Move KXStudio to ArchLinux?

[danboid]

Great news! I'm delighted F has decided to migrate KX to Debian - its undoubtably the best fit for the job.

[wolftune]

I was not under the impression that a final decision has been made. But I wanted to add this:

I studied the issue further and have decided that Debian is the closest option to my philosophical position, beating out Trisquel and Parabola. In other words, if KXStudio can live in Debian and, of course, continues to have non-free section but that is segregated and marked (as it is now), this is my own ideal. There are examples of non-free software that are in every way otherwise ethical and honorable. I appreciate furthermore that Debian recognizes Free Culture (whereas FSF does not). Debian seems honorable, idealistic, and yet less dogmatic than others. I greatly value ideals but do not believe in dogmatism.

So, count me now as a 100% vote for Debian. I prefer this probably over Arch or Mageia or others. And I'll accept whatever compromises are involved in the transition (although, yes, I'll stick with 12.04 for the near future).

I urge the transition to Debian as the way to go, working all along with others to see about still packaging relatively up-to-date stable software.

Cheers!

[GMaq]

Great news! I'm delighted F has decided to migrate KX to Debian - its undoubtably the best fit for the job.

Haha, danny-boid one has to love your enthusiasm

I think we all better wait for an official announcement on that... I know it's being considered and that can't be done without taking some time to get a good look at Debian under the hood.

[danboid]

I've already given shout outs to Kanotix, AVL and Mepis as great examples of desktop Debian based distros but somehow I neglected to mention Linux Mint Debian Edition! If you sat most Ubuntu users in front of LMDE or asked them to install it, most would swear it was actually Ubuntu but maybe a bit quicker as the Mint guys have done a great job in claiming back most of Ubuntus usability tweaks for Debian. Ubuntu users will (and do) feel totally at home under LMDE.

So, to anyone who has only ever used or had any real Linux success with Ubuntu and/or KXStudio, let me assure you you have nothing to worry about with this transition should falktx decide to switch to a Debian base - all your Ubuntu skills, tricks and knowledge 'port cleanly and effortlessly' to Debian, especially LMDE.

Gmaq: You're as bad as me - hee hee!

[tux99]

So, count me now as a 100% vote for Debian. I prefer this probably over Arch or Mageia or others.

Mageia took their philosophical position from Debian so from that point of view they are very similar.

The main difference from a user point of view between Mageia and Debian is that Mageia is more up-to-date and that Mageia has one release a year (which I prefer when compared to Ubuntu or Fedora, upgrading every 6 months is way too often, but then my ideal release cycle is CentOS with one new release every 3 years).

[raboof]

As an aside, I think it's refreshing to see how we had/have a very good discussion on such a touchy topic (distrowars!) without drama.

Cheers to us! If any of you manage to catch me IRL, I hereby promise to buy you a beverage of your selection. Let's keep this up!

[wolftune]

So, count me now as a 100% vote for Debian. I prefer this probably over Arch or Mageia or others.

Mageia took their philosophical position from Debian so from that point of view they are very similar.

The main difference from a user point of view between Mageia and Debian is that Mageia is more up-to-date and that Mageia has one release a year (which I prefer when compared to Ubuntu or Fedora, upgrading every 6 months is way too often, but then my ideal release cycle is CentOS with one new release every 3 years).

Ok, good to know, that sounds like Mageia is then everything I'd want! So I vote 100% for Mageia also! I strongly prefer score / range voting actually. See http://rangevoting.org/
It is far far far far far better than the poll here which forces a yes or no and loses all the nuance. Simple polls often end up with polarizing extremes. All other types of voting like instant-run-off and Condorcet are all too complex. That site explains it all. Range voting is the best, period.

So on a scale of 0-9, I give:
stay with Ubuntu: 4, Debian: 9, Mageia: 9, Arch: 6, Chakra: 6

And my vote might change with more information. But this sort of score/range voting is what should be done if anyone really wants to understand how people feel. It results in good compromises too. Simply add up the total score for any one option. An option that everyone can live with might win out where it would not have gotten votes in a strict one-choice poll.

[skavar]

Well, the question posed is "Move KXStudio to ArchLinux?" which requires a yes or no answer.

However, I believe the question was posed as a device to elicit opinions on such a move, and as such has been huge success!

[wolftune]

Well, the question posed is "Move KXStudio to ArchLinux?" which requires a yes or no answer.

Right, and in that, my response now, especially with the focus on range voting is: "bad question!" I.e. the response to a question doesn't have to accept the terms of the question.

However, I believe the question was posed as a device to elicit opinions on such a move, and as such has been huge success!

Yup!

[ToddMWorth]

Bummed. Debian is a good choice no doubt. I just prefer arch, a whole whole lot. I'd probably put debian or redhat as 2nd though, so hey... It's not too bad

[emarsk]

Hi, just to add my opinion, here it is:
my vote is "no", because what I'd really love is a move to Debian (I'm happy to see that it's actually under serious evaluation).
Maybe you could work with the Debian Multimedia team (https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia) and have your tools accepted as official Debian packages? This would benefit both Debian and Ubuntu users and would probably mean less work for you to build a KXStudio DVD? But I'm just guessing, since I've no experience here.

On a side note, I currently use Debian Sid and I already use KXStudio's PPA: I download the updated sources from the PPA and rebuild the packages (with the "debuild -us -ub" command, so not much manual work needed actually).
Usually the package:

• is the same version of Debian "unstable" or "experimental", with virtually no changes (maybe just the debug package discarded)
• is not newer enough to care
• just builds with no or trivial fixes

One notable exception is LMMS which has an unmet dependency that I don't care enough to fix.
I had to wait a bit for the new Cadence tools to build without a dependency hell, but now it's fine.

[Jaaxx]

I would like to see KXStudio stay with Ubuntu partly for the stability (assuming a sort of middle ground between Debian and Arch), but mostly for ease of adoption/support for users new to Linux. Especially with all the new interest in Gaming, I see a potentially large influx of new users who will likely adopt Ubuntu as their platform. Remember, a large user base is good for any project from both a support and development standpoint. IMHO that has been a large factor holding back Linux audio over the years.

As far as a platform for studio work, I favor stability and ease of use for the end user (especially "newbies.") For years I used PClinux, and in fact maintained the realtime kernel there, provided a repo for latest jack, ardour, et al, and maintained a small distro (RocXshoP.) The only reason I abandoned those activities was because of a huge shakeup in the development team at PClinux that made the future of the distro pretty dim. But for my pennies worth that platform had a lot of things I found ideal as an audio platform:

a: RPM based - I personally found RPM packaging to be painless. Everything was in one spec file.
b: Used APT for RPM package management - All the familiar Debian package management tools (synaptic, etc.)
c: Rolling Release - I think this idea speaks for itself. Comes with it's own problems of course, but generally good for users.
d: Small but active community focused on support, especially for new users.
e: Based on Mandriva - Great set of polished/intuitive config tools, solid base.
f: Mklivecd scripts made custom ISOs absolutely trivial.

FalkTX, as great as you are at what you do, you cannot keep up packaging everything in the universe plus developing new apps forever. IMHO you must build a significant user base and attract a good core group of packagers/maintainers/coders to help. It's a bad idea for any large project to rest entirely on the shoulders of one individual.

With all it's faults, Ubuntu appears "here to stay." Canonical has the resources and the clout to attract large numbers of new users and developers to the platform.

[wolftune]

Jaaxx, your arguments sound like they all favor Mageia, everything from the packaging to the accessibility (not as sure about the gaming, that's an issue not for me personally, but, yes as I said before, I want something like playdeb to work with the system to entice newbies). Anyway, not pushing for Mageia over Debian myself right now, don't know enough to say about that, but just remarking that Mageia fits with most of what, you, Jaaxx, are arguing for.

[Jaaxx]

wolftune, not necessarily arguing for Mageia (although I would rather see that than Arch.) Just pointing out what I found attractive about PCLinux in the past, because my basic philosophy remains the same even though I have moved on to Ubuntu variants.

I've just seen to many distro-scale linux audio projects wither from lack of user base. I think KXstudio moving to a smaller potential user base is a terrible move. Especially when it means moving to a packaging medium outside of DEB or RPM. Seems almost suicidal in my eyes.

[wolftune]

err, maybe I was not clear enough...?

What is done is done, Ubuntu 12.04 is the version I support right now, and will continue until at least 14.04.
Maybe when 14.04 I'll support it too, I'm just not sure if I will support 13.04 or not (as it has been said, it's too much work that takes me away from cadence & carla).

By moving to debian I would actually be supporting *all* Ubuntu versions (from 13.04 upwards, since that's what version kinda matches right now).
You only lose some minor things (like always-enabled codecs), but being Ubuntu there are a lot of other places to get those resources from (getdeb, playdeb and medibuntu are examples).

So going with Debian means a larger community, not smaller, right? Because those who want to run Ubuntu (separate from LTS) can still use KXStudio stuff and also use playdeb and etc etc, and those who want to escape from Canonical and emphasize their freedoms can go with Debian! All of this sounds to me like KXStudio moving further upstream and that is totally great, and quite different than moving off to some other stream.