.
It would then probably save time for everybody to simply put a reference to the LM forums on the pro-audio page of the arch wiki.

As for the content that is both arch linux & audio specific, ie anything that could justify a sub forum here, I can't actually think of much at the moment except user support.
Packaging (pkgbuild dev) questions will be best be answered on the arch forums, system tuning is not particularly distribution specific.
The only thing that stands out is arch users are often the first ones to report new bugs since they live on the bleeding edge (as already mentioned earlier).
In comparison gentoo/funtoo and other rolling release distro users seem to be less numerous or less vocal.