Linux Audio the way to go!?

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by UnixMan

trying a Beta is definitely not the best thing to do if you're looking for a smooth experience. For that I would not even try a freshly released version, but one which have been released since at least 3 months.


why do you want to do that?

The RME is by no means a normal "desktop" sound card.

Pulseaudio have never been intended to be used for "hi-end" or "pro" audio (and related hardware). Its sole purpose it to make life easier for the average desktop user: play sound through the typical sound card, plug in an USB headset and be able to use it, etc.

Perhaps you should rather try Ubuntu Studio instead. That should handle it gracefully, and it would actually be a bug if it doesn't.

I'm trying to build a desktop system ( for serious audio playback I currently use my SB Touch).

The system should handle satisfactory

1. pictures
2. video
3. audio playback
4. audio file tagging
5. ripping (optional)

at a reasonable quality level !!

And I'd like to use the newest kind of desktops.

Everything needs to work smooth on a home network, with multiple clients.
Ubuntu server is used. That server is running mysql for pictures,
audio (squeezebox).

Unfortunately Amarok won't seem to work under Gnome anymore.
It's seems to be so deeply integrated into Plasma that it fails under
Gnome. Perhaps only due to that I need to give KDE another try.

I had a look also at all other Gnome compatible players. They all are pretty basic apps. Nothing I'd use or would recommend.


Cheers

[phofman]

I am afraid ubuntu studio 10.04 uses pulseaudio just the same way regular ubuntu does.

But it is trivial to remove pulseaudio in a minute, just a matter of copying/pasting a few commands to the terminal. I have used the tutorial Elegantly Disabling PulseAudio in Ubuntu 10.04/10.10 | www.jeffsplace.net many times, always with 100% success. Even a beginner can acomplish that easily.

I would not recommend using the betas between LTS releases either. Their lifespan is miniscule, upgrading painful, changes too deep. LTS 10.04 has gradually become a fine distribution, with the major bugs already fixed or reasonable workarounds known. There are lots of useful and up-to-date ppa's for lucid available.

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by phofman

I am afraid ubuntu studio 10.04 uses pulseaudio just the same way regular ubuntu does.

But it is trivial to remove pulseaudio in a minute, just a matter of copying/pasting a few commands to the terminal. I have used the tutorial Elegantly Disabling PulseAudio in Ubuntu 10.04/10.10 | www.jeffsplace.net many times, always with 100% success. Even a beginner can acomplish that easily.

I would not recommend using the betas between LTS releases either. Their lifespan is miniscule, upgrading painful, changes too deep. LTS 10.04 has gradually become a fine distribution, with the major bugs already fixed or reasonable workarounds known. There are lots of useful and up-to-date ppa's for lucid available.

1.
I btw had this "elegant" way to running for quite a long period of time.
It's not what I call elegant. You break Gnome packages.
And you need to rely on that ppa and related packages to fix these.
I don't like that.

Elegant would be just a button in a menu: "Pulseaudio On/OFF"

On one hand you recommend LTS releases on the other hand you recommend any kind of hacker ppa's. Hmmh.

2.

LTS releases are usually not up2date. Those are much behind newest developments.

Look at the new 2.6.38 kernel, 1.0.24 alsa asf. asf.

Linux is always late - much too late - with drivers in particular.

And this is exactly the reason why rolling releases (Distros) become more and more popular. Afaik there are plans to prepare a rolling release version
for Ubuntu.

For those who havn't heard about rolling releases: With a rolling release there is no need for major upgrades anymore. Packages are continuously upgraded on the fly.

The rolling releases can work since it seems that Linux got a lot more stable than it used to be. Ubuntu even seems to do a better job then good old Debian.

My current Ubuntu Natty Beta proves that things run quite stable even at such an early beta phase. Since I installed it I'havn't had much problems.
I even enjoy it.

The only problem is the broken Alsa-Tools package (HDSP mixer) , which is not an Ubuntu problem!


Cheers

[soundcheck]

Hi folks.

Yesterday I tried the Liquorix Kernel.
It's based on 2.6.38.

The kernel had been suggested over here some time back.

Just run below 5 commands and reboot into the new kernel and you're set.

sudo su
echo "deb http://liquorix.net/debian sid main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get install '^liquorix-([^-]+-)?keyring.?'
apt-get update
apt-get install a*2.6-liquorix-686

I can tell you it made a noticeable improvement on my system. Give it a try.



Enjoy.

[phofman]

Originally Posted by soundcheck

1.
I btw had this "elegant" way to running for quite a long period of time.
It's not what I call elegant. You break Gnome packages.

Creating a fake pulseaudio package is no major problem. I have never encountered any trouble with it. It is how the packaging works.

Originally Posted by soundcheck

And you need to rely on that ppa and related packages to fix these.
I don't like that.

I have no problem with it. The LTS will not be upgrading to newer pulseaudio package with incompatible features, therefore the fake package will not need any upgrade.

Originally Posted by soundcheck

Elegant would be just a button in a menu: "Pulseaudio On/OFF"

You have all the power to implement it, if you desire it. I am fine with the above procedure. Ubuntu is a desktop distribution and as such Canonical will not put resources into disabling pulseaudio which is getting better each version.

Originally Posted by soundcheck

On one hand you recommend LTS releases on the other hand you recommend any kind of hacker ppa's. Hmmh.

I recommend what I find the best option at this stage of matters.

Originally Posted by soundcheck

LTS releases are usually not up2date. Those are much behind newest developments.

Look at the new 2.6.38 kernel, 1.0.24 alsa asf. asf.

And it never will. You either want stability and no hassle, or "newest development"

Originally Posted by soundcheck

Linux is always late - much too late - with drivers in particular.

Then use something else, there are numerous options.

Originally Posted by soundcheck

And this is exactly the reason why rolling releases (Distros) become more and more popular. Afaik there are plans to prepare a rolling release version
for Ubuntu.

For those who havn't heard about rolling releases: With a rolling release there is no need for major upgrades anymore. Packages are continuously upgraded on the fly.

The rolling releases can work since it seems that Linux got a lot more stable than it used to be. Ubuntu even seems to do a better job then good old Debian.

I wonder which rolling releases you have used actively and for how long. I do not mean installing and wiping the next day/week as is usually the case for reviewers and distro hoppers. I do not know ANY rolling release distro I would recommend for production use. Arch being most popular is still too much edgy. Just try running it for a few months and use it on a daily basis. I did. It is a wonderful distro for developers and linux enthusiasts though.

For me the hassle-free upgrade to new version is basically equivalent to rolling-release - I never have to reinstall and do the configuration again. And that is the case with our servers running debian stable - we have not reinstalled for over 8 years, just dist-upgrades (while serving) and continuous HW upgrade/replacement. For the desktop I have come back to ubuntu LTS which I find a good compromise between stability and novelty. We will see what they do with 12.04, whether they keep the classical gnome desktop and Xorg. Most probably not, ubuntu is purposefully heading away from the classical desktop to touchscreen devices (unity, wayland). And I understand, that's where the only money is, in the app stores mobile users are accustomed to pay for. That is another reason why I do not recommend the new betas after 10.04.

Originally Posted by soundcheck

My current Ubuntu Natty Beta proves that things run quite stable even at such an early beta phase. Since I installed it I'havn't had much problems.
I even enjoy it.

These recommendations last for weeks, maybe months. Most people do not have the time and patience to keep reinstalling/upgrading/solving upgrade problems which inevitably happen unless the upgrade process is thouroughly tested and perfected. And that takes A LOT of work and time.

[phofman]

But I still believe there is a market opportunity for corporate desktop linux distribution. I hoped Canonical would fill the niche, apparently they are moving away to consumer space.

I believe companies would be willing to pay reasonable yearly fees for a reasonably modern linux desktop with well tested upgrade route. At least mine would. Something like the debian desktop/debian CUT, but with a commercial entity behind offering paid support and proper care of packaging (i.e. LOTS and LOTS of testing, perhaps developing the much needed state-of-the-art automated package testing infrastructure). Perhaps RedHat will eventually expand seriously into corporate desktop with viable pricing.

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by phofman

But I still believe there is a market opportunity for corporate desktop linux distribution. I hoped Canonical would fill the niche, apparently they are moving away to consumer space.

I believe companies would be willing to pay reasonable yearly fees for a reasonably modern linux desktop with well tested upgrade route. At least mine would. Something like the debian desktop/debian CUT, but with a commercial entity behind offering paid support and proper care of packaging (i.e. LOTS and LOTS of testing, perhaps developing the much needed state-of-the-art automated package testing infrastructure). Perhaps RedHat will eventually expand seriously into corporate desktop with viable pricing.

No company - except Google - is gonna manage to make Linux available to a wider consumer market. It's the money which makes things moving.
Not some idealistic Linux hackers. Others will for sure piggyback on that.
But even with Google in the lead you see 100s of different variants popping up. It's a known fact that Google has to get this under control.


Corporate Distros will be used as special purpose animals. Linux as a Desktop system is IMO unacceptable in professional Desktop environments.


You can reduce testing efforts and increase quality if somebody would take the overall integration lead, if you'd get structured, if you'd avoid redundant work, if you'd have a common goal.

And -- you can't count on support by hobbyists, if you take all this erious. Linux would be dead by now without long-term industrial cross-financing. The active fulltimers are paid by the industry.



If all the wasted design time and efforts in Linux land world could be used in a productive manner, not any other OS would be able to compete.

Example:

1. Ubuntu and Debian should better merge. That would avoid lot's of redundant work and would increase quality.
2. The audio layer should become integrated alsa/oss/pulseaudio/jack/gstreamer/xine ..... all in one hand. On top of that proprietary audio driver handling should be introduced to get the manufacturers on board. And somebody should start working on an OSX compatibility layer. In this case OSX drivers could be used.

[UnixMan]

Originally Posted by phofman

But it is trivial to remove pulseaudio in a minute, just a matter of copying/pasting a few commands to the terminal. I have used the tutorial Elegantly Disabling PulseAudio in Ubuntu 10.04/10.10 | www.jeffsplace.net many times, always with 100% success. Even a beginner can acomplish that easily.

actually, I don't see why bothering with all that. At least on 10.10 (but IIRC also on 10.04) you can simply purge pulseaudio altogether!

root@lucid:~# aptitude purge pulseaudio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
  indicator-sound libcanberra-pulse pulseaudio-esound-compat pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-gconf
  pulseaudio-module-x11 ubuntu-desktop
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  pulseaudio{p}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 4,567kB will be freed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  ubuntu-desktop: Depends: pulseaudio but it is not installable
  pulseaudio-module-bluetooth: Depends: pulseaudio but it is not installable
  pulseaudio-module-x11: Depends: pulseaudio but it is not installable
  pulseaudio-module-gconf: Depends: pulseaudio but it is not installable
  indicator-sound: Depends: pulseaudio but it is not installable
  libcanberra-pulse: Depends: pulseaudio but it is not installable
  pulseaudio-esound-compat: Depends: pulseaudio but it is not installable
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
indicator-sound
libcanberra-pulse
pulseaudio-esound-compat
pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
pulseaudio-module-gconf
pulseaudio-module-x11
ubuntu-desktop

Leave the following dependencies unresolved:
gnome-session-canberra recommends libcanberra-pulse
gnome-settings-daemon recommends pulseaudio
indicator-applet recommends indicator-sound
Score is -2223

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

answer yes and pulseaudio will be gone for good ("ubuntu-desktop" is just a metapackage which is used to "pull in" other packages; removing it does not change anything on your system). Then you only need to run:

gstreamer-properties

to tell gstreamer to use ALSA directly instead of PA and install/use some different mixer. I personally like best the text mode alsamixer, but you may want some GUI based one.

[phofman]

Unixman,

many users would not be happy with the volume applet missing. And I am not happy about the removal of the ubuntu-desktop package

But I see we both agree that removing pulseaudio in recent ubuntu has become trivial for anyone and that is the point :-)

[phofman]

Originally Posted by soundcheck

2. The audio layer should become integrated alsa/oss/pulseaudio/jack/gstreamer/xine ..... all in one hand.

I hope nobody with the decision-making power will share this idea. Merging alsa/pulseaudio/jack is ok, but gstreamer/xine are at least one level above and do not belong to the low-level libraries.

Originally Posted by soundcheck

And somebody should start working on an OSX compatibility layer. In this case OSX drivers could be used.

Well, good luck with that.