Hmmmm...
The main thing I learned is that there's something to be said for spending a bit of money. While it's fun to get all this jank for free and all, quite frankly, there isn't enough time in the day. I probably spent two hours trying to figure out how to make it so the mouse pointer didn't go across the entire screen when I moved my finger, say, a centimeter. (For what it's worth, I wasn't actually able to figure this out. I just gave up.) Then another hour spent trying to figure out where the example patches for PD are stored. I was finally able to get sound to come out of the computer, but by that time, I simply didn't care any more.
No offense to the FLOSS banner-wavers, but Jesus Christ, by the end of the process, I was willing to press "accept" on any damned EULA you put in front of me just to have a help file that said something besides "todo: write help file." Now, all that said, this is a fairly comprehensive package, and it's non-invasive. You just download the ISO, drag one of the folders to your hard drive, boot from the CD, and you're golden. No partitioning nightmares or configuration hell. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's true. After 15 years, Linux is almost to the point where you can, like, do something. But not really.
19 comments:
-CR
You confirmed my suspicions. Now I can spend that free time I booked in February rewriting the Rastafari Hisorical Preservation Society Manifesto instead of trying what you did.
1. Is it worth spending money on software to boost productivity?
Yes.
That was easy. (Having some code that's open source is great, too, but anyone who says that *always* trumps exchanging resources for something of value is nuts. Heck, if we all go live on a commune, I'll still happily trade some cheese from my goat if someone made an awesome FM synth.)
2. Is Linux harder than Windows?
This is obviously way too broad. It would be completely unfair to judge all of Linux on behalf of bleeding-edge pure:dyne builds. Now, in fairness, part of the complexity IS the variability of distros, but part of the Cult of Ubuntu and such I think is that, once people find a distro that works for them, they tend to latch onto that -- maybe rightfully so.
3. Is pure:dyne ready for prime-time?
Since I sometimes write like Polyanna, maybe I implied it was. But it's very much still in development. (Yeah, everything is, these days, including Pd, but you can at least identify certain benchmarks to readiness, and I don't think it's quite there yet.) And it may not be the best choice for everyone.
Since I've gone out "shilling", I do feel a responsibility to better sort this stuff out. I'm working on putting together more of the distros and actually testing them, and getting more input from the Linux community. It might surprise you, Chris, but the die-hard Linux music fans often share your frustrations -- they know what works, but they also know what's broken and what needs improvement. And I think the music community is far more realistic about these things than the mainstream gung-ho Linux advocate, because even on Linux, OS is ultimately secondary to actual music making.
1. Windows is the choice for spreadsheets, word processing, and games.
2. Mac is the choice for audio and video.
3. Linux is the choice for servers, and for hardcore hackers.
-CR
Anyway, I'll certainly admit that getting this stuff to work can be a bitch-and-a-half, even for me with the software background. Nowadays I try to find a Linux distro that does what I want so that I don't have to spend too much brain time on the issue. Alas, not all distros are ready for prime time, and the other big gotcha is hardware compatibility. Live CDs make this stuff way easier to try out, which is good. And if you've got a fresh empty computer to play with (where this item started, right?) then it's not too hard to audition a few odd installs to see if something works well enough.
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