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Mediainlinux: Path Forward?
Marco Ghirlanda writes "There is an Italian Public founded Research and Technology Park -- the Virtual Reality & Multi Media Park which is hosting a Hollywood-like film studio, the Lumiq Studios The Lumiq Studios and is investing a lot of resources in creating a Debian based multimedia distribution, Mediainlinux wich is basically two lines of Linux Live CD, one based on Knoppix and one made from scratch (Mediainlinux 3) for 2D, 3D, Audio and Video pre and post production. ML needs testing outside our production environment and our school. "
Seriously, how many Linux distributions do we need? Linux has a long way to go before becoming a decent desktop alternative.
The open-source community needs to pool their efforts instead of forking.
Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare.
/tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!"
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments:
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
Damn, Hollywood should have its own Linux Distribution, too.
On the software list, I could see no mention of Blender. The list did seem a little short though, but I believe that if you're going to have a specialised distribution such as this, you need to list all the relevant software packages.
Why? Because Linux is not yet user-friendly. If Linux were easy for each person or organization to customize, there would be one distribution and the work of customization would be left to the installer.
It doesn't and can't work that why for the average person right now.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these.
But does it run Linux?
In Soviet Russia...
1)?
2)?
3)Profit!
See my Karma Whoring Sig!
Anti-Microsoft! Pro-Linux!
Are we done, yet?
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
In your description you state "for 2D, 3D, Audio and Video pre and post production.", yet I don't see any 3d software listed under your software listings, in particular I don't see Blender which is by far the most robust 3D content creation application available as free software on Linux. It also has a significant role in 2D illustration work (ie creating complex textures and shading for 3d text, or creating a rough overview of shading and texturing for a scene via a 3d rendering and then filling in details in your 2d tool). Also it has video editing and compositing features.
Something between 'Extreme Linux' and 'Dumb Linux'?
--
It's a stupid copy and pasted comment from like 5 years ago, which only vaugely has something to do with the article.
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
You have that completely back-assward. Linux is easy to customize therefore it has many distros. The demands of different functions do conflict. A realtime recording studio OS isn't going to be well-suited to run on a LAMP server-farm. A server-tuned OS is going to have crap 3d game performance. Each use implies at least a different kernel build, perhaps a whole tuned userland as well - a custom distro, in other words. It's precisely because Linux is not merely configurable, but rebuildable, that multiple distros become a practical necessity.
Linux has quietly and almost completly replaced Microsoft's OSes as The Default Choice for almost the entire range of new computing products and solutions over the past five years.
Every new computing device I come into contact with these days is running some version of Linux that the manufacturer has included. Linux has become so ingrained as the default choice that new devices I come into contact with rarely even mention what OS is running on the thing - of course it's got Linux running on it...
It is funny to watch the whole desktop Microsoft vs Linux debates rage on the Net while Microsoft has been effectively sweep off the map for almost the entire range of non-desktop devices.
I do still come into contact with the dwindling number of 'Microsoft guys' out there. It is funny to see their lack of anything to say when they try to get someone to use some version of Windows on a new device and everyone asks them why the hell should we pay money to lock ourselves into a closed source and single vendor system?
There are many distros that already have these Audio/Video..etc packages in their repository. Unless a distro includes really difficult to find packages pre installed, the only thing good about this kind of distribution is that it works out of the box without having to go to the repository and install packages needed, which is very easy. But maybe it's not about packages..If a distribution has working out of the box 3d acceleration, optimized Jack, distributed rendering stuff..it'd be cool.
Where are leading audio apps like jack, ardour, sweep and audacity? Where are Blender and Wings3d? How about dumping Gnome, using a better performing desktop and using the extra space for koffice libs so they can include krita and the drawing utility.
This appears to be a poorly conceived distro.
This distro's been around for quite some time and aims to be much the same thing.
This Medialinux thing is better than fedora/CCRMA how?
I don't object in the least to anyone making a new distribution of BSD or Linux, but realistically if you're going to do so... differentiate yourself somehow. At the very least, don't be a bad imitation of another setup.
I have to wonder if these people even bothered to research existing resources.
To beat the Hell out of the Anti-Linux guys on User friendliness. Linux is User friendly IF you get compliant hardware, and set it up correctly.
Its just not hardware vendor friendly. Because hardware vendors don't like to make drivers for us.. Its the hardware vendors and the Music industry trying to smash Linux.
As for the Package Management issues. I can just click setup under Linux, its called rpmdrake or synaptic. I click the RPM under KDE, and either Synaaptic or Rpmdrake launches.
I don't know what that guy was talking about with regaurds to Quake 2. Installing Quake 3 for me was simply selecting the PLF Package in RPM drake, and letting it copy the base directory of my Quake 3 Drive...
God those people piss me off!
how can they be serious in the 'media' arena if they forgot that?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I went to their site, but there is nothing to see,
since I do not have (or want) a Flash plugin.
So, nothing for me to see there, I move along.
Blender is and always will be (as I can imagine) in Mediainlinux. Our environment breaths Blender, we know Ton and we love his work and commitment. This post on Slashdot was to just make people know about a Public institution's effort about multimedia and GNU/Linux. Many other media Distro are/were Public founded (Agnula/Demudi, Planet CCRMA and maybe also Dyne:bolic). GNU/Linux is about creativity and we all like it. Peace. MG
Have you ever heard of a distro called Mediainlinux? It sounds like they're into all of that.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Yeah, they've completely invalidated themselves because blender isn't in that list.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
First, I have to say that I totally disagree that Linux have a long way to go before becoming a decent desktop alternative. Distros like Mandriva and Suse are quite good in this respect (its the two that I've used). One thing is that the installation is way easier and better at detecting hardware than Windows (and this is indisputable to someone who has done both lately). They are also quite a bit ahead at doing several things like desktop search and cd-burning, file-management (konqueror) and a lot of other things. Yes, there are some areas where it is still lagging, as with media capabilities (which can be fixes with some messing around). But in general they are at least on par with Windows as desktop systems. I have installed Mandriva for my parents and my sister. They both have dual-boot with windows, but they always use Linux, without problems.
Second, the specialisation of distros like this is really the beauty of Linux distros / liveCDs. Having one CD you can boot into without having to fiddle around with installing specialised software is great. CDs that lets you make media, play games, develop with eclipse and so on is great for trying out stuff. You can test out different software and find out which is the best or if you find it interesting, and then go on an install it if it suits you. This is not a general desktop, it's for a certain group which. It lets you tune the system for one thing, so everything works better. I think this is one of the strenghts of Linux, having niche distros that do certain things really good.
-TN
FYI, this is an old troll: Example one, example two, example three (and even repeated off slashdot).
Perhaps they just forgot to mention their 3d apps on the web page this time around.
Didnt try the disk myself, was just commenting after reading their 'contents' pages.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It would seem not. Oh well - I've a few hours to kill before I lose connectivity, so I'll d/l direct. But a BitTorrent would be a good idea. (And no, I don't have the facilities to do it myself ; see "lose connectivity" above.).
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