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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. "
Well done, not quite first post but almost. A small critique of your troll, could you please update it to include saying "1% marketshare", and also you could perhaps have a more modern game than Quake 3, especially now that Quake 4 has been released.
You're welcome to leave linux to those that do get it and use whatever makes *you* happy.
It's called choice, and I'm all for it.
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.
Right, so the installer should be able to handle supercomputers, servers, enterprise networks, phones, and embedded devices all in one. I think you're being slightly too ambitious here, especially considering you're proposing an installer that can fully customise an operating system to exact needs of every computer in the world as a user-friendly option.
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'?
--
Riiight. Ok, put down the bong.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
What's easier: Install a distro marketed as "Linux for home users", or try to work your way through an uber-complex install process that's suited for every sort of system? Remember, every option the user doesn't want to see decreases usability...
Not only that, there are multiple versions of Windows with unclear purposes. Vista will have 7 versions, I think. Customising the Windows installer is pretty difficult too, moreso than any Linux distro installers I've customised... and the base WinXP install is a lot worse than most distros.
There is one distro that can be suited to a heck of a lot of systems: Gentoo. You can customise that for pretty much anything, but it doesn't make it easy to use.
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?
Funny, for linux apparently being a non-viable desktop alternative OS, I've never had any issues. I've used Mandrake, Redhat (and fedora), a couple debian-based distros, and most recently settled onto Gentoo because it fits my needs. That's kind of my point, though, is that for anyone who has researched what they want in an OS, they can choose the distribution that meets their needs instead of their OS telling them what they want and need. That, honestly, is my sole reason for running linux instead of Windows.
I hate seeing posts like this because it just shows the ignorance of the average computer user. Linux is indeed a very strong desktop alternative to Windows, but unless the user knows exactly what he/she wants out of it, they probably won't be happy with it.
Oh, and in response to the post that said "Which is simpler, typing apt-get or emerge, or double clicking an icon that says 'Setup'?" I would like to say that for me, and for more than a few people I know of, a command like 'emerge' or 'apt-get' makes a lot more sense to us than double-clicking an icon that for all we know could be installing a trojan horse along with the software we want.
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.
Customising the Windows installer is stupid-simple if you get your hands on the right program(s).
/ windowscustomization1/
Copy the CD to your HD and you can tweak the hell out of Windows, integrate drivers (no more "press F6 for SCSI drivers"), remove extraneous crap, etc etc etc.
I've tried out a few and found that for me, nLite is nice. YMMV, but here's a walkthrough guide to using the prog (not that it isn't fairly self-explanatory)
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides
FYI- There are other unofficial 'distros' of Windows out there, you just have to go looking for them. People have cut Windows down to the bare min, they've made live windows CDs, and so on.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"Linux is *not* user friendly"
"Linux zealots, dump core, some obscure web address, segfault, Oh God, Windoze, some lamer friend, God, what a fucking mess! 3 minutes to copy everything, reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
Oh Dear!
Ever heard of the "Blue Screen of Death?" Remember? Jog yer memories? Ctrl-Alt-Del? etc^n
You are of course correct, M$ can run Quake well... and makes a good graphics platform, and a word processor,
Linux on the other hand...
Anyway, what's wrong with running a re-mapped O/S in ram? Or wanting to use a computer for more than a word-processing games station??? Or having "choice".
:-]
Well you seem to forget that most of the distros are really a selective collection of software (along with some other things) and if you would have only one distribution, with one variation, the distro would be around 20GiB or so, or the installer would have to download the stuff you want during installation, which well is a bit problem phrone for big installations, and of course the installer would be insanely complex. If it ain't broke... improve it
Linux has a long way to go before becoming a decent desktop alternative. Oh I'm sorry, I forgot that my operating system was crap. Seriously, watch me bow down to you, windows (or even mac) user, for you are a higher being! Jeeze...
Tom says so, QED.
It's worth noting that programs like apt-get are more than just an installer. They also do intelligent selection of dependencies and retrieve, install, and configure the whole set. They can also be used to keep everything up to date. A simple 'setup.exe' doesn't compare AT ALL to this.
Obligatory car analogy: This is like a waterhose at the gas station compared to a free, always-available travelling car-detailer.
For those that feel the need to a single file install like that, Slackware, Debian and others all have user-provided 1-file installs for the most popular programs.
In short: You can have your 1-file install and apt-get too, but not on Windows.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Funny, for linux apparently being a non-viable desktop alternative OS, I've never had any issues.
- I love Linux, but IMO, OP does have a point. I recently switched my notebook to Kubuntu. Boy was I in for a suprise. 3 year old Presario 905 US, cardbus D-Link wireless.
I installed the OS, no problemo. Well other than wireless not working. After toying around, I noticed the GUI won't let me change the wireless parameters. Some weird bug, asks me for my pw (sudo), nothing happens. All right, let's do it manually, edit interfaces file, play with iwconfig. Got it running.
Next problem, Firefox. The menu and toolbar was ridiculously huge, large fonts. Of course no option to change it. Again, hack a configuration file in the chrome folder. Firefox doesn't like KDE...
Next problem, Mp3. The package manager (Adept) kept giving me Install (BREAK) messages and wouldn't let me install the correct libraries. Of course I had to google around to find that I didn't have the ID3 tag reader, install that, then the gstreamer package and I could finally play Mp3s.
Next problem, video files. I installed the correct libraries for Kaffeine, oops , it started to crash. Adept wouldn't le me install anything MPlayer related. Finally I installed the xine engine for Kaffeine and it was working. I still couldn't get Firefox to display streaming video, tried installing mozilla-mplayer, adept said screw you!
Now I am not a Linux expert, far from it. More like a novice, I was/am a longtime windows user, infact I can do pretty much everything on windows including analyzing BSOD crap. I was very dissapointed in Kubuntu. I had to do text file hacking, install various packages just to be able to do three things:
- Browse web.
- Play my MP3s.
- Play my ripped DVDs (video files).
IMO, Linux is not ready for desktop. There I said it, now let's see getting moderated to -5 troll.
http://www.dynebolic.org.nyud.net:8090/
From the website: "dyne:bolic is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives as a practical tool for multimedia production: you can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, having automatically recognized most device and peripherals: audio, video, TV, network cards, firewire, usb and more; all using only free software!"
It's a distro based on debian too (if i remember correctly) and one of the core developers is Jaromil.
about me A - B
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!
This is sadly all true, I guess, although I haven't tried it. Quake is an old game, and linux isn't as binary backwards compatible as windows.
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 /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.
Would you want to tell your windows users how to install the latest graphics drivers when installing quake too? This section is just added to make it sound more complicated than it really is.
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!"
And in my opinion the right people to blame for all this mess is the people behind quake, not the people behind linux. It shouldn't be that hard to create a binary that doesn't need a HOWTO in order to get sound. And I see no reason why a game need to be setuid <something>
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!"
Well, if you need to get a CD and reboot your computer, just to play a simple old game, that's a pretty big hurdle for me. Much easier to just "apt-get install quake3" or "emerge quake3". Of course, quake3 isn't open source software, so it will never happen that you can just apt-get or emerge it. The problem with linux, if you agree that it's a problem, is that it doesn't make it easy for people to package non-free software. Many people view that as a strength, and those are the ones we call zealots.
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.
"Well, if you need to get a CD and reboot your computer, just to play a simple old game, that's a pretty big hurdle for me. Much easier to just "apt-get install quake3" or "emerge quake3". Of course, quake3 isn't open source software, so it will never happen that you can just apt-get or emerge it. The problem with linux, if you agree that it's a problem, is that it doesn't make it easy for people to package non-free software. Many people view that as a strength, and those are the ones we call zealots."
/dev/dsp, which is becoming deprecated. That said, ALSA comes with some OSS friendly addons that could stand to be more complete on modern sound cards.
You're right on except that you can emerge quake3 and get the 1.32 point release. From there you can play quake3 in demo mode or emerge a handful of available mods. Getting your demo quake3 to the full version is as easy as inserting the cd and copying the relevant pk3 files. I've heard that you can instruct the ebuild to look for cd content and copy it automatically, but I've never felt the need to try it.
Also, the sound issue in quake3 comes from the use of
I think the OP might have more valid points if he'd written that three or four years ago.
Now I am not a Linux expert, far from it. More like a novice, I was/am a longtime windows user, infact I can do pretty much everything on windows including analyzing BSOD crap. I was very dissapointed in Kubuntu. I had to do text file hacking, install various packages just to be able to do three things:
- Browse web.
- Play my MP3s.
- Play my ripped DVDs (video files).
Now, I believe you. Because we refurbish pc's, load
new licencesed copies of Windows, and give them to
deserving people. It is very rare to have
an installation of Windows work completely correctly
without making changes, downloading something, or
hacking something, because each of these used pc's
is different and very seldom does everything work as it's supposed to. Linux isn't much better.
IMO, Linux is not ready for desktop.
IMIO*, neither is Windows.
(*My Informed Opinion)
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
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
What the hell's going on here? Blender was on my MediainLinux CD in the Debian-)apps-)graphics menu, with two entries for full-screen or windowed. Plus Wings3D and POVray and KPOVmodeller. All kinds of 3D stuff. Where is everybody getting the idea that Blender's missing?
Ok, sorry I did misread, no insult intended, I'm in total dumb-ass mode at the moment,
I however think that the specific flavour mentioned to be used as a hybrid base system (Knoppix) is actualy quite a user friendly system compaired to others, the GUI is clean and inviting, the instructions to start of in the correct direction to su and such are self explanitory if one takes the time to read the text enclosed. Admitedly running that particular distro directly from a hdd is not so straight forward and is slightly limited by the knowledge required to play about with it. However, I think the steps taken in that particular distro have enabled a far more user freindly system than many other distros, hence I think the Knoppix-Debian is a good base to expand from, as opposed to some of the other more cumbersome established distros. I do like many others but cannot see past Knoppix, maybe I am on the "wrong" side of the fence...
We should "always" work at making Linux more user freindly, but should we also have to pander to a limited intelects idealism of what user freindly constitutes?
Q - User Freindly Linux^n, Kiddy Linux, Schooly Linux, Granny Linux, Gaagaa-Googoo Linux, Mother and Law Linux...
Yep, "User freindly" needs a serious appraisal, in more than one sense, even M$ knows this. A good place to start would perhaps be for totaly escape the programming side of the o/s then focus entirly on the objectives at hand and allow all Linux folks to list what they term as 'user freindly' then expand from there outwards, but has that already not been done? To myself user-freindly means many different things, but I do appreciate my own opinions are somewhat tainted by what I feel has already been largely covered by an "other" system which is more u$er freindly than admin freindly. I am lost in this "user freindly" conversation thingy. What does it all mean? I wish Freud was still alive! Maybe if we focused on how "user Un-freindly" the "other" os is, or would that require all potential users to pre-boot their user-freindly-understandings then apt-get their patches!
I'm obviously quite Clueless, I've been turkeyfied the past few days!!!
Reduce the steep learning curve.
:-]
It doesn't and can't work that why for the average person right now.
Yes, because it could everytime like average was in future.
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 ----
Answer: As many as we need.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Yeah, I have seen this sort of stuff... and I have done the Windows customisation (and I occasionally use the version without IE too), but I find the whole package management type systems on Linux distros make life a lot easier with things like netboot and customising the install CDs.
> The problem with linux, if you agree that it's a problem, is that it doesn't make it easy for people to package
.src.rpm or the Debian equiv inhouse. Which makes tweaked repackaging for alternate distros a bit harder, but otherwise adds no difficulties for supported platforms.
> non-free software.
Why do you say that? It is equally easy to package proprietary software as it package Free stuff. The only difference is proprietary vendors would keep the
Democrat delenda est
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.).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
You are in fact answering to an old troll (at least 2 years old) that come back from time to time, often with exact same wording.
...
Google for some sentences, you will quickly find it even on old Slashdot discussions.
So that you're not fooled next time