When is enough, enough..?

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GMaq
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When is enough, enough..?

Post by GMaq »

Every time I start work based on the next Debian platform my love of Linux dies a little more... In the early days of AV Linux I had a great setup that used JACK and the kernel aloop (ALSA loopback) module and a python daemon. The system booted, started JACK invisibly and all the User knew was that JACK and ALSA stuff all just worked automagically, routing stuff was pretty much limited to your imagination... Enter PulseAudio which really didn't solve any meaningful problems for AVL Users because JACK and ALSA were already routing everything to the selected JACK Audio device, PulseAudio at first was completely optional and didn't put it's tentacles into places it wasn't needed until Distributions made it a hard Dependency for pretty much every common Desktop Environment and Web Browsers started being built with PulseAudio support ONLY etc. etc. and from there PulseAudio was here to stay and had to be reckoned with even though it really was of no benefit to Multimedia production workflows and I see the exact same scenario playing out with PipeWire.

I went back to Windows (10) a couple of years ago after leaving it at Windows XP in the mid-2000's for Upscaling AI workflows that aren't available on Linux. I installed Windows myself and shut off as much of the ad targeting and data collection as I could and after a couple of years I haven't had one bad update, the system has never frozen or glitched once (it took several Kernels to support my Threadripper CPU without random lockups on Linux) my Windows XP-era Video Toolbox apps VirtualDub and filters all still work, my most ancient of Windows VST Plugins work and every piece of my Audio equipment has an ASIO driver and some sort of useful Control UI and I can run Audacity, Ardour, Mixbus and energyXT (my main Audio apps) all natively on Windows... Kdenlive, Shotcut, Openshot and others are all there for the choosing as well..

Then I look at Debian Bookworm; Sysvinit, systemd, runit, GTK2, GTK3, and (shudder) GTK4/libadwaita... QT5, QT6... Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE4, LXQT, Enlightenment, Budgie (that's the surface only...) PulseAudio/PipeWire...Snap/Flatpak/Appimage... LADSPA,LV2,VST,VST3,CLAP and on and on and on.

I'm a pragmatist and I've run my own business since 1989 to live and I balance that with being a so-called artist and fairly independent thinker so I try to be open-minded but the way things are done in the Linux world under any other sort of productivity paradigm is just ludicrous... like seriously WTF!? I'm getting older and my bullshit tolerance has disappeared with my hairline and I'm teetering on the edge of calling bullshit on the whole thing.. Choice...? Freedom...? GRUB2, SystemD, PulseAudio, and now PipeWire all have a history of being 'new choices of doing things' and since evolved into the only way of doing things unless you want to use Slackware or compile every single application on your system yourself to circumvent all this stuff. Wasn't that the major downside of Windows/OSX? We had to do it 'their way'? Well Linux is no escape from 'their way' it's just different people calling the shots, people who usually aren't accountable to anyone else (ie Shareholders) and decisions without accountability that often lack any reasonable foundation other than getting the publicity of doing it your way instead of making the existing way better..

I LOVE Linux, I've given 15 years of my spare time and effort to it and I used to (and still want to) believe in the altruism and grass roots community it fosters but it's also death by 1000 cuts and it seems more aimless, divided and untethered than ever..

Maybe Lou Reed says it better; 'Set free to find a new illusion'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nea2I1dQmLE

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by bluzee »

What are they doing with Pipewire dependencies? I remember when Pulseaudio was a dependency for pretty much every app on they system including the desktop. Try to remove Pulseaudio and it would delete most of your system. That was stupid and I'm glad this is no longer the case. On AVL I delete pulseaudio, apulse gets installed as an alternative dependency and all is well. If they are repeating this dependency hell with pipewire I'm going to have to get vocal about it.

Not sure what to say about Win10/11. My XYL's laptop came with with it so I left her with a dual boot setup. Win11 barely runs on the machine. Linux everything is snappy and responsive and has a much nicer desktop. She booted win once then linux and I don't think the linux has ever been turned off since then. With Win10/11 when MS wants to use your resources for their distributed network they have full access and there is nothing you can do to stop that. It's not your wifi that is slow, it's MS pushing out updates to everyone on the planet by hijacking your bandwidth.

I try to not work on windows machines at all but I've been talked into doing tech support for various people at times. Hardware combinations do not always work out in windows either. Setups that I've done in Linux that just work have been impossible in windows. I've run into driver registry issues that were so stubborn that ultimately a complete reinstall of windows was required just to swap out a sound device. Lately I've had people show up at my door with a brand new machine asking me to install Linux for them. Sometimes living in a small community has it's disadvantages.

In some of my other hobbies I run into people who are forced to stick with outdated, unsupported and easily hack able versions of windows because their drivers or software won't work anymore in new windows. My gear still works and my old hardware still runs snappy on a fully updated modern distro.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by erlkönig »

You're absolutely right! When i read your post i thought: "give the advice to slackware", but you mentioned that. All the fck you described came with distributions like Ubuntu. It's absolutely ok to give such distros to people that are not in the technical stuff. But if you don't want to give away sovereignty, you have to stick with slackware, arch, manjaro, maybe gentoo. I moved from slackware to manjaro a few years ago, because manjaro made things possible without the effort slackware sometimes brings. It was no problem removing puleseaudio and e.g. starting jack via /etc/rc.local . I'm able to ignore the rest of systemd.
All in all i see linux is diverting since ten or maybe fifteen years into a branch for "i want to use linux but i don't know why/don't hit my to hard" people and a branch for people who are willing to deal with technical stuff. It's sad to see people mixing up kiss-principle with complexity, on the other hand i often think, they deserved it. The core-intention of creating opensource, namely "i have a problem that has to be solved, therefore 1 program: 1 task" and releasing it into freedom, into its own evolving path, is obviously replaced by seemingly profil-neurotic posers (which sometimes end at microsoft) which think they have to make everything better, no matter, if it fitted the needs.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by GMaq »

@bluzee

I was typing hot and fast in the OP, my point isn't that Windows is perfect, or better or not without numerous flaws. My point is it's a different world now than in the mid 2000's when Windows was hostile toward Open Source and Linux and that Windows 10 has all the flaws it ever has BUT it is certainly quite a stable, agreeable and usable system in my daily experience.. It's support of some very old software without any special interventions from me made me appreciate having an underlying system that has a large degree of compatibility with older apps (of course not completely). That doesn't take ANYTHING away from what Linux does well, but the fragmentation almost everywhere you look is getting beyond ridiculous..

Fedora made PipeWire default while it was still in early beta and most large Distros will now laugh you out of the room if you suggest not using systemd I have very little faith that Packagers will not make PipeWire a hard dependency for the DE's, Browsers and for the Audio/Video and Media Playing apps they package... as you said they did it initially with PulseAudio there is no reason to believe they won't do it again especially with the belief that PipeWire is the final Linux answer to Audio on Linux.

Let me be clear, PipeWire is just an Audio server, it's not the enemy and if you use it and like it and it doesn't impede your goals have at it! Just don't force me change a system that works well as-is from upstream, in that past this stuff ends up getting rammed through whether you like it or not..

Last edited by GMaq on Sat Mar 18, 2023 10:47 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by GMaq »

erlkönig wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:49 pm

You're absolutely right! When i read your post i thought: "give the advice to slackware", but you mentioned that. All the fck you described came with distributions like Ubuntu. It's absolutely ok to give such distros to people that are not in the technical stuff. But if you don't want to give away sovereignty, you have to stick with slackware, arch, manjaro, maybe gentoo. I moved from slackware to manjaro a few years ago, because manjaro made things possible without the effort slackware sometimes brings. It was no problem removing puleseaudio and e.g. starting jack via /etc/rc.local . I'm able to ignore the rest of systemd.
All in all i see linux is diverting since ten or maybe fifteen years into a branch for "i want to use linux but i don't know why/don't hit my to hard" people and a branch for people who are willing to deal with technical stuff. It's sad to see people mixing up kiss-principle with complexity, on the other hand i often think, they deserved it. The core-intention of creating opensource, namely "i have a problem that has to be solved, therefore 1 program: 1 task" and releasing it into freedom, into its own evolving path, is obviously replaced by seemingly profil-neurotic posers (which sometimes end at microsoft) which think they have to make everything better, no matter, if it fitted the needs.

Hi!

I've been a Distributor of Linux almost as long as I've been a User, I learned on Debian and I know Debian and despite what Debian-based upstream projects like Ubuntu do they manage to keep Debian at it's core pretty agnostic. I need to use the OS and I need good tools to build an OS and Debian (and MX Linux) provide that. With no disrespect to Gentoo or Arch or the multiple others but if I have to leave Debian, I'm leaving all of it...

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by erlkönig »

@GMaq
...i left out debian, because i see it in none of those branches. I know it as the most reliable and robust system (together with slackware) with no effort on maintaining it (where slackware lacks, but it has a different approach to this), if it's configured to your needs. Reliably serving infrastructures always is superb with debian. But i'm not sure, if i would like it as a desktop system, especially in my studio. But that's a matter of personal taste. Maybe we have to learn to accept that the way linux seems to go is not the way that was intended during its first decade.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by bluzee »

GMaq wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:59 pm

Let me be clear, PipeWire is just an Audio server....

My understanding is that it also ties in video and that is something good for podcasters and Twitchy people. It can do it all with low enough latency to keep them happy, but possibly not low enough latency to keep people like me happy.

I have not looked to see what type of dependencies packagers are tying into Pipewire so that may be worth investigating. Theoretically it should drop in and work mostly invisible to your average user. As long as there is a way to easily disable it on a device when I want that device to run on real Jack or straight ALSA I don't have an issue with it. Where latency is not critical it may actually prove to be something I like.

For example with ham radio digital modes Pulseaudio alone is sufficient to route audio around from transceiver to demodulating software and makes it child's play compared to what is required to get the same configuration in Windows. Pipewire could be even easier to route as it gives Jack like routing graphs to the likes of Pulseaudio applications.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by GMaq »

@bluzee

MX Linux already has a PipeWire setup metapackage that pulls in the necessary stuff, copies over the important configs and on systems in VM's I've installed it to it works OK. A big issue is that the PipeWire jack modules conflict with the PulseAudio jack modules which instantly breaks the default AV Linux JACK/Pulse/pajackconnect setup which is one of it's most important features. Sadly it's currently a one or the other proposition..

When you open Rui's qpwgraph on a regular running PipeWire system the connection spaghetti in the graph is pretty scary...lol

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by bluzee »

Yes, it's going to have to be one or the other. So far Pipewire has been available to test but not setup by default. You'll just have to decide if and when Pipewire is production ready then instead of doing a Jack/Pulse-jack setup it would be a Jack/Pipewire-jack setup. Am I making the correct assumption?

Personally I never use Pulse and Jack together and I expect that will continue if Pulse does get replaced by Pipewire. The Pipewire docs seem to indicate that using native Jack will continue to be an option.

I've seen Jack patch graphs that start to look like rewiring your CPU. Makes my brain hurt.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by MattKingUSA »

I understand the frustration. My practice has always been not to upgrade in the middle of production on audio work. Things love to break. I recently moved to fedora, maybe a year or so ago, and I must say they're doing a good job of not breaking user space between versions. I would al.ost suggest using an old distro that is designed for what you need for a project. I use that method for Loki lan setups. I typically use mandriva 2007 spring for those older systems. But with the constant changes it's always a good idea to keep your setup stable forbthe duration of a project and that may mean having an offline machine. That's my point of view in regard to audio projects.

-Matt :D

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by Gps »

I remember asking here, why they did not fix, extent alsa, instead of adding new layers, and I was told the ALSA code is badly documented.

Pipewire seems to be working, but I do have

pipeWire PulseAudio implementation
pipewire-alsa - PipeWire media server ALSA support, installed.

I would be lying if I was claiming I fully understand this.

All sound also in LMMS is working fine though.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by sunrat »

Gps wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 12:00 am

I remember asking here, why they did not fix, extent alsa, instead of adding new layers,...

That's what should logically have happened. World is not logical.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

bluzee wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:29 pm

[...] With Win10/11 when MS wants to use your resources for their distributed network they have full access and there is nothing you can do to stop that. It's not your wifi that is slow, it's MS pushing out updates to everyone on the planet by hijacking your bandwidth. [...]

Thanks for reminding me why I left Windows all those years ago. It is backwards compatible with every application ever made for the platform since MS-DOS. However, if you run into trouble you have no idea what's the matter, let alone how to solve it. Windows is a closed monolith and an incomprehensible dinosaur. Ever tried to grasp Win 10's Control Panel? A Frankenstein of Win 95's Contr. P. and I don't know what.

bluzee wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 6:29 pm

[...] I've run into driver registry issues [...]

Thank you of reminding me of the other important reason to quit Windows.

However, the last few years I've come to question my choice for Linux for the same reasons @GMaq mentions and was contemplating a switch to Win 11 in combination with it's limited Linux support. It is immensely frustrating that Desktop Environments and some applications disappear or change for the worse. I had to throw away all my "How To" text files when I re-installed Linux some time ago. On Linux you have to start from scratch time and time again and I feel like a newbie idiot too darn often.

And don't get me started about the crippled hardware support in general (not Linux's fault).

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by Impostor »

I'm a recovering Windows user. Linux gets all the credit for saving me from the dark side. I can take a lot of its idiosyncrasies, since the scars Windows left on my soul are still fresh.

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Re: When is enough, enough..?

Post by Gps »

I have been thinking about going to windows too, for music production.

For me it would be beyond simple because my pc is already dual boot openSUSE and win 10.

I then would probably get Cubase.

I rarely start my windows 10, but every time I do, I get instantly reminded of why I went to Linux.
Microsoft seems to think they own my pc.

I want full control over my pc, even if that sometimes means I wreck things. Its my pc so I should be allowed to wreck things.
I payed for this pc, not microsoft.

On the Linux site though, its also frustration for me how long it takes the LMMS devs to fully support Linux plugins.
With LMMS 1.3 (beta) lv2 support is starting to work though. Calf organ is working as one example.
Through Carla I can load Amsynth, but I can't automate it. :(

In Cubase its allot easier to apply swing and humanization.
Cubase that once only had an Atari ST and Mac version.

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