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Ubuntu Studio Announced
lukeknipe writes "Ubuntu has set up a page for the April release of the Ubuntu Studio. An ambitious project, it is described by Ubuntu as a 'multimedia editing flavor of Ubuntu for the Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional who is already familiar with the Ubuntu-Gnome environment.' They've set up an Ubuntu Studios Wiki for the project, and their stated goal is to have a the package ready for use in time for 'Feisty Fawn'."
I am so waiting for "Zany Zebra"
This will really help attract even more dedicated linux users. As a multimedia enthusiast, I left Linux because of the lack of multimedia support that was integrated to some level and that worked. Hopefully this will bring back some others who may have left for the same reasons.
Just get back to sleep. This release is for those who are awake and want to contribute I guess.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I've yet to see a good video editing software for Linux.. Maybe the new Ubuntu will show me what I've missed?
Anyone can plan to do something, but how many of those projects are finished?
Anyone can plan a well-polished gnome based distro, but Ubuntu are one of few who've delivered.
I'd give alot more credence to a well funded organisation with a proven track record than the announcement of YALM project.
If they're announcing, they're probably confident about delivering.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
... is what was desperately missing within the Linux/OSS community. Just looking at that splash page of the Ubuntu Studio project made me utter a sigh of relief. Visual and outer skin consistency are things that Linux has seruiously lacked up to now. Ubuntu - basically a not-like-shit-looking version of debian - is what OSS needs to finally succeed in the real world. They use Gnome (which I don't like) but if they continue to improve it style as they did I couldn't care less.
Seeing this, one knows that OSS will prevail and Ubuntu will be at the helm. Nice prospects indeed.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm afraid that even in the hands of a "pro" Photoshop has a hard time producing music...
This might be the distro that might attract me away from my redhat core. I started with redhat 3 back in the day and progressed with each new release and now I'm using fedora core 6. People have been bugging me to try Ubuntu (in spite of the fact that they keep calling it "Oou-Buhn-Too" or even "You-Buhn-Too") But given that this one aims to cater to an interest that I haven't fully explored yet...? Maybe it's time.
This really is a great idea for a distro. In my own experience, I've found that keeping workstation task (web, e-mail, programming, etc) and multimedia tasks (DVR, editing, etc. as well as games...) on seperate systems works out for the best of both tasks. The two have a terrible tendancy to conflict with each other...
One may be working on a job that will take hours, while the other may need a quick reboot ASAP. One may need 99% uptime, while the other serves it's purpose just as well at 95% downtime. One needs quite high-end hardware, latest drivers, and frequent updating of software, while the other is better handled by older, lower-power, more reliable hardware and old, known-good software. One can be tucked away in a corner, while the other often needs to be nearby. etc.
Plus, it's no secret that many multimedia tools are a serious hassle to get up and working in the first place. Different toolkits and widely varying interfaces abound in this space. Good luck trying to INTEGRATE them with each other, on your own. My multimedia system is filled with shell scripts, which do the job pretty well, but aren't very elegant solutions. Doing something in a convoluted way is sometimes quicker and easier than trying to adapt the scripts that, for example, convert between formats for different editing tools.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I've been meaning to get back into recording, but ardour has been putting me off it for years. Perhaps the Ubuntu team will dig out something that doesn't require the user to script stuff to get going. I've been meaning to check out Beast ( http://beast.gtk.org ) but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Anyone got any other good audio apps.
As for the comment I see about no good video editing apps, I've had marvelous success with kino. I did a documentary on a Stop Bush demo when the bastard came to Canberra. It doesn't have as many flashy looking transitions as iMovie ( which is admittedly the only other video editor I've used ), but on the plus side, it doesn't have horrible cut & paste bugs and crashes and other bullshit that iMovie has.
I don't think it'd be hard to roll DeMuDi or Dyne:bolic into an ubuntu-themed & flavored distro. Both of those are working systems, if not yet sporting the famous Ubuntian ease-of-use.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Why not just build packages than can be installed to the main Ubuntu distro(s) already out there?
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Res publica non dominetur
They might have done some advancements in various aspects such as easy installing and various hardware detection (not that they are the first) but there are no elements yet to build such a project. Maybe a studio for the masses for basic photo editing but no way for professional stuff. I'll be happy at least to be able to edit or compress the mjpeg's from the digital camera in avidemux on ubuntu out of the box. Any improvement matters, good luck. Len
Your advertisement for Photoshop belongs elsewhere.
If this is your only specific complaint, I can quite easily dismiss you by saying that a great many paid professionals don't want or need to handle "56 GB" images.
What theoretical "guys" use is irrelevent.
Everything is still in development, so that list will change. Besides, you aren't even constructively criticising, you're just bitching and whining that proprietary apps are (magically?) better.
You are, and it still is.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Linux audio is maturing at a rapid pace. Where at one point I considered it not mature enough for studio use, this is rapidly changing. With Ingo Molnar & co's low latency patches being integral part as of kernel 2.6.18, the hard part is taken care of.
The rest is a matter of finding the right audio and music software. Here's a list of the software that I've actually used personally and that I consider the best of breed audio and music software for Linux. You will find these packages to fulfill most any audio need you might have. If you are going to get started on Linux audio for the first time, check these out before anything else.
Transport:
JACK audio connection kit: supported by almost all linux audio software.
Allows routing audio between jack-enabled applications. Use with qjackctl.
Mixing:
Ardour: Multi track Digital Audio Workstation. Very complete and definitely very usable. Main downside: Not all mixing parameters can be MIDI-controlled by an external mixer (yet), this is currently my main obstacle to integrating my mixer into my linux audio chain.
Audio editing:
Rezound: A decent wave editor. Feature rich, although not very suitable for multi-track work.
Audacity: Another good wave editor.
mhwaveedit: A small wave editor, which, although a bit limited, I've found very reliable for recording jack streams.
Gnu Wave Cleaner: To remove noise, pops and crackle from recordings. Works well, but unfortunately is rather unstable. Make a backup of your audio before denoising it.
Soft synths:
ZynAddSubFX: A very nice virtual analog synth
fluidsynth: Sample-based synth, use with qsynth or (better) java-based fluidgui
LinuxSampler: More powerful sampler than fluidsynth, albeit with higher latency
Aeolus: A virtual pipe organ. Believable to the untrained ear.
Composition:
soundtracker: IT-tracker style music editor
hydrogen: A drum machine (or more accurately, a drum sequencer).
Rosegarden: A MIDI sequencer. Use in combination with one of the above soft synths. I've experienced some trouble combining both MIDI and audio inside the same project.
Real-time processing:
LADSPA plugins: Effect processing for almost any purpose. Most prominently absent is a good pitch corrector/auto tune.
freqtweak: Create all kinds of interesting effects by tweaking parameters in the frequency domain.
Jack-rack: Process incoming JACK audio in realtime.
Other:
amidi: Command line utility to dump incoming MIDI traffic and send MIDI traffic.
Very useful for MIDI diagnostics
hd24tools: A jack-enabled suite that allows playing disks recorded on Alesis HD24 recorder.
Main things I feel are still lacking:
- Replacing audio peaks by drums: I've written a small tool, drumreplacer, which does this for a single audio channel. However it is rather limited and uses a lot of CPU. Still a far cry from the capabilities of drumagog.
- Auto tune
- A tool to 'unwobble' wobbly drum tracks in real time
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I think that this flavour of Ubuntu will convert quite a few people that I know if it manages to do what it advertises.
:)
I got quite a few friends who are wow-ed by the latest advancements in the linux desktop enviroment and wanted to convert their workstations to running Ubuntu. The main reason why they're not doing so(most of them are video editors and sound engineers) is the lack of pre-installed tools for audio-visual editing. Having such flavours of Ubuntu will probably make their conversion to Linux easier
You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.
Ok call me a troll if you want, but DON*T TELL ME for fuck sakes that this is for the pro.
You are trolling.
Your complaint seems to be specifically about the GIMP/Photoshop. Fine, many photo professionals use photoshop & won't accept anything else *shrugs*.
However, to conflate all multimedia users with PS users is....stupid.
For instance, users of cinepaint for instance will dismiss photoshop as a "useless toy". They're not correct (its just not the tool for their job) - but neither are you.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
You really don't need to load an entire file in order to edit it (There are some exceptions, of course)... Which is good, because I would hate to load my entire hard drive into RAM, to make any minor changes to it.
You can stick to loading reasonably small segments of it at a time, and in the case of images, only low-res previews of the entire image if/when needed.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
They make Maya for Linux.
There's also XSI and Houdini and few others for linux. Most of the big 3d and composting packages have been ported to linux. I know because I make a living using such programs on linux, as to many others.
Let's see I'm a pro and I use:
3D Studio Max, XSI, Maya, Zbrush, Avid, Fusion, Nuke, Combustion and Photoshop.
Only one platform runs all of those: Windows.
None of those programs are included in this "multimedia pack for professionals". So uhh yeah, my complaint is with the parent... this isn't a professional package at all.
If you use Photoshop day in and day out you would know that Gimp isn't acceptable. And it's not because it doesn't load obscenely large files it's because it's a sub-par application.
Unfortunately, the GP is right about PS vs Gimp. I love the Gimp, use it daily in combination with Inkscape. But when playtime is over and I actually have to produce results, I'm forced to convert it all to Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign so that the printer can handle it.
It is especially the lack of decent support for CMYK in most OSS apps that causes that. And PDF-export in all OSS apps just misses the features that are needed for professional printing, even if CMYK where into place.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
But I'm just not that into Pokemon.
Please talk about image processing techniques when you know some, until then "shush".
XP hahahaha
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Pixar doesn't render their movies on Macs or Windows PCs. Wanna take a wild guess what they use? Same goes for ILM. Linkie. So yeah, take your uninformed opinions and shove them.
I see. Therefore: Anyone else who is a pro MUST be using all the same programs you do. And because you aren't already using free programs, they must not possibly be able to do the same job.
Either you're a complete fool, or just trolling.
Nicely done. No reasoning. No justification. Just the word of God. No matter what, anything named "Gimp" can't do the things programs named "Photoshop" can.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The above summary brings up a question about the pronunciation of Ubuntu. The summary states "an Ubuntu" which would men it's pronounced "oo-bunt-oo" but I've always assumed it was "yoo-bunt-oo".
Or am I just a grammar nazi?
Yes but his point still stands... Renderman and Mentalray also aren't included with this distro. So just because it "exists" doesn't mean it's relevant to Ubuntu Multimedia edition.
I'm going to assume you aren't making a stupid joke. Comparing the two is like comparing Linux and MySQL and suggesing a migration from one to the other is equally stupid.
His point was that Linux was useless to the professional artist. It isn't.
How about "Rusty Russell"?
No but I've used a Tiff file before for the background sound effect of a starship engine. (Which I edited in Photoshop.)
Serious.
I believe there are problems with full CMYK support due to software patents. Sucks, but there's not a lot we can do about it (other than quasi-legal workarounds like Mplayer's win32-codecs.)
What do you mean "decent" cmyk support? Do you mean there is no support or that the support is lacking in some way. If the latter could you be specific.
Always remember that open source only works when YOU contribute and sorry but whining does not count as contributing.
evil is as evil does
What's the point of me installing UbuntuStudio if there's no support for my RT-X100 video editing card? No real-time effects. No hardware encoding. Perhaps no DV grabbing either.
Until hardware suppliers ship Linux drivers (with all the interoperability issues of standardising drives for so many things) its pointless. I'm sticking to Windows for my video editing and music mixing. Linux for everything else though...
There are OSS programs out there with support for CMYK. KOffice (Krita?) comes to mind, but I'm not too sure. In most programs though, support is lacking.
I KNOW that open souce only works when I, and all other users, contribute. Point is: I can only contribute for as far as my knowledge and skills go, not? I'm not a C++-programmer, I'm a webprogrammer and graphic designer. Whenever I can contribute with bug-reports or pieces of code I actually understand, I do it. But that doesn't occur much.
I'm much better at evangelising Open Source. And sorry, but whining about me whining doesn't help the talk one bit.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
its worth a shot - was introduced to linux with the scientific linux distro, whilst not completely horrific it was not the most pleasent experience (still forced to use it) ubuntu however was much better (perhaps because my knowledge about linux had increased a little, "why use ubuntu then!" i hear you cinics say ;)), so yeah, i'll use it.
Look forward to it
No I know people who use: FCP, Shake, Pro Tools, Smoke, Inferno, Gimp (but he admits he only uses it as a hobby, for real work he switches back to XSI), Modo, Mudbox, Cinepaint, Vue, Audition, Zeno and a million other applications large and small. Proprietary and Free. I use hundreds of open source tools. I even have some scripts that I wrote for 3D Studio Max that run off of a MySQL server.
I've tried Gimp. I worked at a start up studio and for a while they were still even in the buying phase and hadn't picked up a copy of Photoshop yet for the modelers. So we all used Gimp. It was obnoxious. I don't hold any sort of dogmatic appreciation for one piece of software over another. I am constantly changing software and hold no allegiance to manufacturer, distribution model or OS. I use Shake on Linux and Mac (the linux version is much much faster, or at least it was before 4.1 and Intel processors, I havne't used that release yet.). I use any tool I can find that does cool stuff and helps me work faster. If Photoshop became "Gibbed" and was released as open source, and Gimp got renamed as "Photoshop" I would migrate to Gibbed. If something really cool was as good or better than photoshop and was Open Source or even just free I would grab it immediately. I just learned Zbrush after several years and now Mudbox is out. After playing with it I want to add it to my toolset as well.
When it comes to editors: There is Avid, Smoke, Premiere/FCP (practically the same application) and Vegas. Vegas is annoying as hell to edit with on anything longer than 10 minutes so that leaves two options. The current offerings in the Open Source market are useless. Although Smoke does run on Linux, so that would be my preferred "Linux Video Editor". Avid/Premiere/FCP is just a matter of preference and platform choice.
So while I don't say what I use are the only options (far from it, and even then I didn't even list all the stuff I use. I'm using premiere right now at work while editing a reel. I've used FCP on projects in the past. I've sat at a smoke station briefly.) I do know what my options are because I've tried just about all of them. I've talked to people who have also tried them. I research products. I read reviews. And this package is not all that useful for a working professional right now in the visual fields. And not just because of small things like when a Nuke compositor is annoyed with Fusion. These are big huge deal breaker problems in just about every single selection.
AFAIK it's completely missing.
The reason for this is because its nigh impossible to add it at this point since the gimp was build with only RGB in mind (AFAIK again)
this is one of the main reasons they are rebuilding the nitty gritty of the gimp from scratch.
the project name is GEGL and currently in a 0.0.6 release.
feature list now on the website contains:
* 8bit, 16bit integer and 32bit floating point, RGB, CIE Lab, YCbCr and naive CMYK output.
* Extendable through plug-ins.
* XML, C and Python interfaces.
* Memory efficient evaluation of subregions.
* Tiled, sparse, pyramidial and larger than RAM buffers.
* Hit detection.
* Rich core set of processing operations
o PNG, JPEG, SVG, EXR, RAW and other image sources.
o Arithmetic operations, porter duff compositing operations, SVG blend modes, other blend modes, apply mask.
o Gaussian blur.
o Basic color correction tools.
o 32bit floating point for intermediate values.
o Text layouting using pango
If this hits a stable release and gets incorrperated in stable gimp, it will probebly wipe away more then half the arguments most 'pro photoshop users' have with the gimp.
Offcourse it wont do away with the 'the ui of the gimp sucks' argument, but as someone who works with the gimp daily for webdesign i can throw that right back at them. imho photoshops ui sucks.
But meh, where talking about people here who can also make statements like "You can't design on a pc, only on a mac"
In the Linux community if you want something to happen, get involved. They've got an irc channel listed there so that you can come in and drop some input. Get an RC and help sort out some of the bugs. Give them a hand. I hate developing when I'm getting paid. I can't imagine how it must be to have a thankless development job.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Tried Scribus ever? Fantastic PDF output, extremely versatile, and supports loads of PDF features, is capable of generating PDF 1.4, PDF/X-3, or pretty much any other profile you can care to mention. Can and has been used for all kinds of professional printing stuff. Also has CMYK, colour management, supports spot colours, and so on...
I don't know what kind of incompetent printers you must be using if they're incapable of printing stuff that wasn't output by Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign.
What's the reason for developing a whole new branch of Ubuntu for a specific purpose? (Such as the EDUbuntu) Why not just have a list of programs that people might want to download. Are there really changes that need to be made at the operating system level for multi-media editing?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Yeah but he wasn't saying Linux is useless for professionals. He was saying this pack didn't include any of the useful tools for professionals that runs on linux:
Shake, Maya, XSI etc...
But I would argue that it was implied. I mean, he's saying how much better Photoshop is than the GIMP. Last I checked, Photoshop was NOT included with Windows. The professional video editing tools for Linux are more robust and mature than the ones for Windows.
The way I see Ubuntu Studio is that it's a collection of the finest open source artist's tools compiled into one package, on a Linux OS. If you want to install some third party software, like Maya or Renderman, you are perfectly free to do so. Just as you are with Windows.
Depends on what you define as whining.
The problem I've had with just about every single large Open Source project is it requires me to contribute. I don't want to contribute to it, I want to use it. If I had time to contribute I would be a software developer not an artist. This is why projects like Apache do very well in an Open Source environment. People who use it, contribute to it and make it better, because using it is improving it.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266678
I don't know if anyone will find that interesting. The votes are basically deadlocked between CD and DVD... Turning point in the format wars?
Photoshop desperately needs some competition to force them to rethink their UI. CS3 is different, I haven't had time to look at it yet, but hopefully it's brand spanking new.
And for christ's sake how about CTRL + DRAG brush resizing... they're only the last major paint application to not implement it: Painter, Combustion etc...
P.S. as of the last update of Gimp I used, you couldn't resize brushes, you had to create a new brush at a different size. That = Garbage Bin alone. It might have changed by now.
int main() { while(1) fork(); }
Last time I checked, XP couldn't allocate more than 2 GB to a process.
And yet, we work with >2GB video files without problems. If you have a 56GB bmp image or something like that, there's nothing wrong with being able to edit that taking whatever is in your viewport into memory. I'm not saying it'd be easy, pretty or even useful, but it's certainly possible. But if that's the best FUD they can come up with, GIMP has come a long way in any case...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The only mature video editing tools for Linux are Smoke and Fire both are in the high 5 to low 6 digit price range. And both were only ported to Linux several years ago. If you want 'robust and mature' you want Avid, it was one of the first and it's still imo the best for the money. It does not, however, run on Linux.
The open source offerings are barely competing with Windows Movie Maker and iMovie.
I have recently spent a lot of time researching network-transparent audio transport applications so that I can, for example, walk around my apartment with a wireless Linux laptop while it is outputting sound to big speakers in the room (over wifi to a Linux media server connected to an audio receiver).
I have come across JACK and a dozens other apps, but it seems that PulseAudio is by far the most advanced and the cleanest implementation out there. It is multi-platform, it comes with dozens of plugins (alsa, oss, esound, etc) for max compatibility with existings apps, it is a clean architecture, etc. I haven't taken the time to test it yet, but it seems very promising. Has anyone here had previous experience with PulseAudio ?
It all depends on which pro. Sure all advertising professionals will prefer Photoshop to Gimp, but what if you're an experimental artist working with computerised visualisations? Then you'll probably appreciate Gimp's superior scriptability. Or more likely, you'd use something like Pure Data, which is about as far as you can come from Adobe's CS suite in usability and slickness. Some professionals use power tools, and know their tools well. Power tools are crude.
That's only three months from now. I can already see it being "almost done" at that time, and of course it's such a good PR doohickey that they'll push back Feisty two months rather than wait for Feisty+1. And then the integration will still be half-assed. Save it for 7.10 and do a killer job, guys.
A heavyweight like Gnome2 is not what I'd be running for any high-end task. Why can't they provide an option for fluxbox, avoiding GConf, Gstreamer and all the other Gnome baggage? libXML, Pango, GTK and even libGnomePrint are fine, brain-death like GConf and GStreamer are to be avoided at whatever cost. Gnome 1.x used to be my desktop of choice, Gnome 2 is the festering abomination that the mono crowd are circling like vultures.
Remember kids, just say no to Gnome, there are healthier ways to get fluxxed-up.
"Let's see I'm a pro and I use:
:) It is a reasonable replacement for many professional users and we do get people who are migrating from those various packages (although more are coming from Lightwave, Cinema 4D, Truespace, and other lower end packages) As a professional 3D artist you will find Blenders mesh modeling tools fairly comparable for SubD modeling; sculpting tools fairly comparable to zbrush (although with tradeoffs and limitations - we have native retopology currently but lack masking capabilites so you can only hide mesh); uv unwrapping that is superior to all of those listed; node based texturing is fairly comparable - it lacks certain shaders specifically a SSS shader. But given the list of software it sounds more like it will tend to be work that Blenders internal renderer is suited for (really it depends on a case by case basis). Its node based compositing and non linear editing (sequencing) are quite good - but not likely to knock any of the top end software out currently. While I don't expect current users of other major 3D packages to migrate to Blender as a replacement for their existing software (why go elsewhere when they already have a pipeline that meets their needs). Blender is already quite well suited for many professionals needs and is already in heavy usage by a number of small and mid sized studios for commercial 3D work (print and video advertising, architectural rendering, scientific visualization, feature animations, etc). It also is being used in some major studios unfortunately most are requiring NDAs about software used in their pipeline although we are seeking permission to do interviews with some artists on major projects that it has been revealed that Blender was used for.
3D Studio Max, XSI, Maya, Zbrush, Avid, Fusion, Nuke, Combustion and Photoshop.
Only one platform runs all of those: Windows.
None of those programs are included in this "multimedia pack for professionals". So uhh yeah, my complaint is with the parent... this isn't a professional package at all."
You clearly haven't tried the latest version of Blender
Of course Blender isn't suited for all 3D animation tasks currently - I'd recommend against it for photoreal rendering involving animation of people; and against if for special effects work involving smoke and flame (ie volumetric rendering) and certain complex particle effects.
However that is a subset of all animation work - and those can and ofter are handled with specially dedicated software.
Just because a set of software that meets your professional needs isn't provided, doesn't mean that the professional requirements of others aren't being met.
LetterRip
XSI (SoftImage) sells a version for Linux.
You make yourself a new brush and assign context-brush-radius-increase and decrease actions to the scroll wheel. Working that way, I find I can resize without thinking.
The whole argument seems silly to me. I started out using Deluxe Paint on the Amiga, and have used dozens of different image editors over the years. I've used Photoshop since version 3, and I'm as comfortable with PS as with the Gimp - they're both just tools for getting a job done.
Being professional doesn't mean being precious. Gimp is easily one of the most capable of the current crop of image editors, and it's free. You can carry a copy on a USB stick and use it anywhere. Why wouldn't you learn to use it?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Those who keep up with their news know that 2.4 will do color management. Color spaces are a seperate issue, don't lumpo them together.
Videos are streamed when your opening them. The entire video doesnt need to be in ram at one time.
With graphics its technically possible but it would be one nasty hack.
Slow too.
You left out Jokosher. It's still less than a year old, but it's probably already one of the best, and it's only going to get better. Jono Bacon (the guy who started the project) is an employee of Canonical, and I'm pretty sure Jokosher is one of the applications open in that screenshot on the Ubuntu Studio website, so you can expect it to be one of the "killer apps" in Ubuntu Studio.
I've been trying out 64Studio v1.0 over the last couple of months. Debian-based, with a core set of audio apps that fit on a single CD, and JACK to glue them all together. Ardour and Rosegarden work well, and it wasn't hard to get my USB audio & MIDI gear working with standard modules. Includes some decent graphics / video programs too, Blender3D, CinePaint & more. If I have one wish, though, it's for more synthesisers in the base package, and even a general-purpose sampler. (QSampler only supports GigaSampler files so far, not building your own sample sets, as supplied.)
(this is not a
You havent considered that this could be the push needed to get some truely professional and open replacements?
AFAIK Scribus has excelent PDF export. I also wonder why every time professional graphics editing is discussed everyone jumps on the CMYK gun as if web, games and TV don't have graphics.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
There was Maya for Linux. Not sure what happened to it.
I'm pretty sure the Linux renderer still exists because thats what all the 3d movies are rendered with.
Windows Movie Maker and iMovie do clusters & HD video? Cinelerra does...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Most (if not all) printers in the Netherlands are requiring one of the following formats for decent output: CMYK-JPEG, EPS, PDF, PSD, AI. Even InDesign is badly supported overall. I have not yet met a printer who actually knew about PNG and SVG.
The guys at the printshops all use Macs with Photoshop and Illustrator. Anything else that comes their way is "unprofessional", "not adhering to standards in the branche" and "unprocessable". So a print-ready file is one made up in Illustrator, using CMYK, with all text converted to pad (or else their Mac-version will screw it up). Don't dare to insert one single RGB JPEG, or else they'll return it immediately.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
While i cant comment on the 2d grapic scene, and you may be correct that GIMP dies on large files, i dont agree about the 3d world.
Ever hear of Blender? In the old days it was a commecial product, so to speak ( ok, it wasnt for sale as it was in house, but is the same idea ). Since then it has only grown in ablity. Sure, it takes some getting used to, ( like any 3d package does ) but it is as capable as most anything else out there is you want to try.
But then again, you are out just to bash things and wont even listen to reason.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Oh my god. To those people that keep saying gimp is better than photoshop, its so damn annoying. Its like saying my dicks bigger than yours. It doesn't matter. If you do stuff that is with small files and doesn't need color correction why blow your money on photoshop, just use gimp. Premiere vs final cut, once again, its what your doing. So don't be so quick with judgement. But this distro does have potential. If they can get basic DV capability this could be a cheap suite that blows movie maker out of the water. Just gonna have to wait and see.
I do want to add some constructive comments about GIMP, although this is not a GIMP forum. It does need a lot of refinement to remove a lot of its annoyance. to start with it has a annoying resource usage. and this is what i mean, it loads, then it works then it loads. its like when your a newbie driving a car, speed, stop speed, stop.. its really annoying. Photoshop its like DAMMIT LOAD UP!!! LOAD UP!!!! and i mean once its loaded, it doesn't break as much its smooth between the task.
my point is once single delay fell less stressing that many small breaks. its emotional, firefox had the same problem in the older version, when you think you have something it shows half and your just pissed cuz you have to wait. where as the new ie and firefox 2.0 it loads the whole bulk and dump it it. its not really much faster, its emotional.
Most of the Opensource software need to understand what is the underlying emotional stress. Paid software holds study groups to study how end users uses the software, or tries to use the software then add the feature. to make it flow the way a end user expects it. (some call this UI Ergonomy )
Linux has LUG chapters all around the world, it should be easy to collect survey data. every now and then there are newbie linux users that shows up. We just need a marketing savy leader to create some sort of check point per software. collect the data and cruch it.
Yes, iMovie does HD ;-)
It's a nice step forward.
127.0.0.1
There still is. It's released at the same time/version as the windows/mac.
but I'm still waiting for support for my Sound Blaster XFi :(
The key word here is "render."
You hit the nail with that one. I *am* a programmer. I like open source software and I appreciate the OS community/karma. However some (most of the OSS ?) programmers have this weird notion that you can not say their program is ugly or bad or does not work for X or Y or Z. Any kind of criticism (good or bad) will be answered with "why dont you make your own software" or "so what it is free" or even... "fuck off".
That state of the issues is very sad. You might think it is a problem of the open source community but, just one or two days ago there was a story running on slashdot asking "why are IT people always jerks"?.
Of course not all of them are like that... but there is a high concentration of jerks doing Open Source.
I could understand why *you* would not like to contribute with those kind of projects which to be sincere *really* need some help of UI designers and alike. Same thing with games... no graphic designer wants to "contribute" to the open source community (or it is very hard) but I am afraid it is because of the arrogance of developers.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
> Gimp (but he admits he only uses it as a hobby, for real work he switches back to XSI)
Are you confusing GIMP and Blender or PS and XSI here?
As a long time Gimp user, Photoshop annoys the hell out of me, I actually prefer the Gimp interface. How is Blender's sculpt mode shaping up against zbrush*, silo2 and mudbox?
* Nobody who invested the time to learn zb can complain about the Gimp interface!
That'll be a version to remember...
That is why there are hundreds of linux distros.
Since there is no money involved, it's all about the satisfaction you get. And it's much more satifying to have your own project, rather than contributing to somebody else's project.
So every snot-nosed kid does some somthing like: throw every multi-media app they can find on an established linux distro, then they have their own new "multi-media" distro. Or throw every security related app they can find on another distro, and then they have a special "security" distro. And here on slashdot, everybody makes a big fuss over it, like it's something revolutionary.
IMHO: throwing apps on another distro does not justify yet another linux distro. Also, IMHO, apps that work on any version of linux, are not special features. But, in the insane linux distro land, that is what most distros are all about. Look at the "feature" list of most distros to find "OpenOffice" or whatever.
That is why I use debian. 180mb network download, then only download what you want. Make it a super-stable server, or a bleeding edge desktop, or a multi-media whatever. And you need only download and install it once. Use whatever WM/DE you want, or don't use any, debian doesn't case. You don't have a different *buntu distro for a different distro.
All JMHO.
To anyone who can't be bothered reading the 4 paragraphs, here's a summary: opensource is useless for the working professional right now in the visual field.
Why? -- Doesn't say.
Wish I had mod points, most informative post I've seen in a while.
I wish i could say I was excited with this. Unfortunately, it's probably another project put together by individuals who don't 'get it'. Simply including Audacity & video editing software into a distribution doesn't make it multi-media centric. You have to include packages to make use of specialized AV hardware which currently don't exist.
Currently I run a 24 track based home studio and would love to convert it completely to linux. Alas though, until drivers are created for Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU - http://www.motu.com) hardware this distro is just more chaff waiting to be swept up and forgotten.
Has anybody tested out Wired? I never got around to installing it myself, but it looks promising as well. Just wondering since it does not seem to be mentioned here at all...
It's no coincidence I mentioned those two side by side. Rendering effects for HD can get really slow.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Although it may be exactly what I'm looking for in order to move away from Windows, I just can't read Autodesk's marketing crap. It's just too stomach wrenching fluffy. Even when I try, it doesn't really say anything. They don't even show you a demo - you have to ask for a salesperson.
It appears that this product is pitched towards larger commercial settings or is in early beta so you can't actually see anything (don't look behind that curtain please). Oh, and pricing - if you have to ask how much it costs, you apparently don't need it. At any rate, this product seems to be pitched in the opposite direction of everything else here - closed, expensive and tied to hardware.
Oh well, I don't like Autodesk much anyway.
As an aside, there have been a number of threads on Digital Photography Reviews to the effect that if Linux DOES manage a digital photography workflow that even gets close to Windows or Apple (read something better than GIMP and some reasonable RAW file viewer) along with decent color profiling, then there would be a significant Linux adoption. It may get there in a few years....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Hot and psychopathic dissociative identity disorder to boot...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Since when is "what I personally use" the definitive list of "programs that are professional"?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
this isn't a professional package at all.
If you're saying that because professionals don't use it, I'm wondering what kind of logic you are using because it doesn't exist yet.
Secondly, if you are reasoning "I'm a professional, and I don't use this software, therefore if someone uses this software, they aren't a professional," then I would also be rather skeptical of that line of thinking. Being a professional usually has to do with whether or not you are generating income, and I doubt that no one has ever profited from the use of the software that is going to be included.
All community attempts to create drivers have been snubbed by MOTU, any problem here is purely with your hardware vendor!
Unless they send copies of the distro to the producers of the hardware, and show them that there is an OS tailor made for their hardware and their customers, just waiting for them to make the drivers. In other words, Ubuntu may be trying to offer up a chicken to get the hardware manufacturers egg.
At first I thought it said "Tasty Fawn"
Let's see, we're talking about two groups of people here:
And you're saying group number one are the jerks? Your ideas are intriguing, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Meanwhile, here's a hint to group number two: try showing some contents out of your wallet to the applicable group one member(s) if you don't like how their software works. I bet the chances of it getting fixed will instantly go up a thousand fold.
Most media apps have decent F/OSS representation, save one: CAD. There is no good F/OSS CAD package. Blender is o.k. for doing certain types of 3d stuff, but that's not what I'm talking about; I'm talking about production level engineering/architectural drafting. This is the only reason I still keep a copy of Windows handy - there is an adequate if not excellent application for every other significant task out there, save CAD.
I'm glad Ubuntu is doing this, although I'm not sure why this isn't just a meta-package of some sort, but sadly this will do nothing to fix the achille's heel of F/OSS apps.
Did you happen to see monster house? I watched the extras from the DVD the other day. They are using Blender. If a major motion picture, with a highly sophisticated 3d and person effects uses it, why isnt it good enough for us?
They used a cool trick too, they made the camera seem more realistic by using a hand held camera device to aim the camera that was viewing the rendered screens, making it seem more like a real director.
As an aside, there have been a number of threads on Digital Photography Reviews to the effect that if Linux DOES manage a digital photography workflow that even gets close to Windows or Apple (read something better than GIMP and some reasonable RAW file viewer)
Ah, so now I know to avoid the idiots at DPR then. I'll say it again: RAW IS NOT A FRICKIN FORMAT! It's the device-specific barf straight from your camera/scanner/whatever, and requires the hardware maker's direct support to do anything with it. RAW is the devil.
I have never seen a more rude, impolite, asshole group then people who steal photoshop and then bitch at gimp users because it's not photoshop. They are truly the worst scum of the planet and I can certainly emphasize with any programmer who wants to choke them to death.
A while back they had a logo contest and one entry was "it's free so quit your bitching". I wish they would have adopted that.
Anyway there is no way a bunch of programmers who give you free software can be compared to photoshop users. One are angels, the other scum.
evil is as evil does
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
All I really want is a simple video editor for making anime music videos, and for this, I currently have to boot Windows to use Premiere.
you can run most vst's very nicely in linux http://ladspavst.linuxaudio.org/
tasty electronic music vittles
This looks great! Maybe I can finally ditch Final Cut Pro. I guess, like other distros, they'll keep the questionable codecs behind the counter.
There's no place like ~.
What? Imageworks didnt use Blender for Monster House. Imageworks doenst use Blender for ANYTHING. I worked on the movie for over a year. The commercial apps used were: Diva -> MotionBuilder -> Maya -> mArny Arnold pluging / Arnold renderer -> Bonsai (proprietary compositing) No Blender. As far as I know, Blender hasnt been used on ANY feature films. I have tried it out, and it's certainly educational to have an open source 3d app, but comparing it with XSI, Maya, and other commercial products simply isnt viable.
Windows wont let a process allocate more than 2 gig.
(Not sure about specifics but I'm pretty sure there is no way around it. Doesnt affect other OSs)
Wanna know the primary reason why Pixar, ILM, Imageworks, Weta, etc use linux renderfarms? It's free and it was the most logical platform jump for all of the shops that started out with SGIs running irix. Not to mention all the other apps we rely on are either commercial or proprietary and supported by a significantly large team of engineers. Any open source stuff anyone uses is at the OS or utility level. We use gimp for quick and stupid stuff (like maya shelf icons), or launch Photoshop w/ emulation. Anyone doing serious paint work uses Photoshop on OSX. Anyone doing serious editing work uses Avid on windows or Final Cut Pro on OSX. It's not that linux is useless, it isnt. But alot of those open source 3d, editing, paint, audio apps are well, pretty much useless to the 'Pro'.
My experience has been the same but just in case you haven't heard of it; MainActor for Linux is quite Premiere-like and costs much less.
From their site:
pure:dyne has been created to provide a complete and ready made environment for artists and developers who are looking for a free operating system dedicated to realtime audio and video processing.
pure:dyne is a GNU/Linux live distribution based on the new dyne:II core. You don't need to install anything, pure:dyne is running from the CD itself. It can directly boot from virtually any PC machine, or Intel Mac, and the optional hard-drive or USB-key installation is just a matter of copying one folder.
This particular live cd brings you the latest exotic FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open-Source Software - read more) such as Supercollider, Icecast, Csound, Packet Forth, Fluxus and much much more, including of course Pure Data and a great collection of essential externals and abstractions (PDP, PiDiP, Gem, GridFlow, RRadical, PixelTango
I've always prefered a command line interface. GUIs are such a cursory way to interact with a computer.
I'm an interaction designer and would love to contribute to the UI design of a couple of OSS apps. The problem is, most of these projects seem to have this notion that graphic design is *pretty-looking pixmaps* when, of course, that's pretty much the last thing a competent designer would care about when designing an interface. Devs seem to think that interaction design is purely a dev job, when collaboration and communication are what's really needed.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Wow do I look stupid. Your right. I was thinking about the O'Reilly Python book that you can clearly see sitting in the frame during the discussion of the animation. The interface looked surprisingly familiar, Blender. A search of Blender and Monster House gave results, but it was do to Elephants Dream. I wasn't paying attention and associated the two. Ah well, thanks for clearing that up.
Hahah whoops. Yep I meant Blender.
> How is Blender's sculpt mode shaping up against zbrush*, silo2 and mudbox?
It's not. Because it's not designed to handle hundreds of millions of polygons. It would probably require a full rewrite to function effectively. This is the same problem Maya, Max and XSI have. (Although there is a plugin for Max which sort of implements a semi functional version (Polyspeed)).
As a joke a friend and I used it on Spiderman 3. But not for anything useful, just to say we did. We just created a plane and exported it as an OBJ. Although I'm not sure if we ended up using that plane...
Over the past 6 years or so, I've used Cinelerra (and its predecessor, Broadcast 2000) to create around a dozen videos, mostly consisting of pan/zoom stills (up to 800 in a single video) with fade transitions and multiple sound tracks. Final product runtimes have ranged from 15 minutes to 2 hours. I know what you're talking about regarding the stability, but I've had few problems in that area with the community version. I've built it several times over the last year or so (mostly on Kubuntu, but previously on Mandriva also) with no build problems and only the occasional runtime crash.
I've mixed captured video with stills, using around 100 video tracks and 4 audio tracks, applying various video effects, with little difficulty. The various keyframe controls (fades, camera, projector, effects, etc.) take a little getting used to, and until recently, the documentation was quite lacking. But the documentation seems to have improved significantly over the past year, and once you get the feel for the controls, they seem easy enough to work with for me.
I've found the render farm capability easy to work with and a real time-saver (using the 4 PCs in our house).
I'm not a professional video editor, just an enthusiast/hobbiest, so I don't have any comparison experience with other, proprietary apps. But I do know that it works fine for me, and I appreciate the fact that it works with an XML EDL file format, which has allowed me to write a few scripts to pre-build project files to save myself many hours of otherwise manual layout.
I hope this small bit of information encourages you to try the community version. And I hope you experience the same results as I. As I said, I have no comparative experience with other apps, but for me, Cinelerra works great.
Open Source: I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
>As a professional 3D artist you will find Blenders mesh modeling tools fairly comparable for SubD modeling.
Maybe with Maya's, but Maya's imo are pretty poor and all of the main apps now have inexpensive plug-ins to add Modo level functionality.
>sculpting tools fairly comparable to zbrush (although with tradeoffs and limitations - we have native retopology currently but lack masking capabilites so you can only hide mesh).
But the engine wasn't designed to handle millions upon millions of polygons in real time, so if it's hampered by interaction it's not going to catch on. This is the problem Maya, max and XSI face with their sculpting tools. Fine for quick tweaks, but not for a dedicated sculpting app. Interaction is almost Feature #1 on a digital sculpting app.
>uv unwrapping that is superior to all of those listed.
Actually it uses the same algorithm as Max's PeltMapper. Also Maya and XSI have implementations now. Plus Gator is pretty freaking cool for low poly stuff.
>node based texturing is fairly comparable - it lacks certain shaders specifically a SSS shader.
But it lacks a good DX shader creation system.
When your rates are > than $100 an hour, it doesn't take much time saving to pay off a new application every 18 months. That's the problem Blender is facing. It's doing quite well. It's easily comparable to the best 3d application a few years ago, but "fairly good", "Almost as fast" and "reasonable" aren't adjectives when the clock is running. That's why studios will buy both Mudbox and Zbrush. The only software that usually gets used isn't software that's "Almost as good as A" it's software that's the best for that task. And there is nothing that Blender does best. It's in a game of catch-up and I feel like it's investing too much time into the frivolous externalities like liquid sim, that aren't going to convince people to pick it up in their pipeline. Look at Modo. It offered the best modelling tools and it exploded onto the scene, because it had something to offer. I can't think of a single thing which makes me want to add Blender to my pipeline over something I already have.
Once Blender has a trojan feature to worm its way into the pipelines it'll get the attention it needs across the board to be really really competitive.
I would start with just blatantly ripping off all of the neat Silo/Modo features for modelling. Then hit the animation side in full force, get those tools up to snuff, then rendering and finally start adding dynamics and "fun" features.
Why in that order? Because models are easily transferable inbetween apps. Pipelines are modeler agnostic right now. You could model in ASCII and most pipelines wouldn't care. If blender just showed up one day with the most powerful modelling package, it would be adopted left and right. And it would give people a chance to explore the other features while they're there.
Except we are not automatically talking about "goodness of their hearts" just because there's no money involved. 'No monetary compensation' is not necessarily the same as 'no compensation at all', either.
(Rant mode: on)
I've seen plenty of people involved who answer all criticism with "It's free, don't like it, shut up!", etc. In most cases, there are costs attached, often hidden costs that the coder is reluctant to have dragged out into the open and called what they are.
I knew a graphic designer/programmer once who did 23 skins in a package, all in blue shades, and answered all requests for something in green, gray, red, etc. with a lot of foul language and calling people stupid for asking for other colors because he liked blue. JERK!
(If he'd just said "I just felt like doing those, and don't want to do more.", I'd defend him. If he'd added "But you can adapt them if you want.", I'd praise him for doing it out of the goodness of his heart, as you put it. He didn't, and it wasn't.)
Then there's the freeware program author who used "RTFM!" a lot, but refused to include the manual in distributions in any language except Klingon (I kid you not). JERK!
(To be fair, he warned people on his website, so he wasn't as big a jerk as some, but still, this was such an arbitrary condition that he was wasting a lot of people's time, and that's not free.)
There's a programmer who finished out someone else's free project after the originator died in a car crash, but decided he'd done as much work as the dead guy so he should be allowed to distribute it without the originator's name attached. Then he left in the dead guy's contact info without explaining it, so the deceased's parents got lots of complaints directed to their son. JERK!
There's the guy who wrote a graphic painting program, and didn't use 8 bit color, didn't use 16 bit, etc, he used 32 bit alphablended color, on a Windows 95/98 based program! Insead of RGB, you had to input in GR(alphablendvalue)B order, in hex (except for a very few inputs that were decimal instead). X co-ord's started at 0, y co-ords started at 1! A young woman who asked him why he was supporting alpha in a windows environment that just plain didn't drew a public threat of rape from this JERK!, one which eventually resulted in him doing a little time. (Saying "Why don't I cornhole you until you shut the F*** up about things that are over your head." to a minor is not justifiable just because you aren't charging for your program. It's not justifiable to an adult either, but here it was egregious enough to be actionable and not just foul.).
So here's a hint to group number one. The only time it's an issue of fairness is when someone likes your program, and derives some benefits from using it. Then you deserve gratitude. If you have asked for something reasonable, in advance of your possibly wasting people's time, you deserve that. If you asked for something reasonable in return (and thus not truely free), but you didn't mention it until after the deal was consumated, you are doing the same thing as a typical commercial EULA, and 'free' doesn't make that kind of unfairness fair, whether you are asking for a little thing like a postcard, or a nice thing like not using the software to support warfare, or whatever. Even if I admire you're asking for so little for a good program, you still should put your cards on the table, and not try to get past the download and maybe the install stage before you mention that 'little' condition.
Even worse, there are things that don't actually cost money, but are near priceless. Freeware authors can claim that 'free' means they are not responsible for personal data they acquire on their web site, and even put it in a EULA, but the law is quite clear on what happens if you take and release people's SSNs or collect certain data fr
Who is John Cabal?
I just want to congratulate the team who took over and pushed through with the vision I once had.
I'm happy back on debian, but this is a good milestone that I am happy they [will eventually] have reached.
They sure do still make Maya for linux.
"They" are just Autodesk now, instead of Alias or SGI.
Yes some of the softwares listed above are only available for Windows -
does every 3D professional need to use Maya, XSI and Max
of those only max is not available on Linux... Maya and XSI are natively supported.
Both Fusion and Nuke do run natively under linux. Combustion is not supported but
its brother smoke is. Shake is available under Linux but not Windows (due to very
dubious involvement from Apple)... which leaves Avid in your list of compositors...
Zbrush is a bit of a sticky one... Mudbox is available for Linux but not yet
commercially. They have the code it is just pending demand. Lets hope that happens soon.
And that leaves Photoshop ahhh photoshop. Adobe is probably the biggest thing keeping
Media professionals from Linux. Disney and ILM get around the problem using Crossover
Office. Its not as fun as having a native copy given but it does work.
How much professional media goodness does Windows give you out of the Box...
windows paint, the movie editor & windows media player...
You have to buy all those apps and it will put you back many many thousands of dollars.
Unless you are the sort of person who steals other peoples work to make money for yourself - and
you are not one of those sorts of people are you?
So what will Ubuntu Studio realistically give you....
It will give you a
reasonable image editor the Gimp (its somewhere between photoshop and MS Paint)...
a reasonable illustration program (Inkscape)
A not completely horrible DTP app that people are using to make actual books (scribus)
A rapidly improving somewhat difficult to learn 3d package that people are using to make actual short films (blender)
A Powerful if somewhat tempermental video editor (Cinelerra)
A powerful DAW digital audio workstation
A reasonable Midi editing environment
With any luck all of these should be configured and ready to go out of the box. (particularly the audio/video stuff
which is a PITA to set up). If you are already married to Adobe et al I can't see this being a step up in the world.
But it might be just the thing to put on that spare box you happen to have floating around.
Linux is an excellent platform for multimedia artists.
Ubuntu Media Center Edition... isn't a positive or a negative force for visual content creators.
I'm not married to Windows. But I don't hold anything against it either. Since it runs effectively everything except for shake, I don't see a reason to switch.
Personally running linux is like shooting myself in the foot because it only limits my options. If I was working right now at a Nuke, Fusion or Shake studio, I would be perfectly content to work in a linux environment, or an Apple environment depending on what I was doing. But bundling Gimp, Blender and Jahshaka isn't adding any value to the deal. It's bundling applications I won't be using, and for the most part aren't ready for production. (Have you tried using JahShaka?)
Therefore I agree with the OP. It's bloatware. I would much rather see a "Linux Nuke Edition" that boots straight into Nuke and has nothing except Nuke, Firefox and a few other tools. Frees up the rest of the memory and just streamlines the whole thing to run super fast. That is something I would be interested in. They could call it Nubunkeu.
I don't expect bundled software with my OS. In fact I frown upon it. I'll choose what I think is the best tool for the job. In this case. I don't find any of the bundled tools as the best offering, so they're just bogging down the system.
Everyone jumped on the OP and attacked him for saying "Linux isn't fit for multimedia production" but none of them stopped to read the post and make sure he actually said that. Which he didn't.
I've made money off work that has passed through MS Paint. Does that make it a professional image editing tool?
I too am a pro, the difference being that I'm an audio pro, and I use Logic Audio and pro Tools on a MAC, plus Sound Forge on a Wintel PC - with all the data being backed up/stored on a couple of Linux servers.
I would love there to be something equivalent to these tools in Linux so I look forward to seeing what this new distro can achieve.
And before I get the usual replies then let me say no, Rosegarden, Audacity, Ardour etc. are not equivalent to the aforementioned tools. They're a really good start but they don't come remotely close in terms of integrated features and ease of use. This isn't a criticism of the developers it's just a fact that currently the commercial tools are better developed - undoubtedly due to having more full time resources.
I look forward to seeing what Ubuntu Studio turns into.
We keep reading how users are important to a project - how bug reports and feature requests can help improve things. This is part of the Open Source mantra.
:(
And yet many projects abuse people who provide just these things. Anything a developer doesn't understand or feels threatened by results in abuse at the user. It doesn't take long before users stop contributing these ideas at all, which is then the death knell for a project's long term usefullness.
It's like watching the Gnome and KDE guys go off at people suggesting UI changes... Just because it looks pretty doesn't mean it works well. Eye candy is nothing without a consistent user journey, and yet this is where I see most of the focus going
Rendering is just the number crunching that goes on AFTER all the real creative work is done. You can do number crunching on anything you like, and the only things that matter are reliability, support for your applications and speed.
When you're in the actual design phase, most people would use something significantly slower if it meant a better interface or a better way of letting them do stuff. There aren't a lot of multimedia apps for Linux that are friendlier to their users than the competing apps on other platforms, and so people stay on other platforms.
I'm personally more intrigued by the idea of an Ubuntu version meant specifically for developers. Give me the normal Ubuntu system (sans useless desktop things like games, media players, etc.), add on a nice IDE maybe, throw in build-essential and the relevant sections of the UNIX manual, and I'd probably make a mess of myself in anticipation.
;-)
Currently, I make these modifications myself after a fresh install at every new release. I'm really just asking Canonical to make my life even easier.
http://www.openusability.org/ ??
I had to go into some configuration files in order disable ipv6 and to get networking up on my box, among other little things. rhel doesn't suffer from this problem and it would be nice to see a ubuntu disribution having everything work out of the box.
You're quite right - not only is it possible to load things in as-needed, it's not even particularly hard.
/. comments on the Gimp bear no resemblance to reality at all.
It's amazing how many
The Gimp has had support for enormous images for a long time through the use of tiling.
I have The Gimp open right now editing a 3 gigabyte image, and it works fine... and it's using 200MB of ram to do it!
Well, ok, it's a little slow, but nothing a few hundred dollars in RAM couldn't fix. I'm sure it could be improved, but this thread is just hilarious. Far from being impossible, in fact, the Gimp already has this "one nasty hack" and has had it for a while.
And as for the XP comment... Your average Linux system can't allocate more than 2-3GB of ram to a process, either (depending on configuration). This isn't an OS limitation - a 32-bit processor only has 4GB of address space to use. And yet, somehow, many programs, including for example The Gimp can open and manipulate images much larger than this!
No, it's duck season...rabbit season...duck season...rabbit season...rabbit season...duck season.
Dyna:bolic under Ubuntu base will do fine for studio. No need to pull the fussy hair over all this. (Fly like a sly raven)
The key word here is "render."
Not so. Pixar uses Red Hat on many of their artists' desktops as well. They'll use a non-Linux operating system when an artist needs a particular Windows or MacOS tool, but they use Linux everywhere else (Maya, in-house tools, etc.). And the bulk of their pipeline (rigging, layout, lighting, rendering, simulation) consists of in-house tools. (At least, this is my understanding from talking to someone who works there.)
I'd love a different job, but I don't want to work fast food, and until I graduate I'm stuck supporting some code that was written before I was born that's pretty much devoid of comments
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage