This is the same guy that gave key note speeches at various trade shows and symposiums about how machines will soon be smarter than people and will take over the world and kill all of us. He is a lunatic and should be regarded as such. He is clearly reaching pretty far with his argument. Instead of showing any kind of technical example of anything or any real world situation he just speculates based on a large number of assumptions.
Despite your claim of poor selection of sound interfaces for the notebook factor there actually are a lot of options today. The PC Card version of the RME Hammerfall is an amazing multi channel audio interface and boasts a 1ms ASIO latency. In addition to PCI based audio there is also some high quality USB and Firewire devices which are very high quality. The EZ-Bus, which is in the $500 range, from event seems like it would be ideal for an electronic musician who wants to combine PC and outboard gear in a live rig.
I am also involved in computer music production. I think the fact that your friend works in a professional environment would rule out all the existing Linux audio projects. Digital recording demands low latency access to hardware and compatibility with a wide range of hardware which is not really considered mainstream. Running windows apps through an emulation layer might run office apps ok but will not provide the performance needed in situations like this. Currently none of the solutions that I am aware of will provide you with this natively on Linux. Although there are many ambitious attempts to remedy this situation I fear that nothing that exists on Linux today will give you the anywhere near the flexibility, reliability and feature set of a properly configured Mac/Windows based Cubase, Logic, or Pro Tools rig. At the height of BeOS's popularity Steinberg and E-Magic were working on ports of some of their products for that platform. Since then they have both canceled those projects. Makers of audio software tend to be very sluggish about making a move to a new platform and I think this fact combined with the general lack of standards in the Linux world might dissuade them from support of Linux right now.
When I think of Linux applications I think of lean mean server side programs with no fluff. No paperclips popping up to tell me what to do just a few text based config files and raw power. That's how I like it. When I think of Windows I think of powerful feature rich desktop applications (Quicken, Word, Cubase). The interesting thing is that as Linux is beginning to tread into the desktop arena its starting to face some of the same problems that Windows has gotten a lot of flack for. As you add features you add complexity and increase the size of the code and increase risk of some kind of flaw or failure. Windows is more bloated/unstable/convoluted because it has so many features. Just look a GNOME. That thing is a true monster which looks like its just going to continue to grow.
Frankly I haven't seen one desktop application / user enviornment (including GNOME) on Linux that isn't 10 years behind a comparable application on Windows. Don't get me wrong I love linux I just don't see a point putting it on my desktop.
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This is the same guy that gave key note speeches at various trade shows and symposiums about how machines will soon be smarter than people and will take over the world and kill all of us. He is a lunatic and should be regarded as such. He is clearly reaching pretty far with his argument. Instead of showing any kind of technical example of anything or any real world situation he just speculates based on a large number of assumptions.
Despite your claim of poor selection of sound interfaces for the notebook factor there actually are a lot of options today. The PC Card version of the RME Hammerfall is an amazing multi channel audio interface and boasts a 1ms ASIO latency. In addition to PCI based audio there is also some high quality USB and Firewire devices which are very high quality. The EZ-Bus, which is in the $500 range, from event seems like it would be ideal for an electronic musician who wants to combine PC and outboard gear in a live rig.
I am also involved in computer music production. I think the fact that your friend works in a professional environment would rule out all the existing Linux audio projects. Digital recording demands low latency access to hardware and compatibility with a wide range of hardware which is not really considered mainstream. Running windows apps through an emulation layer might run office apps ok but will not provide the performance needed in situations like this. Currently none of the solutions that I am aware of will provide you with this natively on Linux. Although there are many ambitious attempts to remedy this situation I fear that nothing that exists on Linux today will give you the anywhere near the flexibility, reliability and feature set of a properly configured Mac/Windows based Cubase, Logic, or Pro Tools rig. At the height of BeOS's popularity Steinberg and E-Magic were working on ports of some of their products for that platform. Since then they have both canceled those projects. Makers of audio software tend to be very sluggish about making a move to a new platform and I think this fact combined with the general lack of standards in the Linux world might dissuade them from support of Linux right now.
When I think of Linux applications I think of lean mean server side programs with no fluff. No paperclips popping up to tell me what to do just a few text based config files and raw power. That's how I like it. When I think of Windows I think of powerful feature rich desktop applications (Quicken, Word, Cubase). The interesting thing is that as Linux is beginning to tread into the desktop arena its starting to face some of the same problems that Windows has gotten a lot of flack for. As you add features you add complexity and increase the size of the code and increase risk of some kind of flaw or failure. Windows is more bloated/unstable/convoluted because it has so many features. Just look a GNOME. That thing is a true monster which looks like its just going to continue to grow. Frankly I haven't seen one desktop application / user enviornment (including GNOME) on Linux that isn't 10 years behind a comparable application on Windows. Don't get me wrong I love linux I just don't see a point putting it on my desktop.