Re: [vox] The Xbox Linux Project

["R. Douglas Barbieri" <MAPSdoug@dooglio.net>]

I like #1 below *a lot*. I've decided to switch away from using Windows
to compose music--I, however, want the power that Cakewalk and SBLive!
gives (I'm talking sound fonts, but MIDI music composition in general).
ALSA supports soundfonts, and there is Rosegarden for doing MIDI work,
but it is confusing to set up. You talk about packaging--I'd like to
work on some sort of packaging that could:

* make it easy to install the ALSA modules. On Debian, for example. if
you want precompiled modules, you can get the .deb file, but it forces
you to install a certain version of the kernel, namely 2.4.16--I had to
revert from 2.4.18 just to install the modules. However, if you want
ALSA to work with the latest kernel, you need the source package for the
modules, as I understand it. Apparently, the ALSA support in the kernel
is *way* behind. For the average user, this is a bit much. Most
musicians just want to sit down and compose music, not mess around
compiling code and wrestling with loading modules and such. Can there be
a better way?

* setup sound font support easily. I hate to compare anything to
Windows, but with my SB Live! card, the Win32 software made it easy load
up sound fonts into the hardware. There was a nice tool showing how much
memory was being used by whatever sound fonts I had loaded. Is there any
package out there for Linux which does this, i.e. sound font management?

* integrate any MIDI sequencing program seemlessly with the sound font
system. I (used) to use Cakewalk, which works seemlessly with the Win32
sound font system. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this with
Rosegarden, and I've searched for it online with no luck. I'd *really*
like to start using Rosegarden, but it is taking a lot of digging to
even get it to recognize the sequencing device (and I still have had no
success).

Gosh, even if we just concentrated on making it easy to setup and use
ALSA, that would be a step in the right direction.

( oh, and Bill, don't start on the MOD thing... ;-) /me would rather do
MIDI )

Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
 > i've been trying to drum up a lugod project for over a year now.
 > it's a crime that we have such talented people but can't muster
 > enough free interest or time to contribute in our own small way to
 > the free software community.
 >
 > some of my ideas have been:
 >
 > 1. a sound recording/playing/editing/midi tool with the power of
 > snd/sox but with an idiot-proof interface.  this is a glaring hole in
 > the linux community.  there are a couple of attempts at this
 > currently, but they all seemed to have stalled.
 >
[snip]
 >
 > have all been my very small contributions to the community, but i
 > think it would be fun as heck and very educational to do a
 > collaboration with other people from this list.

Agreed. I've always wanted to be a part of an open source project. 
Besides, as I understand it, we can get some $$$ help from the Linux 
Fund, yes?

-Doug (aka Dooglio) Barbieri

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