[PlanetCCRMA] Linux distributions and audio (Was: drop outs with FC8...)

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

[sorry for the delay, I was away on vacation]

On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 10:31 -0500, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> On Jan 6, 2008 10:08 PM, Hector Centeno <hcengar@gmail.com> wrote:
>         Thanks a lot Greg for the information. My opinions are based
>         only on my experience as user (I've been using both Ubuntu and
>         Fedora for audio and visual production since Fedora Core 2 and
>         Ubuntu Warty), but is good to know the view from someone who
>         works inside. From certain perspective, decisions like
>         replacing the firewire stack in the final release for one that
>         breaks compatibility with older devices (I think that's why
>         FreeBob wont work with Juju, but thanks to Fernando to make it
>         possible) makes it feel like there is more of an intention to
>         beta test than to provide with stability and compatibility,
>         but on the other hand I'm pretty sure the switch will probably
>         bring benefits to the wider Linux community. Anyways, all work
>         is appreciated! And any
>         Linux distro has it's ups and downs (e.g. I'm starting to have
>         some freezes and login problems with the Ubuntu RT kernel).
> 
> Yeah, the firewire change definitely bit us -- but someone's got to
> move first, right? 

Depends on how. 

> Because if you don't make the changes first at the library/kernel
> level, you can't then make the necessary changes at the application
> level. 
> 
> That balance between stability and innovation is always painful.

We all understand (more or less) that this is true. 

However, the broken (for audio) juju stack was introduced in fc7. When
was that? Quite a while back. It is still (AFAIK) broken. That is way
too long for my taste, even for what some call a "development" distro.

After it became clear it was broken and was not going to be fixed soon
it should have been reverted, or a method should have been provided to
alternate between both stacks. Maybe I should have screamed louder at
that point... but screaming also takes time which I don't have. 

-- Fernando