Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Discuss how to promote using FLOSS to make music.

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Yes
26
72%
No
0
No votes
Other
10
28%
 
Total votes: 36

merlyn
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by merlyn »

Thanks for all the thoughtful and interesting replies.
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by muzikermammoth »

The reason is pretty nuanced:

The hurdles required to get to using linux as a main method for producing music, necessarily means the person is conversant with a few of the tools as well as the audio aspect of things, and well, it is a lot better now for multimedia production than say in the early 2000s and it is definitely better than windows in 2000-2008. As much as i hate to use a signifier like using linux as a proxy for a certain level of competence, i'd say if you're able to think your way through jack,pulse,sfz,build tools, etc. then it's pretty likely you'd have a particular view about music and it's constituent parts.

This is especially true, if you're interested in building new modes of interaction with music and audio.

So yes i'd like more people to use linux, but no i don't think it is for everyone.
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Linuxmusician01
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

milo wrote:My main reason for voting Yes in the poll is that I want to have a community full of interesting people that I can learn from, making interesting music, developing and refining tools that I can use. The actual market share of the platform is incidental to me, as long as the Linux world remains vibrant, open, and fun.
Exact same reason that I voted "Yes". I'm selfish: I want to learn from others because I don't know a lot 'bout making music. So even a Windows user can learn me a whole lot 'bout DAW's and producing music on a computer. :wink:
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Linuxmusician01
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

merlyn wrote:For the number of Linux users to increase we have to 'turn' Windows users. That means making Linux more attractive and accessible to them. Which means more GUIs, less command line.
I disagree. We need to show them that the command line works easier than searching for that one little piece of functionality in a GUI. I love the CLI and am appreciating a GUI less and less. Couldn't do without it though...
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by jonetsu »

Linuxmusician01 wrote:I disagree. We need to show them that the command line works easier than searching for that one little piece of functionality in a GUI. I love the CLI and am appreciating a GUI less and less. Couldn't do without it though...
Especially in the context of configuring and maintaining a system and how that configuration can be kept inside simple regular text files, just almost ready to be replayed when needed. As opposed to doing a configuration entirely based on pop-up windows and dialog boxes which is most often always a mess to replay, especially with complex configurations.
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by modusjonens »

raboof wrote:But what we need to scale is is not more consumers, it's more tinkerers.
Agreed, and well put!
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by tripomatic »

I only choose yes, for better support of hardware, from sound interface to controllers etc.
It has been much worse ofcourse, but still it could be much better.
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by lykwydchykyn »

When I started out using Linux, I was big into pushing it because Linux needed more users. I wanted people to use it so that it would benefit Linux and help it to grow and be better, more legit.

At some point, I became convinced that my advocacy was backwards. It's not that Linux needs the people; the people need Linux. It shouldn't be about Linux (or FOSS, more the point) benefiting from the users, it should be about the users benefiting from it. It was a subtle but powerful shift in my thinking.

I think there are a lot of people who could benefit from free software that aren't, either because (1) they don't know about it, (2) it isn't accessible to them, or (3) it doesn't meet their needs. I'd like to see more people be able to benefit, but to do that we have to address all three reasons, not just the first one (and certainly not by shaming, insulting, or hard-selling people who aren't using Linux).

Just my thoughts.
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by raboof »

lykwydchykyn wrote:certainly not by shaming, insulting, or hard-selling people who aren't using Linux
That indeed would make no sense - though I'm not sure that happens a lot?
lykwydchykyn wrote:I think there are a lot of people who could benefit from free software that aren't, either because (1) they don't know about it, (2) it isn't accessible to them, or (3) it doesn't meet their needs.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by '2'?
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by khz »

I am happy when people use more GNU/Linux and over time understand the logical reasons and internalize them and then live.
Music has something to do with "freedom"! IMHO.

But that is also the problem: freedom.
There is no "the chef", "the way", "the distribution", ... . :wink:
. . . FZ - Does humor belongs in Music?
. . GNU/LINUX@AUDIO ~ /Wiki $ Howto.Info && GNU/Linux Debian installing >> Linux Audio Workstation LAW
  • I don't care about the freedom of speech because I have nothing to say.
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Michael Willis
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by Michael Willis »

raboof wrote:
lykwydchykyn wrote:(2) it isn't accessible to them
Could you elaborate on what you mean by '2'?
I would guess that it refers to a fairly large demographic that will not use an operating system that doesn't come installed on hardware they buy at a store. The process of downloading the installation software, putting it on some kind of loadable media (DVD or USB storage dongle), configuring the computer to boot from that media, and installing and configuring the OS is far beyond many many people who aren't tech heads like us.

Companies like ZaReason and System76 are really just minor players. I wish they could operate at a larger scale and it wasn't so rare to see somebody who uses a laptop designed to run Linux, but that's just not the case. I know Dell made a token effort to ship machines with Ubuntu a while back, but that didn't really go anywhere.

So the fact remains that any non-technical person is unlikely to use Linux as a desktop operating system unless they have a Linux enthusiast encouraging them to do so. My kids have grown up using Linux on our home computers, but they don't really know it as such. They can tell that it's a little different than the Windows machines that they use at school, and that things sometimes go a little wacky and dad is this mad wizard that can usually fix things with a few incantations in this weird black-screen-with-gray-text mode, but I think they mostly dismiss it as "dad's job is computers, so he's the one who knows how to do these things". I still haven't figured out how to enable them to believe that they can do it to, which I really feel is the first step to the "freedom" that we always talk about.
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mike@overtonedsp
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by mike@overtonedsp »

I would guess that it refers to a fairly large demographic that will not use an operating system that doesn't come installed on hardware they buy at a store. The process of downloading the installation software, putting it on some kind of loadable media (DVD or USB storage dongle), configuring the computer to boot from that media, and installing and configuring the OS is far beyond many many people who aren't tech heads like us...
I think its a bit of an unfair generalisation (to put it politely) to imply that people who don't use Linux are somehow not capable. It might also be that if you buy a machine with an OS pre-installed, and working, an OS for which the vast majority of available applications are designed, then, even if you are tech minded, you might not see it as desirable to go to the time and trouble of removing it and replacing it with something which could still be a bit hit and miss regarding drivers - and so may end up not being quite as good as what you had (and try taking it back to the store when that happens...)
Last edited by mike@overtonedsp on Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by CrocoDuck »

Michael Willis wrote:I know Dell made a token effort to ship machines with Ubuntu a while back, but that didn't really go anywhere.
Dell is still selling some Inspiron and XPS laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled in various areas. You can buy one in the UK, for example.
Michael Willis wrote: I still haven't figured out how to enable them to believe that they can do it to, which I really feel is the first step to the "freedom" that we always talk about.
When I was about 11, my brother was attending university and discovered Linux. He bough home some Mandrake Linux live CDs and I seen KDE for the first time. It all looked cool, and it was even free. I wanted it! Then, I started playing around with live media. I would play with Knoppix a lot.

But one day my brother got me a new computer and he gave it to me without any OS installed. Then he put a Gentoo Linux CD and the printed Gentoo Linux installation manual on my desk. "Now that you have your first computer you have to install your OS", he said. I was suddenly made fully responsible of my new computer, either by making it work or by bricking it.

I am not gonna lie, after a whole day of messing with commands I had to beg him to help me to get a Kernel booting - just booting -. Anyway, with his help I would eventually install Gentoo, and go on using it for a while before I got annoyed by how much time it takes to build everything from source. Then the dual boot Ubuntu + Windows XP days came, mainly to play games on XP... and by 2009 I was running on Linux only.

I think that two things did the trick for me:

1) When I was 4 we had an Amiga 500 in the house, which I desperately wanted to use for games. I clearly remember that to launch games I had to type commands into a blue screen, so I guess in my brain computers always been the "take and execute my order written as text" kind of thing.
2) My brother put me soon in a condition in which I was the total responsible of a system. That made me learn things by wrecking my system with reckless actions. I deleted the partition table once... That made me learn things.

Hence, now I am a Linux guy.

About "freedom": I would like to underline an overlooked side of it.

I did not see it coming, but being Linux and Open Source proficient is a huge professional advantage, and I am saying it not as a programmer or IT guy. I am an Acoustic Engineer.

Having this proficiency made me able to deploy Linux and Open Source based numerical modelling workstations at my workplace, for example. It all was straightforward for me: I know this bunch of scientific and modelling programs that run on Linux plus we have these two computers not really being used equals let's install Linux and the software and let's start run models. Now the company I work for has the capability to run acoustic models, and we make use of it. I understood this is not a skill to take from granted when my colleagues and boss were impressed by it, and by the fact that not a single penny had to be invested to get expensive commercial software.

So I guess that my recommendation is: if you can, try to see if the love for Open Source sparks in your kids. Maybe there is an Open Source lover in them waiting to get out. If that happens, I think it will give some real advantage in life to them. It definitely did in mine, not only professionally, of course.

Maybe I should write an article about this on my blog...
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by jonetsu »

Even Wal-mart hires Linux developers. It is quite common to find Linux everywhere.
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Re: Do you want more people to use Linux for music?

Post by lykwydchykyn »

raboof wrote:
lykwydchykyn wrote:certainly not by shaming, insulting, or hard-selling people who aren't using Linux
That indeed would make no sense - though I'm not sure that happens a lot?
It happens among younger people, though more subtly among the older ones. I see it on reddit a lot, where people divide others up into "linux user", "mac users" or "windows users", and take pot-shots at each other. Obviously there's a maturity thing going on there, but online nobody knows your age, so its perceived as a major facet of linux advocacy.
lykwydchykyn wrote:I think there are a lot of people who could benefit from free software that aren't, either because (1) they don't know about it, (2) it isn't accessible to them, or (3) it doesn't meet their needs.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by '2'?
Michael WIllis nailed it, there are people who just aren't going to install an OS themselves, nor veer from the status quo when they buy a machine. They may have no difficulty actually using Linux, but they aren't in a position to try it because it isn't a viable option for them.

Of course, there's also the other accessibility issues: situations where LInux doesn't provide tools for disabled individuals to use the system, but that represents a smaller group (and yes, we do have some accessibility tools).
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