LinuxMusicians

totalchaos wrote:i also tried Midori (from ppa:midori) and even Epiphany (Web - the gnome browser). They are both working fine, both connecting with alsa->jack plugin and both have html5/h264 support. So now i'm really questioning mozilla's user oriented policy??????

Well, don't go too overboard here. Obviously this is just a particular bug in Firefox, and these tests indicate Firefox is to blame. But you can't go rejecting software wholecloth because there is one persistent bug. Almost no software is so perfect as to avoid such situations. I will be happy when this bug is fixed and am otherwise happy with Firefox and it is KDE integrated enough on my system, even though I wish it were even better.

I was recording this afternoon and I can confirm that I don't seem to be able to start JACK any lower than 1024/2/48000 on my Scarlett 2i4 under 3.8.0-26-lowlatency - I could get much lower latency under 3.2.x.

I won't get to try the vanilla 3.8 kernel until tomorrow now but if the only difference between the latest low-latency kernel is the vanilla is the timer setting then I don't hold much hope for things being any different :/

A patch to fix this issue does exist though - I saw it being discussed on LAU recently. No low-latency USB audio is a showstopper, of course.

wolftune wrote:

totalchaos wrote:i also tried Midori (from ppa:midori) and even Epiphany (Web - the gnome browser). They are both working fine, both connecting with alsa->jack plugin and both have html5/h264 support. So now i'm really questioning mozilla's user oriented policy??????

Well, don't go too overboard here. Obviously this is just a particular bug in Firefox, and these tests indicate Firefox is to blame. But you can't go rejecting software wholecloth because there is one persistent bug. Almost no software is so perfect as to avoid such situations. I will be happy when this bug is fixed and am otherwise happy with Firefox and it is KDE integrated enough on my system, even though I wish it were even better.

Actually i mentioned 4 particular bugs.

0. this issue with html5 and jack (Firefox cannot connect to jack)
1. no html5/H264 support
2. problem with dark themes
3. KDE compatibility issues

So instead of being blindly devotional towards Mozilla, i approached things critically.

Bug 0 has been reported over an year ago and after ten and more versions nothing has improved. This bug by itself makes Firefox less suitable for multimedia distros. It is sad that most of the users (including me) had taken this bug for granted
Bug 1 is related to the aspect of freedom of software, a value that i think we all share. From what i understand the reason Firefox doesn't have H264 support is because the proprietary windows H264 codec is a real pita, full of spyware and malicious features. So Mozilla does respect the users - the windows users. So its not a bug, but more of a politics
Bug 2 - There is a workaround through a script.
Bug 3 - Again there is some workaround and again it seems more of a politics than a bug. Both bugs 2 and 3 are more KXStudio specific than being general problems.

So the question is: Is Mozilla Firefox the most suitable choice to be the default web browser in a multimedia distro, particularly in KXStudio?

I have updated to rev 28 of the ll kernel now but unfortunately the ALSA USB problem persists with my 2i4 in that JACK won't start at anything lower that 1024/2. I could run it happily at 64/3 under 3.2.

I installed the 'new' old 3.5 lowlatency kernel this morning:
and I'm happy to report my Scarlett 2i4 is now starting and running JACK at the low latency setting of 64/3/48 again!

KDE 4.11 has recently been released with some great new features including big updates to kmix, a rewritten panel widget and speedups for Dolphin amongst other things so I'd like to see it make it into the kubuntu updates repos in time for inclusion with 12.04.2 hopefully!

danboid wrote:KDE 4.11 has recently been released with some great new features including big updates to kmix, a rewritten panel widget and speedups for Dolphin amongst other things so I'd like to see it make it into the kubuntu updates repos in time for inclusion with 12.04.2 hopefully!

Given that it is already part of existing kxstudio updates (I'm running it right now), I'm sure it will be included.

Hehe!

Now that you mention it - I'm running it already myself too, I just didn't know.

I don't see any real changes in kmix here but I do think Dolphin is notably faster at opening dirs with lots of folders in now.

The best part for me is the Kscreen option. I have a cheap external monitor and a modest laptop. With this version, I can seamlessly plug in and unplug and the monitors are instantly swapped and all adjustments to resolution are perfect, no commands even needed, just reacts automatically!

Yes - I noticed that too but not tried it yet.

Sounds like a major upgrade and plus point for KDE now it handles multi-monitor setups better!

Please package a recent svn build of qtractor for the 12.04.3 ISO!

Its likely something you were going to do anyway but I wanted to make a note of it here that between 0.5.9 and 0.5.10 the ability to position the playhead with a middle-click got removed. Thankfully, this feature is back in svn just in time for the next KX release!

qtractor is a key app for KXStudio and this feature greatly increases my productivity in qtractor so I'd be sad to see this missing in the default install and I very much doubt Rui will make another qtr release before the next KX install iso arrives.

I'd say Rui has made a new qtr release once every 3 months on average over the last year or two. 0.5.10 was released 2013-07-18 but this was just before Rui went on his holidays so the middle-click is the only fix or addition (its the only change) to svn since 0.5.10.

As I understand it, the plan is to release 12.04.3 in the next week or two. I wouldn't be expecting enough new features off Rui in that time to justify a new release for qtr so I expect backporting may be the better option.

Rui is usually very prompt to fix bugs but I can't ever remember him ever boasting of his rapid development output!

cpufreq-indicator icon got fixed with the recent update!

Cadence got updated in the same blow but it still gives an error first time you try reboot. I presume this is not going away for the next release?

I'm hoping KDEnlive will get updated in time for the iso?

I've just spotted something else missing from 12.04.1 that should be included as standard in .3 - linuxsampler. 12.04.1 included the LS plugins and also qsampler but you can't use any of 'em until you install linuxsampler itself!