I thought this may be of interest to the list. In a k5 poll about usability of linux audio apps, ( http://www.kuro5hin.org/poll/1023512126_OSelOkZS ) So far, out of 38 answers the results are:
-How do you like music software for Linux? 2 % - Great! It has everything I need. 13 % - Good, but i wish apps were more userfriendly (Like Reaktor or SoundForge) 31 % - Could be better, I think the apps are not yet mature enough for my needs. 15 % - It's unusable, the apps plain suck. 10 % - Dont care about composing on computers 26 % - Dont care about composing. ---- I think this raises some questions.. My feeling is that most people aiming to write music on this OS is expecting to have apps with super easy and intuitive interfaces, where you only go trough displays, knobs, sliders and paintabe areas. Why we dont have apps such as Reason, Reaktor, Sonar, Sound Forge, etc? I dont mean full apps, but at least projects aiming for that kind of thing. We do have very powerful tools, but i have to admit that for most of them we have to learn some script programming. Do we lack good APIs? Alsa MIDI api is the best I have seen for it's kind. Also, sould linux apps really take this windows approach of making huge bloated interfaces with lots of eye candy, or should we try to improve on making our apps intercommunicate between eachother, while still giving some importance to ease of use? What do you think about this issue? Juan Linietsky
