My email is changing

[Luke Kuhn]

To lukefro...@hushmail.com due to unacceptable account security demands from 
Hotmail that violate my own security standards
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: RE:Re: live video switching (was: Linux Tools for Serious > > Photographers)

[Luke Kuhn]

I was under the impression you were referring to switching PLAYBACK from 
multiple source files, not from multiple running cameras. Kdenlive can take 
input from one  camera, no idea if it can do multiple cameras, as I've only 
used that feature for a webcam. I don't own pro cameras, only the $300 kind, as 
all my activist work is posted under strict no-monetization principles for 
ethical reasons.



> Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 12:45:53 -0700
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: RE:Re: live video switching (was: Linux Tools for Serious >
>   Photographers)
> Message-ID:
>   <95c0a5ca5c6a54386517b20162b35678.squir...@ssl.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> 
>
>

> By live switching I mean having two or more
> video streams coming in direct from cameras for example and being able to
> see both streams at the same time as well as the result of the switching
> (that is at least three live views)... probably four to include at least
> one stream from the local drive. The resultant video is then output as
> video that can be broadcast at the same time the incoming video is being
> made. Bonus if the audio can be mixed on the same machine. or at least
> added to the stream. Anything less is editing/VJing.
>   -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE:Re: live video switching (was: Linux Tools for Serious > Photographers)

[Luke Kuhn]

I didn't know LiVES could do anything like that, as it has to "import" all 
video files before use. Kdenlive (in repo, and which I use for making activist 
videos) works directly from existing video files or clips, does not need to 
import anything. Playing back a timeline in Kdenlive essentially live switches 
between them, but bogs down in transitions as that requires playing two videos 
at once.  I did find that using a rather large (100W) Nvidia450GTs video card 
with Noveau (NOT the proprietary driver) gave far better results in Kdenlive 
transitions than anything from ATI or any prop driver. Too bad OpenGL with that 
setup sucked.

Kdenlives uses KDE and ffmpeg (now avconv), would be a bear to package by 
default unless the QT libraries and a fair amount of KDE stuff also included. 
It's what I use, though, and I've tried most of the video editors I've seen for 
Linux, never once found one that was better or even remotely as good for making 
complex videos, from a wide variety of clips that may come in multiple formats. 
 Even AVCHD clips can be used, though I use avconv (formerly ffmpeg) to 
repackage their streams in .flv containers instead of .MTS to get reasonable 
seek times within them.

Putting Kdenlive and kgpg into a GNOME based intro, it's usually reasonable to 
throw in the rest of a basic KDE desktop as there's not a whole lot not already 
being pulled in, and you are going to have a rather large root filesystem. I 
did manage to get an old Maverick based system with these down to 2.7GB for a 
flash drive, but I'm usually looking at 4GB plus, especially with what happened 
in GNOME after Maverick.  On the other hand, if anyone ever made a 
"kubuntustudio" metapackage, Kdenlive would be a no-brainer to include in it.

Openshot (in repo) uses the same mlt/ffmpeg backend as Kdenlive and is GTK 
instead of QT based, unfortunately with far fewer editing capabilities.  
Presumably that also plays back by liveswitching videos. The same concept is 
used commercially by some online video editing tools that work with previously 
uploaded videos only and do not make a new file, doing this whole liveswitching 
process on the remote end and feeding the resulting clips to Flash one after 
another. Usual privacy and security concerns of all "cloud computing" apply to 
their use, of course.

I don't know if Openshot lets you maximize the playback window, but Kdenlive 
does. Set up a timeline, maximize the window and you have a live video switcher 
ready to run, with just the playback window and play/ff/rw/stop/pause controls 
showing. In fact, this is the best way to check your work before you render.


> Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 07:59:14 +0900
> From: Emmet Hikory 
> To: Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion
>   
> Subject: Re: live video switching (was: Linux Tools for Serious
>   Photographers)
> Message-ID: <20120807225914.GG3199@gerdhr.shipstone>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> Len Ovens wrote:
> > Took a while to find any docs for it... in the doc directory of the src
> > package. freemix is designed to do live showing switching of videos stored
> > as file on the computer like a VJ. I don't know if it can connect to a
> > gstream opened by another app or not. But it is not designed for it. It is
> > only available as a src package right now.
> 
>Ah, indeed: the demo I saw must have either used named pipes or been
> a derivative of the sources currently on launchpad (engine.py would need
> extension to directly access non-file sources, although it's all gstreamer).
> Packaging this source is fairly trivial, if it's considered particularly
> useful: it's a clean setup.py and fairly sensibly licensed.
> 
> > However, I tried looking up VJ in synaptic and that spit out "LiVES",
> > already in the repos. In it's features page it says "Support for live
> > firewire cameras and TV cards". I don't know that we should ship it by
> > default, but extra sw yes.
> 
> Unless someone can document a sensible video processing workflow
> (VJ, broadcasting, etc.) which is known to be well-done with it, I'm
> not sure it ought get any more or less attention than any of the other
> audio/video tools in the archive that aren't part of known workflows:
> while there's *lots* of software in the archive, and all of it is
> presumably useful and used by some folk, the more that we attempt to
> call supported (even as "extra sw"), the less I would expect we could
> refine the experience to be ideal for accomplishing real tasks.
> 
> -- 
> Emmet HIKORY
> 
> 
> 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: Re: Another idea for comments (Len Ovens)/Pulseaudio > removal (Len Ovens)

[Luke Kuhn]

Most certainly I was not trying to say that. I just was comparing that to the 
worse situation of a locked-down distro that requires hacking to get rid of 
unwanted programs. I've seen so much stuff come along that I am better off 
without, such as support for pay software in software center or pulseaudio's 
resource consumption.  Ideally a user would not have to install, nor to 
download, anything they aren't going to actually use.  Removal after the fact 
is second best, but beats the hell out of having to screw with the filesystem 
because someone added dependancies to something that it will run without.

Even if the installer is a big one with all workflows (bandwidth), having to 
first install and then remove unused software  adds time to the installation, 
plus opportunities for file system corruption if there are hardware issues or 
on some kinds of flash media. Leaving unused software on-disk is also a 
security issue (more possible attack vectors) on any machine that will ever be 
connected to a network or even used with removable drives.

Ideally there would be some way to manage separate installers for each 
workflow, plus an "all" installer, to reduce download bandwidth issues.  For 
the "alternate" disk full of Debian packages that would not be such a problem, 
might be a mess for live installers, though. 


> So are you saying Studio should not offer the installing user a choice of
> which workflows to install? Or that we should not install all workflows
> and then let the user remove some? I don't think we can offer the first
> without the user being able to unload a meta. But the fewer a machine
> starts off with the better IMO.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Len Ovens
> www.OvenWerks.net
> 
> 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Chromium privacy issue:browser fingerprinting

[Luke Kuhn]

Chromium is widely used because it is faster than many other browsers, but it 
has a problem: the user-agent is hard to change (you have to call it from 
terminal with the new user-agent, how many end users will do that) , and 
transmits far too much information. In Panopticlick 
(http://panopticlick.eff.org/), it always comes up as "unique" when facing a 
"browser fingerprinting" attack, even when Javascript is disabled.

I have strong suspicions that Google is using fingerprinting, as their new 
privacy policy explicitly allows "device information" to be collected. 
Therefore, I have reason to believe Google wrote the code to be as 
fingerprintable as possible.  Google's motives for this would include the 
following:

1: Get control over Youtube and Gmail users by blocking multiple account 
formation unless users agree to give them a mobile phone number. In the past, 
they used things like IP address  history and IP address match to zip code to 
determine who to "challenge" for a phone number. I abandoned Youtube because of 
this, blocked comments on all my old videos to eliminate the need for 
admininstrative logins, and walked away from the account.

2: Make it much harder to avoid creating a Google search history that can be 
sold to advertisers or used to target ads. This database is also vulnerable to 
subpeona. In the light of the recent "street view" case revelations of illegal 
data retention, I assume the worst about Google.

I won't use Google or Youtube at all without Tor, NoScript, and Ghostery in 
Firefox, and when they block Tor I treat them as "Server down."The user-agent 
is set to make it appear that Firefox is running under Windows.  Since I make 
activist media, I have to be careful about this sort of security issue, same as 
the reason I use encrypted disks, with their overhead, on video editing boxes 
along with all my others.

 Torbutton, despite it's Tor leakage if used poorly, does weaken browser 
fingerprinting, often increasing the number of browsers identical to yours by a 
factor of ten. Blocking Javascript can be the difference between Firefox being 
unique in Panopticlick and one in 889, but in Chromium helps little-especially 
if the user-agent is reporting that you are using an Ubuntu Alpha, which I saw 
at least once!

As a result, I can only recommend Chromium for known safe sites that you can 
trust not to track you by browser fingerprint. Fine to keep it in repo, but no 
distro should install it by default.  While neither Ubuntu nor US is intended 
as a "security" distro, flagging software that creates such a severe privacy 
issue might be a good idea. Of course, the counter is that Firefox has to be 
actively secured to do much better an Panopticlick, but then again,  they only 
have about 2 million browser "fingerprints" to test against. Surely Google has 
far more.


> Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:37:25 +0200
> From: Ralf Mardorf 
> To: l...@ovenwerks.net
> Cc: Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion
>   
> Subject: Re: Another idea for comments
> Message-ID: <1343662645.2215.5.camel@precise>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> 
> I didn't follow this thread. Is there a list with the available
> meta-packages and the included files somewhere available. I suspect this
> thread is about Quantal. FWIW I'll stay at Precise, since it's a LTS.
> 
> Much used by Linux folks is Chromium, I guess it's not an option for
> Ubuntu Studio. However, most people from Linux and Windows know Firefox.
> 
> Regards,
> Ralf

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: Re: Another idea for comments (Len Ovens)/Pulseaudio removal

[Luke Kuhn]

I always remove Pulseaudio because I have never been able to get full 
performance in Kdenlive with it running (choppy with AVCHD based files). I have 
Jack if I need a mixer, and my small machines (both netbooks and all my Pentium 
III /low resource experiments) have video playback issues with pulseaudio using 
so much CPU. I've played with Pulse, never been able to get it to cooperate 
with these demands.

About "unremovable packages" remember that there is no way to make any package 
unremovable to anyone with root/sudo access. The binary can have its 
permissions changed to disallow running or simply be deleted, then the package 
pinned to prevent reinstallation. In fact, I used to turn Pulseaudio on and off 
that way (to stop it from respawning if killed)  until I found a volume control 
that worked. That was volti, thanks to another contributor on this list. Of 
course, someone who understands video editing but not the Linux file system 
would be stopped by this if APT won't let you pull the package without ripping 
out a lot of other stuff. 

Making too many other packages depend on Pulseaudio is a bad idea. Things 
focussed on pulseaudio obviously would, but such dependancy on, say, an audio 
editor, would have the effect of making that package incompatable with Kdenlive 
if AVCHD files are to be used, and with all video players, even Flash, on low 
resource boxes.

Not such a big deal with a meta-you can install the meta, then remove it and 
anything it brought in you want to remove. Still, that adds complexity that can 
stop end users dead in their tracks and for that reason alone should be 
avoided. Dedicated machines are just one reason for this, the fact that 
everyone's workflow is different is another.

> Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2012 07:18:49 -0700
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "Ralf Mardorf" 
> Cc: Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion
>   
> Subject: Re: Another idea for comments
> Message-ID:
>   <905ccfe84c81ace2535e987d108d4b27.squir...@ssl.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> 
> On Sun, July 29, 2012 10:37 pm, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > On Sun, 2012-07-29 at 22:18 -0700, Len Ovens wrote:
> >> A fair number of people remove pulse rather than learn how to use
> >> pulse and jack together well.
> >
> > I wouldn't use a distro that won't allow me to get rid of Poettering's
> > crap. If a distro would force me to use pulseaudio or systemd at the
> > current state of development, I wouldn't use this distro.
> 
> Choice is king. Making a package non-removable is not something I want to
> start doing. For a one use box many things can be removed. In a
> professional or serious amateur setting, I would expect a one use box. A
> second multi-use box for desktop use is always an option and someone
> serious enough to have a one use box, likely has an extra older box around
> they can use for that. In a professional setting, accounting (with an sql
> server running) would not be done on a recording box, but on another box
> anyway.
> 
> As there is a move to combine the live dvd and alt style install on one
> ISO (somehow without doubling the size) I am hopeful we will be able to
> allow just installing one workflow. From your comments and those of
> others, I am thinking that there is one more workflow meta we need to
> offer. I am not sure what to name it, I had thought desktop-tools, but
> that may confused with desktop we already use. Whatever the name it would
> include the packages we ship now as standard to combine normal desktop use
> with studio use. Things like pulse, auto-update, CUPS, firefox (not sure
> about this one, some applications use a browser for docs... dillo
> instead?), any of the media playback options that require gstreamer (and
> pulse). That is a list off the top of my head, so neither complete or
> correct.
> 
> Another project in the works is a mode switch that turns off services
> harmful to audio (or whatever) use such as cron and friends, pulse (or at
> least bridging) and set cpu-freq to performance (or perhaps a user
> selected speed... I haven't tried that yet... it is a lot harder as the
> config utility would require finding out what speeds are supported) Even
> unload bad-for-audio kernel modules (like the wireless module on one of my
> machines). I am actually using this on my netbook for audio work now and
> it works very well. It takes hardware that has no serious audio
> application and makes it into a quiet solid audio machine. Right now the
> files are hand configured, the next step is a gui configuration tool with
> suitable documentation. The way I use it is as a tray icon with a
> click-select to select the mode. It can also be setup to change modes on
> jackd startup/shutdown. I have not looked at session managers doing so as
> yet, but if they can run a command they could.
> 
> There are a lot of options. I don't think we should limit Studio to only one.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Len Ovens
> www.OvenWerks.net
> 
> 
> 

RE:icon-theme

[Luke Kuhn]

I still use a modified version  of the old Hardy-era icons, maintain them 
myself locally. Back in 2008, when I ran Ubuntustudio Hardy on an old 500MHZ 
Athlon audio editor/web machine, I used XFCE to speed up Firefox, etc and the 
original Ubuntustudio theme and icons all worked fine in that era's version of 
XFCE-looked just like they did in GNOME 2, in fact. Desktop looked a little 
different due to the differnet layouts of XFCE, that was it. There was one 
bugfix I also implemented: Reducing the file size of the .SVG icon for mp3 
files, as otherwise some of my very large audio directories were very slow to 
load in Audacity's file browser.

I have added icons as needed to support newer DE environments, the modded 
versions work fine in GNOME 3, in Unity, in Icewm(my favorite light 
environment), I am pretty sure I ran them when I did a test install of the 
current XCFE environment. They even work in a lot of KDE applications. If 
anyone wants old-style Ubutustudio icons that work in today's distros, I've got 
them, just give me a place to upload them for you.


> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 08:13:35 -0700
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "ubuntu studio" 
> Subject: -icon-theme
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> We have a package called ubuntustudio-icon-theme, but we don't use it.
> Instead we use xubuntu-icon-theme. Any of our own icons currently reside
> in ubuntustudio-default-settings and end up in /usr/share/pixmaps on the
> install. This has been fine as we have had only a few icons to deal
> with... but it is not the right way really. As per blueprint item:
> [ubuntustudio-dev] All icons for ubuntuStudio submenus should be New
> Ubuntu studio icons in case the ones we are using from xfce vanish: TODO
> 
> Some of the icons we use for our *.directory files also come from
> applications which may go away leaving broken stuff, so we need our own
> icons for any of our own *.directory files.
> 
> We should probably replace xubuntu-icon-theme with
> ubuntustudio-icon-theme, even if the studio version depends on the xubuntu
> version at least for now. Our own icons should then end up in -icon-theme
> rather than -settings. And they should end up in
> /usr/share/icons/ubuntustudio/
> 
> Right now ubuntustudio-icon-theme has no installable files, it just
> depends on elementary-icon-theme. I would therefore suggest that the
> depends be changed to xubuntu-icon-theme and the desktop meta be changed
> to reflect this. This should not change anything on the install, but
> should be tested to make sure things still work.
> 
> Next the ubuntustudio directory should be added to /usr/share/icons with a
> file that depends on elementaryXubuntu and the default icon theme change
> to ubuntustudio... test for breakage.
> 
> Then we can start migrating icons to this package.
> 
> Does anyone see a problem with this? Are there many icons in
> elementaryXubuntu? Should we just add those few to our own directory and
> bypass depending on xubuntu-icon-theme?
> 
> Comments please.
> 
> Note: there will be some icons being developed. for now they will end up
> in the settings package as install to the pixmaps directory.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Len Ovens
> www.OvenWerks.net
> 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Scaling governor controls

[Luke Kuhn]

This is REALLY crucial for some CPU intensive operations. That I know from 
experience includes video editing on newer desktops, and might include 
multitrack sound recording on netbooks and small laptops that a newsman or 
musician might take to a site or a gig. Games on open source video drivers also 
benefit from this, BTW.

When I render videos using Kdenlive, I always set the governor to high, It 
makes a substantial difference in render time, apparently because of transient 
loads that pass before the governor can respond but collectively add up to a 
lot. Just as important to turn it down the rest of the time, especially using 
overclocked AMD FX 8120!

These days I use the cpu frequency scaling indicator Ubuntu offers. It works in 
gnome-shell (Which I favor), Unity, but not in Icewm (netbook). Suspect it 
would not work in XFCE.  All that is really needed, of course, is some simple 
"click to run" scripts to reset the governor (did this before the indicator 
came out)-but they would need to run as root to function.  A simple GUI with 
easy access for end users, like that indicator but usable with XFCE, is really 
going to be needed for some workflows.


> Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:31:07 -0700
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "ubuntu studio" 
> Subject: blueprint - research available audio improvements from
>   audio/music sites
> Message-ID:
>   <40918116aaaf8c854db6b24c91a20e8d.squir...@ssl.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

>  scaling governor - normally ondemand, sometimes gets xrun when
> switching to higher speed. Noticeable difference with "performance"
> setting. Downsides, CPU runs hotter, batteries on battery run devices
> last less time. Best to be able to switch for as needed.

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

ERe: help button in our main menu

[Luke Kuhn]

A very quick and simple fix would be to  copy the content of that web page 
(just save the page in the browser) and drop the resulting file and folder from 
the web page save into a directory somewhere in the OS, then have the "help" 
button point to and open that file in Firefox


> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:15:26 -0700
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "ubuntu studio" 
> Subject: help button in our main menu.
> Message-ID:
>   <922635ed092f7ad58d52b091996fe6f2.squir...@ssl.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> Right now our help button on the menu points at a file that doesn't exist
> in a directory that doesn't exist. The best thing would be to create that
> file and add it. However, we already missed doing so one cycle and are not
> overflowing with people with time. As a fall back I would like to change
> the URL to point to our (new and very nice) web page. I don't think this
> is a good final solution as there are likely to be people who run without
> any network connection. But it is better than the way it is in 12.04.
> 
> Should someone have time to put together a web page for the ISO, the URL
> you would be working with is:
> /usr/share/ubuntustudio-docs/about/ubuntustudio-index.html
> 
> I am not sure the about dir is needed, it is just the format xubuntu used.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Len Ovens
> www.OvenWerks.net
> 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE:Re: State of Jack as a full pulsaudio replacement

[Luke Kuhn]

I have had trouble getting pulseaudio to stay turned off and use no resources 
when nothing is connected to it and anything is using alsa directly. When I did 
my original Lucid/Pentium III experiments in 2010, Pulseaudio would use 15% of 
that very limied CPU with mplayer playing a vga resolution vidio using mpeg-4 
video codec in mp4 container or a flash video of same dimensions. All of that 
CPU, not 85% of it, was needed to keep up. Configuring mplayer to use alsa or 
(in those days) oss did not change anything, pulseaudio still ran and still 
used that 15%.  Killing pulseaudio just caused it to respawn. The only way I 
ever found to reliably turn it on and off was a pair of scripts to change the 
permissions of the binary to allow or disallow execution, and to kill the 
process in the disallow case.

This turned out to be important for working with AVCHD video in kdenlive on an 
AMD Phenom II x4 workstation, a hell of a lot more machine than a Pentium III. 
In that case, pulseaudio worked fine in kdenlive(after the usual kdenlive 
hacks...)-until I asked it to work with the AVCHD files. Then it used too much 
resources, as once again, that camera I use produces a very processor-intensive 
codec. Thus, I cannot use pulsaudio in th video editing workstations because 
the most important program, kdenlive, stutters when loaded that heavily with 
pulseaudio in use. The sound cards in those machine work fine with just alsa, 
and kdenlive then keeps up except in transitions. The only thing that ever made 
it keep up in transitions was AMD bulldozer, an nvidia GTS 450, and the open 
source nouveau driver(NOT the binary blob!)

Since every pulseaudio update meant having to re-run the disable script, I 
threw in the towel and removed it from both desktops.

The Intel Atom laptops with the newer N450 chips had video playback issues in 
flash on Liveleak, and less so on mplayer-not enough memory bandwidth. 
Solutions turned out to be using a non-compositing desktop (don't run a 
unity/gnome-shell session) and to disable or remove pulseaudio-again. As a 
result, I cannot use pulseaudio on the laptop, leaving no machines to routinely 
monitor it's development and any improvements that might fix this down the line.

Best fix might be a better control for pulseaudio, one that can turn it on or 
off, and it will stay on or stay off and not respawn. This would have to be 
combined with a volume control that works both with and without pulseaudio 
running.  I agree that for any kind of maximum performace workstation, as well 
as for video playback with limited resources, people are going to have to set 
up sound for their particular circumstances.  Possibly some kind of GUI control 
for US that would control jack, pulse, and alsa configurations from one screen? 
Maybe bring it up automatically at first run or in installation?

> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 5 May 2012 13:32:22 -0700
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: Re: State of Jack as a full pulsaudio replacement
> Message-ID:
>   <6e439a9c89ada09487e8fa1f3c25c540.squir...@ssl.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 5, 2012 3:39 am, Kaj Ailomaa wrote:
> 
> 
> > I think the main problem is not pulseaudio itself anymore. It would be
> > nice to have a simple way to turn it off. I think it's more about
> > desktop control than the server itself that is the issue these days.
> 
> I have found that turning pulse off is not needed. Pulse is quite happy to
> sit doing nothing taking up minimal resources if the PA-jack bridge module
> is unloaded. If PA is not bridged to jack then it is not forced to run at
> whatever latency jack is running at.
> 
> PA-jack problem two, more than one audio card. Turn off the card not being
> used in pulse... makes a big difference with things like stuttering.
> 
> There is no perfect solution yet. (maybe never) But just as in a hardware
> studio where patches have to be changed depending on use... care needs to
> be taken to set up jack and pulse in the virtual studio too. It's not
> auto, but this is a good thing, it allows me to get around problems that
> an auto mode might not.
> 
> Pulse is what lots of apps are set up for. It is easier to change the
> routing on one piece of SW (pulse) than to reconfigure every pulse client
> to hit jack. It is a lot less work to just ship the same multimedia as
> other ubuntu distros. I don't like PA much either, but I use it anyway. I
> just have to be a little more aware of how it works than the average
> desktop user. As someone interesting in a low latency kernel, I've already
> taken one step in that direction and shown an interest in learning more.
> 
> US is for those who have a desire to get more out of their equipment than
> the average desktop user, if it is tuning the audio/midi setup or
> calibrating a monitor. Time for more documentation. It looks like we need
> a page just on setting u

State of Jack as a full pulsaudio replacement

[Luke Kuhn]

All these bugs and "no sound output" complaints with Pulseaudio bring back the 
idea of finding a way to make Jack replace Pulseaudio altogether. Removing 
pulseaudio is not always enough, in many but not all cases a replacement is 
needed. I remember the old days of Dapper and applications grabbing the sound 
card and having to reboot just to get audacity to connect to alsa, and as late 
as Hardy using sound cards that would only connect to one program at a time. 
This while all those Windows clunkers made that one program a sound server that 
seemed to work fine. We have  a good sound server too, jack, and a good front 
end for it, qjackctl, which I discovered in ubuntustudio hardy.

 My big desktops do fine with straight ALSA for my video editing(kdenlive) , 
audio editing(audacity) and general uses. Their onboard sound cards include 
mixer functions enough to play sound from multiple sources with alsa by itself. 
This is apparently a hardware support capability.  My intel Atom netbook, 
containing a copy of the same OS, is another story entirely. No output from any 
mono soundtrack in alsa, as the soundcard does not support a mono output at 
all. On the other hand, pulseaudio is just too heavy for it, killing sync in 
video playback, even for 360p h264 video.

I ended up using jack as a pulseaudio replacement in that netbook. Anything 
other than flash or audacity, I fire up jack from qjackctl.

Using no sound server, only Flash, Xine, kdenlive and audacity can connect to 
alsa directly on that sound card. With jack, all the video players and 
audacious work fine, Mplayer and Audacious needing to be told in preferences to 
use jack.   Using either jack for sound or straight alsa(xine only) with a 
stereo soundtrack, that same netbook will only fall 1 or 2 seconds behind the 
sound and sometimes keep up entirely on a 720p HD video at 25 fps in H264 
codec. A full 30fps still defeats it. This shows that Jack is much lighter and 
more efficient code than pulseaudio. In fact, it shows that Jack is imposing 
very little load on the CPU compared to no sound server at all. I learned about 
Pulsaudio's resource use playing with old Pentium 3's, when Lucid could not 
play video files that Jaunty played just fine. Removing pulseaudio restored the 
playback sync.

Thanks to whoever put on onto using Volti to control volume with alsa direct or 
via jack! That takes care of the "no volume control applet without pulseaudio" 
issue and works in most DE's. You need the classic-systray extension to put it 
where you can see it in gnome-shell, comes up fine in both Icewm(traditional 
system tray) and in Unity if you add it to the whitelist for systray applets. 

Audacity works fine with Jack running, the only showstoppers for running jack 
full-time by itself are kdenlive (no Jack support yet!) and that old binary 
blob nasty, Adobe Flash. I am using 64 bit flash direct from Adobe, I do  know 
if the "pulseaudio-extrasound" package aimed at making Pulseaudio work would 
work with jack instead. With adobe deciding to throw Firefox under the bus and 
push proprietary browsers, I have a feeling open-source replacements for flash 
are about to hit the big time anyway.

Three ways of making Flash work with Jack  via alsa, gstreamer, or pulseaudio,  
plus a library for direct Jack support for Flash was being described at 

http://jackaudio.org/routing_flash

This page dates back to 2012. All these methods are said to create some added 
latency in audio from Flash, opposite the audio ahead of video effect that a 
too-heavy CPU load or slow graphics will create. Have yet to test them, I 
control jack from qjackctl on the netbook-and rarely use Flash to actually 
watch videos, as I download and keep anything worth watching anyway due to 
limited bandwidth and a preference for local copies of everything.

None of that matters on a big, high-powered A/V worstation, though a direct 
jack/no pulseaudio solution might help with other kinds of latency issues. What 
does matter is getting sound to work on a sound editing system without forcing 
users to learn a lot of new programming that might send them to another distro.

Having to start qjackctl or configure an application in its preferences to use 
Jack is one thing, having to root around on Google for what text file to exit, 
commands to run, etc is quite another.

With Precise now out, this question can again be considered for future 
reference. Thankfully, in Linux distros nobody has to wait, if Pulseaudio 
doesn't work for a user it can be removed and Ubuntu has been careful to keep 
too much from depending on it.  

Maybe a debian package that conflicts with pulseaudio, depends on jack and 
qjackctl, pulls in one of the solutions for flash and anto-configures other 
applications to use Jack by default would make this something an end user could 
actually work with?  That would be something that could be used as an advanced 
option at install or a recommended fix for situation

RE: Re: pulse audio,audacity, and jack

[Luke Kuhn]

Audacity works fine with jack, tested it this way a few days ago (I normally 
run ALSA directly). It passed through a time when it did not work with jack,  
maybe wasn't being compiled with jack support, maybe a bug, but if you start 
jack, then start audacity, you can select jack in preferences. Just remember to 
set it back unless you always use jack and audacity together..
 Interestingly, on my netbook, with pulseaudio not installed, jack is the only 
way to play a mono file in audacious, due to the lack os hardware support for 
mono on that soundcard. That means some kind of sound mixer is a must on all OS 
versions, and jack just works so much better than pulseaudio, even if it is not 
so user-friendly.
> 
> --
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:32:58 +0100
> From: Ralf Madorf 
> To: Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion
>   
> Subject: Re: pulse audio
> Message-ID: <1324287178.8628.4.camel@localhost.localdomain>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> 
> Try Jack. I agree that PA is a PITA, anyway, Audacity should work with
> Jack using ALSA as backend, even if PA is installed.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> -- 
> Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
> Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
> 
> 
> End of Ubuntu-Studio-devel Digest, Vol 56, Issue 21
> ***
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Libavcodec licensing issues and possible IP blocking in the US

[Luke Kuhn]

It makes sense to me that libavcodec, which defies US software patents, is kept 
separate from the actual distribution of the OS, along with the other goodies I 
use like libdvdcss Here in the US, there are a lot of attempts to regulate the 
Internet to block sites deemed to "infringe" patents and copyrights. It is far 
better to have to download libavcodec through Tor and/or alternate DNS if one 
of the bills passes than to have to download a GB-plus installer image through 
Tor because some appointed bureaucrat declares Ubuntu as a whole to be illegal 
on patent grounds in the US. background on this conclusion:There are a lot of 
people here that would love to ban ALL alternatives to corporate-legal, 
closed-binary operating systems. We've got ISP's that like the smartphone 
model, where the "carrier IQ" spyware scandal just hit Android and iOS, they 
would love to block Linux. Go into any wireless store in the US and see the 
dirty looks you get when you say you want to use their service with Linux.  A 
salesman at the counter might help out, but in my experience you can expect 
ZERO support unless you shell out $150 for an OS-agnostic wireless hotspot. Jut 
look at the ugly "trusted boot" OEM motherboard/Windows 8 crap that is 
coming.Having all our good, patent-busting software in repo but a fig leaf of 
legality around the main OS is going to save a lot of bandwidth on Tor in the 
future, I suspect. When the US or just US-based IP's start blocking OS sites 
over "illegal codecs" the smart move will be to move everything except the 
restricted codecs, libdvdcs, etc to new IP addresses, and instruct everyone to 
connect via Tor to access the rest of the software. This way, only the codecs 
have to travel across the Tor network.At first the US will probably resort to 
blocking DNS, and everyone will go to alternate DNS servers, but then they 
might move to real IP address based blocking and a cat-and-mouse game. In this 
upcoming legal environment there will be no way to offer a "ready to go at 
install" image like Windows supposedly does, any more than an underground 
industry can simply set up a storefront. Even though very few countries 
recognize software patents, an age of blocking will mean all residents of those 
countries wanting to use a "real" Linux media distro will need to be able to 
connect apt to a set of repos, some of them reached via Tor and the rest not. 
Time to get working on tor connectivity for apt in my opinion.Of course, in an 
upcoming age of darknets the sort of media I make might not be accessable to 
Windows users, nor on the "legal" Internet, making the codec issue moot. People 
putting out media on a darknet, to free OS users only, will want to switch at 
that time to the free codecs which will work by default for everyone on the 
darknets.

Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:55:41 +0300
From: ?? 
To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"

Subject: Re: choosing typical desktop applications
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Preload greatly reduces startup time; it's included in Ubuntu repos
and it's quite stable and well-tested, I think you can include it by
default.

I'm afraid that you won't be able to ship VLC due to legal
restrictions of libavcodec:
"libavcodec cannot be shipped on CDs (c.f. Ubuntu technical board
resolution 2007-01-02)." (source:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/ubuntu.precise/view/head:/ship-live)

The best thing you can ship is GStreamer.

--
shnatsel
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: RE: choosing typical desktop applications/desktop icons

[Luke Kuhn]

If Nautilus is autostarted by any means, it will display desktop icons if the 
option to use them has been selected.in dconf-editor 
(org/gnome-desktop/background/show-desktop-icons). Personally, I consider 
gnome-tweak-tool in addition to gnome-control-center to be mandatory if running 
any part of gnome and expecting someone not familiar with either using 
dconf-editor or directly editing schemas to be able to use the machine.
I have used nautilus and pcmanfm as file managers on various machines, the only 
conflicts I've seen are if both are set to manage the desktop at the same time, 
sounds like the same is true of thunar. There is,'however, one issue in 
"splitting" file managers: Any directory on the disktop, if clicked on, will 
open in that file manager, not another one selected as a default. Therefore, I 
strongly recommend that the file manager normally used be the one that controls 
the desktop.
Anyway, all it would take to make Nautilus put icons on the desktop in another 
environment is to NOT start another window manager with controlling the desktop 
selected, and autostart nautilus with it set to draw the background and draw 
icons. Of course, if you right-click on the desktop, the menu you get will be 
the one associated with nautilus, not wtth thunar! Therefore, any DE that uses 
the right-click-on-desktop menu for anything important will need a replacement 
for that functionality if fun with Nautilus.
> Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:57:55 +0100
> From: "Ralf Mardorf" 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   , "Ubuntu Studio 
> Development &
>   Technical Discussion"   
> Subject: RE: choosing typical desktop applications
> Message-ID:
>   
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> > > file manager - nautilus
> > Ok, I think thulnar is trying to become this anyway, so if nautilus works
> > better... I think you may find thulnar is used to put file icon on the
> > desktop in xfce though... it may be hard to remove and still use xfce.
> 
> To get rid of desktop icons: Menu > Settings > Setting Manager > Desktop > 
> Icons
> 
> ;)
> 
> Ralf
> -- next part --
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: 
> 
> 
> ---
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

EXT3 vs EXT 4, and data recovery

[Luke Kuhn]

EXT 4 seems to support a MUCH faster fsck filesystem check, unless someone made 
big changes to fsck at about the same time (jaunty) that I changed to ext4.  
This is a big deal for someone with one or more 2 TB disks in their home 
filessytem, for obvious reasons.
I've never had a filesystem reliability problem specific to ext4, but I also 
regard data that is on only one physical device the same as if it were only in 
ram-as volatile until put on a second physical dvice that is not mounted 
automatically at boot and not running all the time. I think using ext3 as a 
default for any installer in an age of 2TB and even 3.5TB disks is asking for 
some looong fsck boot waits unless fsck has gotten faster for ext3 as well. A 
media-specific distro should assume the largest available disks will often be 
seen, as video files are huge and serious video and movie makers quickly build 
up a lot of them and do not want to throw out raw footage after every shoot. If 
you archive everything, your filesystem gets very big very fast, for instance I 
expect to have to get more 2TB disks or 3.5's depending on price sometime next 
year.
Ralf mentioned an accidental  data loss/data recovery issue. For file recovery, 
I use foremost (for older data types) and photorec (for newer data types and 
partial video recovery). Where you will have problems is in recovering video 
from camera cards and similar flash media. This is because ANY write to a flash 
device without a lot of zeroed-out space forces data tyo be moved around so 
blocks can be cleared for bulk erasing. As a result, any write, even a simple 
reformat, to a camera card chops up video files, meaning you get only the first 
section or other sections, typically about 2MB, of most of your videos, plus a 
few larger ones, back. JPEGs come back just fine, though, presumably due to 
being smaller than 2MB for what I am dealing with. I should take a magnetic 
hard drive sometime, zero it out, and put 30-50 non-security requiring video 
files on it sometime, then reformat and run photorec to verify that this is a 
flash issue and not a photorec issue, though.
I once had the sheer joy of using photorec to recover enough video from a 
friend's camera card where data had been forcibly "deleted" by 
rifle-brandishing cops to totally embarass the US Capitol Police by running 
video on Liveleak of them brandishing M16's at protesters.  This was the usual 
flash camera card/vfat scenario, and I brought in photorec because foremost 
recovered that motion jpeg video as a directly of over 19,000 jpegs instead of 
as video! On the other hand, it did find every frame shot, so I had all the 
possible stills from all the video shot.That won't work on AVCHD, though, 
because the data stream isn't a collection ot jpegs.
 -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: Re: leaf/mousepad and saved settings/text editor needed anyway

[Luke Kuhn]

Text editors are NOT used only to edit system files! They open a hell of a lot 
faster than word processors and are all you need for such tasks as writing a 
news story, song lyrics, etc to be read out into an audio recorder.  I would 
consider a default disk with no text editor a nuisance for new users who expect 
one. Even Windoze has a text editor, though I don't know if it is installed by 
default.
I've had good luck with leafpad in the past. It's fast, light, and works when 
updates are running and gedit is broken until Synaptic finishes. It opens much 
faster than gedit on netbooks, uses less CPU than gedit on everything, valuble 
if someone is, say  working on a soundtrack, adding voiceover, while a video 
editor is rendering on something like a single-core Athlon 64.

> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:44:15 +0300
> From: ?? 
> To: Ralf Mardorf 
> Cc: Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion
>   
> Subject: Re: leaf/mousepad and saved settings
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> > It's completely impossible that any distro will ship with perfect configs.
> > E.g. not everybody has a RME card, hence it's ok that the first audio device
> > entry for rtirq is snd. But what if you have several PCI MIDI interfaces
> > connected and a PCIe card from RME?
> 
> >From the UX point of view, the OS should detect your configuration and
> choose the most appropriate default configs automatically. These
> defaults probably won't work for everybody either, so there still
> should be a better way than editing config files, e.g. a configuration
> GUI. If your users have to manually edit config files, you're doing
> something wrong. So shipping an editor is a workaround, not a
> solution.

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE Re: ALSA/Jack midi bridging.

[Luke Kuhn]

I just tested jack with audacity, which I normally run an ALSA. Works fine, 
just have to edit preferences on switching back and forth. If I could get flash 
to work with jack, it would solve the netbook's problem that alsa cannot handle 
mono output directly on some soundcards without mono output support. Pulseaudio 
fixed that-at the price of killing video playback with CPU consumpiton, so it 
had to go. Starting jack at boot would be as simple as writing a "jack.conf" 
file for /etc/init that would start it as an upstart job.  Qjackctl should then 
allow manually stopping jack for any applications not compatable with it, then 
restarting it after closing the offending apps down. Ideally all programs in a 
default install would work wioth jack for this, making jack completely replace 
pulseaudio.
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 06:14:17 -0800
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: Re: ALSA/Jack midi bridging.
> Message-ID:
>   <11dc888f5503555c8488f0810ff06661.squir...@www.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> 
> On Mon, December 5, 2011 2:02 am, ?? wrote:
> > Len, how is jackd started in Ubuntu Studio currently? If it has an
> > Upstart job, it will be very easy to check if it's needed and launch
> > it (well, in theory).
> 
> Right now most people are using qjackctl to start jack, but I think the
> goal is to have jack running all the time from login to log out if we can
> get all the apps that use sound to behave well with it. (gstreamer, flash
> etc.) I am pretty sure qjackctl can be given any file as a startup file as
> long as it is executable.
> 
> -- 
> Len Ovens
> www.OvenWerks.net

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Re: RE Re: Ubuntu ISO Testing team: New buildnotification-why Ubuntu-Studio-devel Digest, Vol 56, Issue 2

[Luke Kuhn]

The function of encrypted disks is twofold. One is that, assuming an "evil 
maid" multi-visit attack is not the issue, it protects data in the event of a 
police raid or "burglary." The second is that recovery and failure to penetrate 
one such encrypted computer deters future raids and "burglaries," on grounds or 
limited manpower and resources. People don't fish in places where the fish 
don't bite. Doesn't work all the time, but as part of "defense in depth" it 
helps a LOT. They sure as hell never made another attempt to get computer 
information from me.
There is a serious privacy concern in Ubuntu, hopefully not in Ubuntustudio by 
default-Zeitgiest, with so far lacks controls to turn off logging. I remove it, 
accept that Unity's menus won't work at all, and turn ~/.recently-used.xbel 
into a directory. This both protects people I give an unencrypted build of the 
OS I use (because they don't want to be bothered with memorizing a secure 
passphrase) ands removes a file of great use to a skilled attacker if one finds 
a way to read it online.
The other factors you mention are beyond the scope of a default OS install for 
the most part. I will now discuss some of the measures that are used with 
encryption when it is necessary to presume that a national government and not 
just a local police department is the opposition. One should always prepare as 
though the most capable adversary they will face will be the opponent. I will 
now discuss encryption and computer "tradecraft" for this level:
 CRT monitors should never be use where security is an issue, their RF 
radiaiton is far too strong. In rural areas where you can control a large space 
and move back the listening post (LP), RF signals travel a hell of a long way. 
In urban areas they die really fast-but the LP could literally be on the other 
side of the wall, so that's a wash. In the US, the codeword for the defense 
against this mode of attack is "TEMPEST" and a tempested installation is one 
that is RF shielded, by shielding the room, the installation, or both against 
RF leakage.  In the real world, RF chokes on power and other leads, an LED 
monitor, a case with NO plastic panels lacking metal backings, and reportedly 
not using analog VGA cables to the monitor all reduce RF leakage and force the 
LP to be much closer and more easily detected. I've never heard of a TEMPEST 
attack beng sucessfully used by the FBI against any activist in the US. If they 
have it and don't want to admit to it, the data becomes far less useful.
ISP and phone snooping is another matter. No connection registered to the user 
by a real name is safe, no home connection is safe, even wireless broadband 
with GPS jammed and prepaid with fake personal info could be triangulated and 
the right house guessed-or ALL houses in the triangulation zone raided in some 
countries or low density areas. Assume your carrier copies everything you do 
and keeps it forever. Use SSL for any site that supports it. Presumably 
intellegence agencies can crack it, but Carnivore cannot, and neither can your 
ISP. What your ISP cannot read, they cannot pass on to the FBI. the secret 
police, or whoever.
 Just using Ubuntu instead of an Adroid or iOS smartphone and using it on the 
road is a big start, because the latter two OS's have been revealed to often 
contain commercial spyware alled "CarrierIQ" that reports back URL's visited, 
etc to the carriers. Once there, the security forces have access to it. Then we 
can get into MAC address spooking, disposable external USB wifi cards on the 
hardware side, and site selection on the user side.
I would not worry about raw video files being copied over the Internet, that 
requires more bandwidth than most connections have. I suppose the FBI could 
order a cable provider to give them a fast connection into someone's system 
though. Raw photos this might be possible, same for text. Monitor your 
bandwidth, watch for suspicious activity or processes
The "evil maid" boot keylogger attack is harder to implement against Ubuntu 
than against Truecrypt, as everyone's initramfs is a little different and the 
attack script will have to generate it locally without access to 
/etc/initramfs-tools, just the existing initramfs. There are no published 
reports of any intelligence service using this in the field, if this is an 
issue keeping  /boot on a falsh drige on your physical keyring makes this 
attack impossible without access to that keyring. 
The real dangers, assuming you use disk encryption,  are this: 
1: ANY unencrypted email on ANY server containing infomation that cannot be 
told to a cop and a reporter at the same time.
2: A poorly-motivated member of the crew with custody of important information 
snitching under pressure-NEVER share passphrases between users! 
3: :Weak passphrases vulnerable to dictionary or publised-writing attacks, 
widely used by the Secret Service.
4: : Smudges left on touch screens from password entry-this is a known

RE: Re: Re Re: Ubuntu ISO Testing team: New build > notification-why encryption support is needed

[Luke Kuhn]

That's ugly, and means where security is a concern people having to install 
from Flash drives may have to dd the drive full of random numbers and remake 
the installer from the .iso image after installation. We need to make 
ABSOLUTELY SURE that when the installer is used to create an encrypted 
partition, or to open an existing encrypted partition, that there is no danger 
of the passphrase or the LUKS hardware key getting stored somewhere. The only 
way that would happen on purpose would be deliberate sabotage by someone 
working for some nation's security services and working on the project, so the 
code should be vetted by at least two people in countries that do not cooperate 
with oneanother on "security" matters. Mostly accidental stroage would be 
looked for, say in something other than a ramdisk used for temporary storage. 
This would be an issue for Ubuntu as a whole, not for Ubuntustudio or any other 
derivative unless that part of the installer is changed or someone creates a 
security-focussed distro. Going to a 750MB installer image for default Ubuntu 
will certainly complicate that, for Ubuntustudio it's always been a DVD/flash 
requiring image anyway.
Until this is proven safe I suggest installing from DVD's-or from camera cards 
in card readers with the write-protect slide set to read-only.

> Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:34:19 -0800
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: Re: RE Re: Ubuntu ISO Testing team: New build
>   notification-whyencryption support is needed
> Message-ID:
>   <1ecacbb7895b4c75d95d1a040a0ec561.squir...@www.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1



> There seems to be some info stored from boot to boot on the install disk
> if it is writeable. The second time I don't get asked as many keyboard
> questions.
> 
> -- 
> Len Ovens
> www.OvenWerks.net
> 
> 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE Re: Ubuntu ISO Testing team: New build notification-why encryption support is needed

[Luke Kuhn]

Yes there is a reason why encryption would be used with ubuntustudio: 
Dissident, protest and political opposition media makers. I make video and 
audio news and opinion media for progressive movements in the US. There have 
been grand jury subpeonas (which people like me do NOT comply with) and police 
raids on activist media maker's homes. One of those raids in 2008 stole a 
computer with Ubuntustudio Hardy from my house-fortunately one with the media 
files on an encrypted partition! They never returned for a second computer or 
hard drive, other evidence suggests they were never able to penetrate the 
encryption.
Other dissidents in other nations have it even worse. In some countries, a 
dissident media maker with an unencrypted machine could get people killed. In 
my country he could get someone called before a Grand Jury or arrested and 
charged with any of a variety of offenses.  Therefore, photographic, video, and 
audio workflows need to be  on fully encrypted sytems in my line of work, 
without every activist media maker having to learn to be a hacker as well, like 
I had to (but would have anyway). All of my systems are encrypted, for obvious 
reasons.
When I did my 64 bit reinstall from a vanilla Ubuntu disk I had no trouble 
installing to existing encrypted partitions, but then had to wait over 5 hours 
for all the media software I use to download over a slow connection. That was 
followed by hours of custom configuration, all of which a default Ubuntustudio 
install (like what I started from in Gutsy so long ago) saves typical end users.
Due to dangers facing some media makers (even mainstream media in some places) 
there needs to be as litle deterrent as possible to a new user selecting 
encryption, otherwise people in positions like my own, setting up for the first 
time and never having faced a police raid, will say "why bother" until it is 
too late. I've seen entirely too much of that, and that's what keeps the raids 
coming. While "anybody" can install Ubuntu, Ubuntustudio or any other distro on 
encrypted disks themselves, that's not the same as anybody who is simply an end 
user making media being able to do so.
Unfortunately I do not have the Internet bandwidth anywhere (at home of on the 
road)  to routinely download and test entire disk images every few days or I 
would handle this one myself. I would guess that simply making sure nothing 
happens to the partitionining or encryption portion of Ubuntu'd default 
"alternate disk image" should keep this working.
Yes, encryption does slow down disks, but with any processor sufficient to 
handle modern video editing there is plenty to handle encryption. I even got 
away with root filesystem encryption on an expendable  Pentium II laptop I took 
on an especially hairy out-of-town mission!  Also, the newest "sandy 
bridge"(Intel) and "bulldozer" (AMD) all have the AES-ni instruction set to 
speed up disk encryption. Haven't tried one of these chips, and I don't know if 
there are hardware issues with AES-NI that would compromise security either.
The only time I see encryption slowing my disks down on my Phenom II X4 video 
editing machines is when copying a filesystem from one partition of an SSD to 
another. Then I get about half processor usage as the fast disks push 
encryption hard.  If a RAID is needed for uncompressed HD video or a big 
multitrack job, I can see this being a problem.  If a big enough ramdisk isn't 
possible and an unencrypted volume has to be used, I would then have to wipe 
the whole thing afterwards, with zeros after each job, random numbers after any 
"heavy" job" and making sure the partition is just big enough for the largest 
projects, so as to force overwriting the space used by previous work and then 
zeroed out. That's how I treat camera cards, given the lack of encrypted 
cameras. I can also destroy them if I ever get trapped with a "loaded" camera.
As for encryption slowing down a portable laptop with less CPU, laptops are 
routinely stolen or "stolen" and need encryption the most. A good friend had 
three stolen in a suspicious "burglary" while guests were in town, good thing 
they were all encrypted!
One last issue-you may ask "why encrypt the binaries?" The answer is that that 
is the only thing that can write protect them  when an attacker mounts the disk 
from his own live USB stick. It is a lot easier to verify the boot partition 
with a hash check (there are ways to do this, none of them simple but I use 
them)than an entire operating system, and there are a lot fewer places in  
/boot for a keylogger to hide than in the whole operating system.


> On Tue, November 29, 2011 8:00 am, qatrac...@stgraber.org wrote:
> > A new build of Ubuntu Studio Alternate i386 is ready for testing!
> > Version: 2029.1
> > Link: http://91.189.93.73/qatracker/milestones/205/builds/7263/testcases
> >


> Also, is there any reason to test case two (encrypted disk)? It would seem
> to me that this would slow down di

Dual monitors-ATI and fglrx

[Luke Kuhn]

The multimonitor situation for AMD/ATI uers is like this: If you use the open 
source ATI/Radeon (gallium) driver, no problems, everything "just works." This 
sort of open source support is why I use ATI/AMD and not Nvidia cards. The only 
problem is that (as exepcted) opengl rendering of Blender projects is a bit 
slow, although still about 4x faster than CPU rendering on AMD Phenom II x4, so 
what am I complaining about?
The fglrx driver (in precise, anyway) now works in gnome-shell and is suppposed 
to support Xrandr, but doesn't support it very well. I get the usual 
Xrandr/fglrx bug of not being able to move the secodary monitor out of the 
primary monitor, that is being restricted to cloning or partially cloning the 
primary monitor. A secondaery montor inside the primary monitor NOT cloning it 
is an ugly mess with any driver. Trying to set up two monitors in the Catayst 
Control Center is worse-you can set it up easily enough, have to restart X to 
put it into effect-and then gnome-shell crashes, other window managers will 
work. With my card, a radeon HD 5570, the secondary monitor simpy goes 
all-grey, displaying nothing else with any window manager except that during an 
attempt to start gnome-shell it may flicker to the color of the background 
image. 
The only reason with my workflow to ever run fglrx is for fast Blender 
rendering using openGL, in almost real time. This is a factor for my "Fur Wars" 
and similr videos that start with a modified Star Wars crawl made in Blender, 
but a minor one. I put fglrx on a backup partition, can uise it if I need to 
experiment with something in Blender and render multiple times.
At the moment, I cannot switch between two monitors (for video editing, 
open-source driver) and real-time openGL rendering for Blender 3D content 
creation(fglrx driver) from scratch without rebooting. Maybe some way to run 
both drivers in UMS and toggle xorg.cof files?
The modified Star Wars crawl in 1024x600 resolution  is the benchmark I am 
using for comparing drivers in Blender.-- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: Re: Re: bug and solution

[Luke Kuhn]

With all the menu stuff going on and admin applications not even showing up in 
main Ubuntu or gnome menus, I have gotten into the habit of launching things 
like synaptic directly from terminal with sudo. A gui launch errors out 
silently for things like a typo in the password, while sudo in terminal will 
prompt you again. Good passwords have the disadvantage of generating typos.As 
for upgrades, my experience is that it is best not to let the next alpha after 
a release get more than a few days ahead before switching repos, doing the job 
directly in synaptic. This applies of course to my practice of treating Ubuntu 
as a permanent unstable.

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:37:10 -0800
From: "Len Ovens" 
To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"

Subject: RE: Re: bug and solution
Message-ID:
<0fa2a14383a825495f49fd28754d7d38.squir...@www.ovenwerks.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1


On Thu, November 24, 2011 10:10 am, Luke Kuhn wrote:
> I haven't seen any sudo bugs yet, but on single-user
> systems it is common to use the same sudo and root password.

Sorry for the confusion. sudo is fine and works as expected. The software
that does the same thing for gui software called policy kit (pkexec seems
to be the bit that puts the dialogue up) is right now set up to look for
the group admin for that user... but the install user is not in that
group. Anyway, it looks like the way these things are done is changing.


-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: Re: bug and solution

[Luke Kuhn]

What is the effect of this going to be on upgrades? I generally treat Ubuntu 
and its derivates as an unstable distro, keeping repos on the current alpha and 
known good snapshots on backup partitions. My last scatch-install was a 
laborious rebuild of my personal OS using Oneiric to switch to 64 bit, followed 
by immediate update to  Precise, then just a couple weeks old. I haven't seen 
any sudo bugs yet, but on single-user systems it is common to use the same sudo 
and root password. After all, any damage that an online attacker can do using 
one of them can be done using the other, and with only one there are half as 
many chances of finding it by a brute-force attack.

> In precise, we are actually moving away from the admin group, so various bits 
> and pieces still need to be changed so they don't use the admin group, the 
> preseed file included.
> 
> Luke

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

US specific packages, software patent follies and the rise of HTML 5

[Luke Kuhn]

US specific packages? I assume that means compliance with software patents or 
other such restrictions. Assuming no international trade treaty ever leads to 
effective blocking of downloads of "illegal" open source software (even through 
encrypted proxies), I don't see any reason why a (non-corporate) user in the US 
would comply with the patent laws by not using the global, all-codecs style 
packages instead. I have libdvdcss and all the restricted codecs on my video 
editing machines, and even if US law enforcement ever wanted to harass people 
with "illegal" codecs or DVD/blu ray cracking software, my root partitions are 
encrypted anyway under very heavy security.

I understand that a "legal" distro is needed as a "fig leaf" so no ISP in a 
restricted nation can be told that say, www.ubuntu.com has "no purpose" other 
than to defy software patents, which they could if no distro free of restricted 
codecs was available.  Still, the focus of efforts should be on making sure the 
full codec versions of everything work right-and the various Internet forums 
will direct people to the right versions of packages, patents be damned. To me, 
the stripped verisons of things like ffmpeg are for show, the full versions are 
for use. My advice? Make it work, but focus the effort on the full versions.
There is one obvious exception: true FOS-only distro versions, stripping out 
any codec or algorithm that is encumbered, run (for now) by users not needing 
to interact at all with Windows or Apple machines. If I could get the entire 
activist community I serve off Windows, I would publish in open-source codecs, 
because those are played by default in all the Linux distros! Until then, I 
have to bite the bullet and use codecs liberated from the corporate people who 
decided what all those Windows users computers would play be default.
Why this outlook? Beause of "Bug #1" in Ubuntu. So long as a video published in 
a true open-source codec generates errors when sent to a site like Youtube or 
Liveleak, so long as a locally-embedded video with open source codecs won't 
play for a "Windoze" or "Crapple" user without installing extra software first, 
so long as cheap $10 audio players don't play .ogg or even .wav files, we need 
to bust the patents, or the commerical patent guys can bust us just by making 
our media unplayable on most people's computers.
I learned this the hard way back in 2004 publishing audio in .ogg format, only 
to find that people running Windows machines were not playing them because it 
takes longer to install a new program than to play the audio-and if they are at 
work they might not even be able to install a new media player or a new codec 
anyway. The activist work I do requires that the end consumers of the media not 
have to make any extra effort to view or hear it, so I have to ignore codec 
patents.
Eventually HTML5 will fix this, as new browsers will all play open-source 
embeds and Windows machines with browsers too old for HTLM5 fill up with 
malware and force reinstallation and updates. This sets up a race between HTML5 
and anyone wanting to create enforcement mechanisms for codec patents. This is 
probably whey MPEG-LA has reportedly declared that all end users (not 
distributors) are permitted to use the codecs anyway, for not-fear of speeding 
adoption of their competitor HTML5. I seriously hope every patented codec falls 
into disuse by 2020, just as I hope to see music and movies made and 
distributed freely by hobbyists dominate the media someday, displacing 
commerical content.
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 07:40:54 -0800
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: Re: distro installs
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> 
> On Fri, November 18, 2011 11:36 pm, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > On Fri, 2011-11-18 at 22:14 -0800, Len Ovens wrote:
> >> Can a dummy package be made that makes it look like they are
> >> installed? There must be a proper way of doing this.
> >
> > # equivs-control 
> > # gedit 
> > # equivs-build 
> > # dpkg -i 
> >
> > http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-helpers.en.html
> 
> So, from looking at the docs at the link, it would seem that the two extra
> packages need to have their "provides" lines checked to make sure it
> satisfies anything the normal packages provide and then just not ship or
> select the normal packages.
> 
> That sounds too simple to be true ;-)  Next question becomes are the
> "normal" packages separate? or are they included as part of another
> package we also need? Is there a way of not installing a part of a
> package? Or is it easier to just do a second install process that forces a
> writeover. I have had an install that wants to remove not only the depend,
> but everything that depends on it including software I want to use.
> Synaptic is pretty smart.
> 
> Anyway, it would be best not to have to maintain a US specific pack

RE:Re: Volti and GNOME 3, phones, locked phones, and "secure boot"

[Luke Kuhn]

As I said, I've never had or used any form of smartphone due to both the 
expense and the security issues. I carry a dumb phone with the battery out to 
prevent tracking, use it like a mobile pay phone for outgoing calls, and a 
netbook with a copy of my desktop OS (heavily hacked video editing mix losely 
based on Ubuntustudio and GNOME3 with other DE's available) on it. All the 
smartphones I've seen were ones used by others at random.  I do not trust the 
iPhone in particular due to it's location tracking database. This is one reason 
why Linux phones could be a big deal down the road for smartphone users.
 In addition, rooting phones to get control of the board and install Linux 
would prepare people for dealing with ugly UEFI "locked boot Windoze 8 " 
motherboards that might require rooting or even mod chips to boot OS's other 
than Windoze 8 on recycled machines with OEM motherboards in  a few years. 
Aftermarket motherboards are unlikely to be missing options to turn secure boot 
off or even modify it to work with Linux, but guess what happens if we have to 
tell everyone to buy a new board? If we have people rooting phones to install 
Ubuntu or some decendent of it,. when they want to turn an Ivy Bridge machine 
into a Linux workstation (because they now need somethign MORE than a phone), 
and it's one they got from work in 2015, they will now how to root the board so 
they can get rid of Windoze 8.
That may prove to the the real value of touch-enabled DE's-to get onto phones 
and tablets that are locked and have to be rooted, jailbroken, or otherwise 
hacked  today, so Micrsoft can't lock us out of motherboards tomorrow by paying 
OEM's not to allow disabling secure boot. 
> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:51:29 +0300
> From: ?? 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: Re: Volti and GNOME 3
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> >
> > All have to support a traditional desktop as well because that one task at
> > a time interface is NOT suited to multitasking, something some of those
> > phones aren't even capable of!
> 
> 
> You've just never seen REAL linux phones. Just google some Maemo or MeeGo
> videos, or visit a nearby Nokia store and try N9 with MeeGo. After that
> you'll never dare to rant about single-task interface again.
> 
> Here's what I see in GNOME 3's future: Enough extensions to mimic any DE
> > from GNOME 2 to iPhone to Windoze 8 to Windows 95 to whatever Apple is
> > putting on their desktop, all using the same core and the same packages
> > except for the extensions. That way, if I am setting up a Linux box for
> > someone new to Linux, I need only know what they used to use to give them a
> > familiar environment.
> 
> 
> You kinda got that with GNOME2 already. There's a number of Mac clones, a
> number of Windows clones, a number of clones of things nobody ever heard
> about and even some clones of clones, but they all are so unpopular that
> you've never heard of most (or maybe any) of them. And there are good
> reasons for that.
> -- next part --
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: 
> 
> 
>
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Volti and GNOME 3

[Luke Kuhn]

I have installed Volti from a .deb package linked to in the previously 
mentioned story and it works. You need to add a launcher in 
/usr/share/gnome/autostart to start it in GNOME, and add  the line "volti &" to 
the startup file for IceWM. In IceWM no issues, works fine, I would assume the 
same for any DE where the systwem tray and notification area are together, in 
the traditional way. There is a problem in gnome-shell, but not a severe one: 
Because volti puts it's icon in the notification area, in gnome-shell it is 
hidden until you reveal the notification area, something no new user would  
know to do unless they installed it themselves and poked around or saw it 
before. I don't know enough about writing gnome-shell extensions to move it to 
the system tray.
With gnome-shell frippery's bottom panel you have to click on the ! at the far 
right side of the bottom panel to bring up the notification area, adding an 
extra click. Of course, the big desktops in which I use gnome-shell are all on 
sound systems with analog volume controls, and the laptop without such a device 
runs IceWM for previously stated reasons.
GNOME3 has potential, in large part due to it's extension system that allows it 
to be reconfigured for different needs, something I have NOT seen in Unity even 
with CCSM. I think the GNOME team is aiming at a common DE for everything from 
smartphones to workstations, something that really does need to be configurable 
for entirely different workflows. By the time they get that, they no doubt 
assume OpenGL/memory badwidth problems will be a thing of the past as CPU's 
with on-chip GPU's displace the GPU on northbridge/memory controller on CPU 
problem. I guess they expect older machines to run older DE's as software 
rendering has got to be a major load on the CPU unless it can "idle" when no 
window is changing size or popping up subwindows.
Apple really created this situation with their iPhone, and since that is now 
the path a lot of people first use to get online and therefore the iPhone, 
iPad, and their numberless clones will be the OS people are familar with, 
turning up their noses when they can't find what they expect on screen.. 
Windoze has actually been among the slowest to respond to this, their Windoze 8 
tile screen start being something both Unity and Gnome-Shell could do simply by 
displaying their existing menu overlay on startup if they ever fixed their 
menus. All have to support a traditional desktop as well because that one task 
at a time interface is NOT suited to multitasking, something some of those 
phones aren't even capable of! This is not an issue for a specialized studio 
(or engineering, etc) distro, but it is an issue for a mainsteam distro like 
Ubuntu, and for GNOME. This is 1984-1995 all over again, and we don't want 
Linux to become another DOS. Actually, for studio and other specialized distros 
there is another paralleel here: Windows 95 had to include DirectX so game 
developers could use the hardware as they did under DOS and not lose 
performance.
I bring this up even though I do not use smartphones for security reasons and 
tablets because typing on one would destrroy my fingers. I've seen others use 
them and I have in fact come to regard the iOS top bar as "gee-it looks like 
gnome-shell!"
Here's what I see in GNOME 3's future: Enough extensions to mimic any DE from 
GNOME 2 to iPhone to Windoze 8 to Windows 95 to whatever Apple is putting on 
their desktop, all using the same core and the same packages except for the 
extensions. That way, if I am setting up a Linux box for someone new to Linux, 
I need only know what they used to use to give them a familiar environment. At 
a distro intall, it could be as simple as asking a user what type of desktop 
they want, and mostly the same packages would be used, unlike selecting a DE 
today. Of course, they will have to remember Page's :Law, and that's one good 
reason to keep other DE's around for those times when absolute maximum 
persformance is the only need.-- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: Re: Removing Pulseaudio, and overweight DE's affects on performance

[Luke Kuhn]

Where did you get the Volti volume control applet? I cannot find it in Ubuntu's 
repos for ANY currently supported version.
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:09:12 +0100 (CET)
From: "Marc R.J. Brevoort" 
To: Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion

Subject: Re: Removing Pulseaudio, and overweight DE's affects on
performance
Message-ID:

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

On Mon, 14 Nov 2011, Ralf Mardorf wrote:

>> In my experience, the main difficulty in removing Pulseaudio is
>> finding a replacement volume control applet that can sit in a systray.

I've had that problem. The Volti volume control applet will do the 
trick nicely.

Best,
Marc

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Removing Pulseaudio, and overweight DE's affects on performance

[Luke Kuhn]

In my experience, the main difficulty in removing Pulseaudio is finding a 
replacement volume control applet that can sit in a systray. I use qamix aa a 
partial substitute, in the "panel favorites" of gnome-shell with frippery on my 
desktops, and in the toolbar of Icewm on the laptop. This is crude but usable 
for me, we need to perhaps dig up the old code for gnome-volume-control from 
before Pulseaudio was used and get it working in current DE's. 
The other problem, as I've said before, is garbage soundcards in some laptops 
that cannot accept a mono input. That of course is not as big a problem for a 
studio-focussed distro except for users who keep the same OS on all their 
machines as I do, and I simply find the workarounds for the problems that 
produces. Has anybody tried to FIX pulseaudio so it would, say, perform as well 
as Jack?
About the DE's while we are on that subject: GNOME 3 , Unity, and KDE4 are all 
case studies in "page's Law" that software gets half as fast at the same rate 
processors get twice as fast. Doesn't bother my big video editing machines one 
bit,. but running GNOME3 on a netbook is enough to create video playback 
problems in Flash. Although I use IceWM instead of XFCE in my netbook (I'm used 
to it and like it), I can see more and more why Ubuntustudio had to dump GNOME. 
GNOME3 with gnome-shell-frippery does a good job at multitasking and can be 
used like GNOME2, but it's still heavy, maybe even more so than GNOME3 by 
itself. . Any time people have to push a machine to the max, that could be "one 
less track" as another poster put it.
As for Unity, nobody has ever written a replacement menu for it that works very 
well, so to use Unity you have to add a separate dock-yet another process, and 
if it uses opengl and you have embedded graphics on the northbridge with the 
memory controller on the CPU, another contributor to memory gridlock and 
stutter. In fact, on that type of machine, including notoriously the second 
generation Intel Atom, the best thing you can do to speed up the graphics is to 
avoid using opengl for anything but a single application that requires it, one 
at a time, and certainly not using any opengl desktop environment. 

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Pulseaudio and H264/AVCHD video playback

[Luke Kuhn]

While we are on the subject of background processes that are resource hogs, 
Pulseaudio is in my experience among the worst offenders. My intel Atom netbook 
with pulseaudio running would not keep up with the framerate of H264 video in 
360p, 30fps  compressed using avidemux to 800bps, on a 32 bit version of the 
OS. With icewm replacing unity or gnome-shell it almost could but not quite. 
Shut pulseaudio down (you have to make the binary non-executable or it will 
restart!) and it would almost but not quite handle 720p at 25 fps at 2000 bps, 
and in icewm only lag about 1 second out of a 4 minute video at that rate. With 
the 64 bit I now use and no pulseaudio, it will play that 720p/25fps with only 
about 50% CPU utilization, but still bog down at 30fps, again in Icewm because 
memory controller bandwidth is an ugly problem with any 1 channel RAM/video in 
northbridge/memory controller in CPU setup.
That's not too big a deal for Ubuntustudio running on power desktops, although 
a totally standard install of Ubuntu in a netbook should not stutter on a 
standard Youtube or Liveleak video! Maybe with 64 bit those will now keep up, 
though I have not tested Pulseaudio in 64 bit.
What is a big deal is that (again in 32 bit tests) if I ran pulseaudio on an 
AMD Phenom II x4 at 3.8 GHZ, I would get severe slideshowing when trying to 
play back AVCHD files from my video camera! This was true in the original .MTS 
container, in the MP4 container from ffmpeg that got buggy with these streams 
in Kdenlive last summer, or in the .flv containers from ffmpeg that fixed the 
seek bugs in Kdenlive for me. If Pulseaudio was running, I could not play back 
my raw clips in mplayer or totem-gstreamer. Again, shut down (and keep shut 
down) or remove Pulseaudio and the clips play just fine in all of my video 
players!
The only thing is, some computers out there have buggy soundcards so far as  
running ALSA directly is concerned. No problem with the onboard sound on my 
desktops (or they would get dedicated soundcards) but laptops of any kind are 
another story. On the Acer netbook, the soundcard cannot accept a mono input, 
so to play a mono file in Audacious requires connecting it to Jack if not 
running Pulseaudio.
It sounds to me like Pulseaudio needs an entirely new backend from scratch. 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Re: dialy build/codecs

[Luke Kuhn]

I always pull out anything that supports digital rights management, pay music, 
pay software, etc from all of my machines. Ubuntuone (largely due to background 
daemons that consume resources) , software-center(can be used to install pay 
software, banned from my systems), and all of Mono(too much BS) are removed and 
all available A/V codecs as well as synaptic are installed.  I have never heard 
ot mutually incompatable codecs other than versionitis being released.  We 
could of course advise people "consumer or producer, choose one," but that 
makes us too part of the problem. 

If people find that they can't play some pair of files both on the same 
computer booted from the same partition, that is beyond ugly and needs to be 
fixed even if it means renaming some binaries or libraries so they can live 
together or be versioned independantly.  I would simply drop them in 
/local/whatever do deal with this, not using dpkg to install them (done that 
with some other packages in the past), though that does not alway work

About that "Itunes" model, I am very strongly oppposed to distribution of 
DRM'ed files, though remember I am from the "no paid content" side of the 
house.  I won't even have DRM'ed media in the house unless I also have software 
to crack it. DRM doesn't even work anyway, it's a form of encryption with a 
very severe key distribution issue, and as a result usually a very small number 
of keys. Libdvdcss, for instance, can simply brute-force the very old 
"encryption" of DVD's, anything that can play DVD video can try every possible 
key in minutes. It would be like encrypting my hard drive (against law 
enforcement as I do) but accepting the restriction that the passphrase must be 
a word found in the dictionary-and that it would also be used to encrypt every 
file I publish (in my activist work) and every user must therefore have the 
password. Of course, anyone back at the Hoover building with John the Ripper 
and a dictionary would be able to play it too, so what would be the point?

If DRM software/codecs are ever used by Ubuntuone, either the source code will 
have to be published or the software not be GPL licensed. If open-source, I can 
guarantee you that the DRM would be cracked and the crack published before the 
first song was sold.


> Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2011 16:32:53 -0800
> From: "Len Ovens" 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: Re: dialy build
> Message-ID:
>   <6bdcb55cf08d9c6457a337e9869ed396.squir...@www.ovenwerks.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> 
> 
> >> Install failed... seems a lot of our codec packages (libavcodec-extra-53
> >> for example) have to have 0.7.2-1ubuntu1 gone.. does ubuntu1 need to be
> >> deselected? I didn't save the log before I tried a second time...
> 
> > firstly i want to thank you for your initiative to test!  that's
> > bloody amazing, mate :)
> 
> No problem... I have two extra drives for testing... but I am realizing I
> could have done with one. The 40G usb drive could be used with either
> machine I have. The bonus with the new drive in the desktop is that it is
> better for testing audio flow from one kernel to the next... less likely
> to be a bottleneck than a usb2 drive.
> 
> > i do not know if this specifically addresses the problem you are
> > having but i am aware of a library that is in a transitional stage
> > that is probably affecting ubuntu studio at some level.  the package
> > is ia32-lib and i believe it is changing how it is built regarding
> > multi-arch, although there is a good chance that i do not fully
> > understand it completely.
> >
> Could be. However, it looks to me that Ubuntu is trying to get away from
> some of the legally risky codecs by coming up with their own (possibly
> closed source) codecs. I find it interesting it is linked to Ubuntu 1
> (that is a one) which does music streaming. Some of the services are not
> open or free. I would not be surprised if they were headed towards an
> "itunes" like thing with pay per view/listen kinds of stuff. I have
> nothing against that idea... but it may make things hard for some of the
> codecs we need which are not just for consumer use but professional use
> too... that is not encumbered by stuff to keep us from copying our own
> product for example. I am not sure they want an official ubuntu deriv to
> ship without it. But I suspect we need it out for at least some workflows.
> Having a "warning this software needs to be removed to install this other"
> may be good enough.
> 
> > for example, there is an automated email from colin watson that shows...
> > ubuntustudio-meta 0.90 produces uninstallable binaries:
> >  * ubuntustudio-desktop (amd64 i386)
> >  * ubuntustudio-font-meta (amd64 i386)
> >  * ubuntustudio-graphics (amd64 i386)
> 
> Ja, saw that. It accounts for the desktop issue, but not the codec issue.
> I figured the sooner people were aware of extra problems the better. The
> text with the

Re: Last call for Oneiric seeds

[Luke Kuhn]

Audacity is so important for editing everything from video soundtracks to audio 
news reports I cannot see ever getting along without it!
When you are NOT doing work that includes computer generated audio, just doing 
basic sound editing with effects (ruling out gnome sound recorder as a 
substitute) and timeline editing, audacity realy doesn't have much competition. 
Ardour is WAY to complex for someone doing say, radio news, and does not have 
the massive effects list that audacity has either.
It is one thing to not include something in a default install, but would be far 
more serious if it ever disappeared from the repos, or worse, was rendered 
uninstallable when imported from another distro's repos or built from source.  
I have been using Audacity since 2004 and would not consider removing it from 
my machines under any circumstances.  Since it is presumably staying in 
Ubuntu's repos, that means it is essential to make sure nothing is done that 
render audacity either impossible to install or impossible to use. In 
particular, if audacity won't work with Jack any more (1.3.7 worked fine with 
jack, for a while I saved it's binary under the name "audacity-jack"), then 
jack must never become something that auto respawns if killed, as that would 
make it impossible to run audacity.

> From: ubuntu-studio-devel-requ...@lists.ubuntu.com
> Subject: Ubuntu-Studio-devel Digest, Vol 52, Issue 9
> To: ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
> Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:00:54 +
> 
> Send Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list submissions to
>   ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
> 
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>   https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>   ubuntu-studio-devel-requ...@lists.ubuntu.com
> 
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>   ubuntu-studio-devel-ow...@lists.ubuntu.com
> 
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Ubuntu-Studio-devel digest..."
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>1. Re: Last call for Oneiric seeds (Gerhard Lang)
>2. Re: Last call for Oneiric seeds (Ricardo Lameiro)
>3. Re: Last call for Oneiric seeds (Mike Holstein)
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:38:15 +0200
> From: Gerhard Lang 
> To: ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
> Subject: Re: Last call for Oneiric seeds
> Message-ID: <4e4af157.4070...@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed
> 
> Audacitie's cooperation with with jack is disgraceful. But indeed, for 
> it's capabilities I see no comparable linux alternative.
> So I vote for retaining
> Gerhard
> 
> 
> Am 16.08.2011 09:02, schrieb David Henningsson:
> > On 08/15/2011 03:38 PM, Scott Lavender wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 1:50 AM, David Henningsson
> >>  >> > wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Hmm, seeds and that is not my area of expertise, but I seem to be
> >> missing audacity?
> >>
> >> --
> >> David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
> >> http://launchpad.net/~diwic 
> >>
> >> --
> >> Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
> >> Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.__ubuntu.com
> >> 
> >> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> >> https://lists.ubuntu.com/__mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-__studio-devel
> >> 
> >>
> >>
> >> David,
> >>
> >> Audacity was consciously removed from the seeds.
> >>
> >> I would infer that you believe it should included.  May I ask why so?
> >
> > Well, the last time this was up for debate, you asked me to write down 
> > a use case or workflow, and so I did, see: 
> > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/Workflows#Simple_recording_of_concert.2C_conversation_etc
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:15:58 +0100
> From: Ricardo Lameiro 
> To: "Ubuntu Studio Development & Technical Discussion"
>   
> Subject: Re: Last call for Oneiric seeds
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Audacity's jack problem comes from portaudio, to retain cross compatibility.
> It will only show a source or sink when active.  Not optimal for standard
> jack use.  But it is true,  it is a very good editor
> 
> No dia 16 de Ago de 2011 23:38, "Gerhard Lang" 
> escreveu:
> >
> > Audacitie's cooperation with with jack is disgraceful. But indeed, for
> it's capabilities I see no comparable linux alternative.
> > So I vote for retaining
> > Gerhard
> >
> >
> > Am 16.08.2011 09:02, schrieb David Henningsson:
> >
> >> On 08/15/2011 03:38 PM, Scott Lavender wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 1:50 AM, David Henningsson
> >>>  >>> 

Re: Re:Software dictates component choices even in proprietary editing softeware

[Luke Kuhn]

Of course, for the $2,500 price of something like Adobe CS 5.5 or even higher 
price of some of the Avid stuff, you could do a lot of mix-and-match 
experimenting, then copy what you find to work. I don't think every 
workstation, laptop, and old computer I own would collectively add up to the 
cost of one of those pro-level packages.  Which is cheaper-three video cards at 
$80 apiece and a few different soundcards and miscellanious pieces, at worst 
two different $120 motherboards or a $2500 software package that installs on 
$200 worth of pay operating system?
When possible, the results of such experimentation should be published. I can 
say the Radeon 5550 and the Radeon 5570 with open-source gallium drivers from 
the xorg-edgers ppa are not only able to handle the Blender interface, but can 
even handle GPU rendering in Blender at least twice as fast as 4 cores of AMD 
Phenom II.  I do not use nvidia cards for any purpose these days except testing 
the nouveau driver, and don't have any of them fast enough to give it a fair 
test anyway.
If I needed more sound input channels than the three on my board's onboard 
sound, I would buy one cheap soundcard, as I know to have worked well int he 
past with Linux, take it home, and test it. If I needded more channels than 
that, I would then go get more of those cards after first proving one to be 
good. Then I would just need a wrapper for the existing Linux drivers to gang 
them all together to appear as a single big card!  If anyone does this, they 
should publish not only the driver wrapper code, but also what exact cards they 
used.
I do not want to discuss portions of the chipset that handle the signal path 
from the keyboard or the hard drive, as that info could be used by an enemy to 
prepare a malicious bios to serve as a keylogger, otherwise I could publish my 
entire output from lswh. 
If enough people start talking about what works and does not, those blacklists 
and whitelists will become a starting point, and where possible workarounds for 
blacklisted hardware will help people with scrounged equipment. When blacklists 
of drivers are embedded in the OS people need to know exactly where to find 
them so they can experiment, as I had to do when that old Pentium II laptop had 
a blacklisted audio driver that still worked on that particular machine.

Btw. a whitelist at least will be subjective to quality issues.With a fat purse 
it's possible to test tailor-made Apple and Microsoftbased machines. Searching 
the web, I didn't find this for Linux audio,excepted of OEM products for some 
target groups, but not for all audiousers.
  
-- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Software dictates component choices even in proprietary editing softeware

[Luke Kuhn]

My experience has been that if you are building a machine especially to max-out 
open source multimedia editing, components should be selected for how they 
perform with Linux, not how they perform in Windows or anything else.  This is 
no different than many pro video editing packages. Avid used to sell their 
video editors only as complete machines build around their software. When they 
started selling the software by itself, they advised that only specific CPU's 
and videocards be used-and got buckets of complaints when people installed it 
on "unsupported" hardware.  
There is a problem if NO hardware in a category supports Linux, of course. In 
that case we can either find a way to make Linux support the product (like 
ndiswrapper adapting prorietary wireless drivers does), or find a way to mod or 
hop up some other product to fill the gap.
 Sound cards could be physically modded with different connections and mods to 
the analog circuitry.  This would mean starting with the requirements for 
connectivity and for audio quality, finding a card or cards for which it is 
possible to write a driver giving that audio quality and number of channels, 
and then adding a secondary board giving the external connections and signal 
levels. 
If more channels are needed an array of cards feeding an external adapter box 
might work better, rather like some of those multi-graphics card gaming 
machines but for audio recording and playback.
 I have given some though to the inputs that would be needed for an audio 
studio with multiple drum mikes and mikes for each instrument recording all in 
real time to separate tracks, and what I figured would be the solution is 
multiple sound cards on a board with plenty of pci or pci-e slots, two channels 
each from their left and right inputs , plus line and front mic inputs, 
possibly wired through an external box to accept standard cables. Should be 
able to build at least a 12-track physical setup this way with 6 cards,  maybe 
16 physical tracks with 4 cards or even 28 with 7. A driver would have to be 
written to treat all these cards as a single large soundcard with all these 
inputs and outputs.
Publishing the circuit diagrams of the mod boards or adapter boxes would be the 
easiest and most open-source mode of distribution, so long as local production 
is not out of a hobbyist's or a paid techinician's capability.
I think of selecting a computer in general  as being like selecting a gun, and 
the software as the ammunition, which is selected first. High-cost pro audio 
cards, and also the larger, power-hungry video cards, are rarely found and 
scavenged and repurposed machines, they are bought when a computer is built to 
to a job. My advice for dealing with such parts is this:  Ubuntustudio should 
publish a "blacklist" of parts it is known NOT to work with, so people building 
computers for it know not to buy these components. 
In 2009 and 2010 I built two video editing machines to run kdenlive and 
audacity as fast as possible, and to be able to produce simple content in 
Blender. That meant AMD 4-cores back in 2009, the on-board sound on those 
boards as all functions worked fine with linux, and ATI videocards as their 
open-source drivers became effective in 2010. Install my exact package on 
something with different specs, and it may work poorly, maybe not at all if 
nvidia graphics are involved. It will run on the netbook, but only audacity, 
the web browsers, and small res video playback are expected to work there. 
Since the first machine works  well,  I built the second machine to be 
electrically an exact copy.
The real problem with Linux video editors is this: very little support for GPU 
rendering outside of Blender. Blender has only basic video editing included, 
though it can create  sequences from scratch. Cinelerra can use opengl to 
display effects, not to render, and kdenlive doesn't use it at all, so playback 
bogs down when effects are added. With source clips being in 1080i,  this is a 
real issue, and forces the use of the most powerful CPU's available. 
Kdenlive has bugs and issues, but costs nothing and what it cannot do, I can 
create as a separate clip in blender. Since the compression suck, I render out 
uncompressed and compress in avidemux, which runs very quickly on all 4 cores. 
If there were some way to merge the Blender, Cinelerra,  Kdenlive, and avidemux 
codebases into a single "Ubuntustudio Creative Suite" package, while fixing 
multithreading in ffmpeg and using openCL for rendering, we would then have a 
package competitive with commercial video editing suites.  Again like 
commercial stuff, rendering times could easily vary by a factor of 10 to one 
between the "right" and "wrong" hardware!  In this case, ranking hardware for 
desirability would be the approach, rather like gamers with videocards. 
 Scrounged hardware, which I have often used for standalone audio editors and 
web access machines, is a different scenario. Here t

cpu frequency scaling for video editing machines

[Luke Kuhn]

For video editing (and for 3d content creation as well) a different issue 
arises: The need to minimize excess power consumption when not rendering or 
playing the timeline. Video editing is often done on very powerful 4 core or 
even 6 core computers, and these are power hogs, with CPU power dissipation 
alone sometimes as high as 140 watts. 
Although running full speed at idle doesn't mean anywhere near the same heat as 
full load, it can be enough to make the fan noise come up, and in some cases 
the rooms these machines are used in can become uncomfortably hot-I know mine 
does! The last thing I want to do is use more electricity first to fun full 
voltage and multiplier all the time, and make the room even hotter in the 
process.
These machines benefit greatly from using all the power-saving tricks during 
what can be a multi-hour editing session prior to rendering, yet being able to 
throttle up when the timeline is played in something like Kdenlive.
This is not the sort of thing I have any trouble working on and setting up as I 
like, but again we come back to the issue of a new user. If someone sets up a 
video editing workstation with any distro, finding high temps and the fans 
running hard compared to what they did in Windows is a real turnoff, similar to 
complaints about open-source video drivers on big video cards that by default 
have to turn off frequency scaling, again due to performance issues.
Perhaps the installation GUI could ask an installer what the predominant use of 
their machine is to be, and recommend a setting for CPU frequency scaling, with 
an "advanced" option to override? -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Re: Re: Heads up, gcdmaster no longer available in Oneiric.

[Luke Kuhn]

If this situation develops and key apps don't get ported to GTK3, that will 
force someone, presumably a serious user of these apps, to maintain the old 
libraries in a PPA along with those  apps. Until I figured out how to get 
Audacious to play .wav files, I had to keep GTK 1.2 around so I could run an 
old version of XMMS that went unsupported after Gutsy. Ran it most of the way 
though Natty!  If everyone had to do this for, say, audacity, audacious, etc 
etc etc it would simply force the availablity of these libraries, possibly 
though in a hodgepodge of multiple PPA's. If that ever happnes, people will 
have to go out of their way to either avoid versioned dependency on their 
version of GTK2, or will have to resort static compilation. Under this 
scenario, GTK 2 apps would be treated like Blender and  Cinelerra, which simply 
have their own GUI interfaces.Hopefully, this will instead work like what 
happened with kdenlive, one of my key apps. In KDE3.5 it worked but was 
seriously buggy. KDE4 forced a proper rewrite, leading to a far better program, 
and nobody that I know of ever looked back. Took about a year after KDE4 came 
out, though, for that sort of thing to stabilize.Maybe we need to consider the 
12.04 LTS the target for getting this porting right, with developers expected 
to start the work for 11.10 but accept that in some cases it might be 
12.04?Still, Anything really important that is unmaintained or which does not 
cleanly port to GTK3 for some reason probably will end up having to be compiled 
with GTK2 staticly included.
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:10:14 +0200From: Ralf Mardorf 
To: ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.comSubject: 
Re: Heads up, gcdmaster no longer available in Oneiric.Message-ID: 
<1307718614.13487.191.camel@debian>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"On 
Fri, 2011-06-10 at 10:30 -0400, Mike Holstein wrote:> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 
9:06 AM, Ralf Mardorf>  wrote:> Do you keep in 
mind, that a lot of Linux audio users migrate> from distro> to distro, 
regarding to what at the moment fit best to their> needs?> > I never used this 
app, but people who are accustomed to it,> might prefer> it for their 
work-flow.> > Don't make it harder for people to migrate to Ubuntu Studio.> > 2 
Cents,> > Ralf> > > > hey Ralph.. ill just paste in Luke's message that started 
this thread> which contains a very concise explanation of not only why 
gcdmaster is> going away. but also what we can do to keep it around...> > > "Hi 
folks,> I still lirk here and read some discussion from time to time, and one> 
thing I noticed was the daily report of uninstallability issues with> the 
studio images, the latest one involving gcdmaster/cdrdao. I have> fixed that 
issue in the seeds, and am presently uploading a new meta> to fix it in the 
archive properly. The downside is that you lose> gcdmaster. Its worth noting 
that gcdmaster uses old GNOME libraries> which are being removed from the 
Ubuntu images, and even main.> Gcdmaster is also not really maintained 
upstream. Unfortunately this> is not easily fixable, as gcdmaster is built from 
the cdrdao package,> which is in main.> > If you want gcdmaster, then someone 
needs to step up and 1) maintain> it, and 2) port it away from legacy GNOME 
libs.> > Luke"IIUC it depends to the switch from GNOME2 to another DE by 
Ubuntu. Apartfrom the Linux audio community/ Ubuntu Studio community, what 
opinionsare common by the Ubuntu users community?There's a German idiom 
'zweigleisig fahren' (driving double-tracked),that's what I'm doing. In this 
case it does mean I'm using Ubuntu andDebian and I'll wait for what will happen 
in the future.I wonder if Ubuntu drifts too much away from being comfortable 
for audiousage. Imagine an engineer accustomed to Linux audio can't work with 
anyLinux anymore, because a distro doesn't keep common apps.Until now there are 
no issues for me, I'm still comfortable with myMaverick install. Well, Natty 
already is tricky. I've got doubtsregarding to Oneiric.OTOH, for Debian there's 
much more work to set up a DAW, I don't think alot of people will debuild ALSA 
firmware etc..IMO this will cause more and more Ubuntu and Debian derivatives, 
somanpower is scattered to the four winds. We already have severalaudio/art 
distros based on Ubuntu or Debian.Regards,Ralf  
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: Re: GNOME2 function comes to GNOME3, with a third party

[Luke Kuhn]

I am running it right now in a netbook with only 1GB of ram installed, and top 
shows it using only 4.2%  of one GB, which is 42MB. When editing video on the 
big 4 core/4GB ram machines, I tend to keep a close eye on ram usage and would 
have noticed pretty quick if some process  made my conky bar for ram usage sit 
at 25% before even opening kdenlive or avidemux.
Even on this netbook, at idle CPU usage will show at 1% on one 'hyperthread" 
virtual core and 2% on the other. Whoever reported 1GB of ram in use with 
GNOME3 probably had a stuck process within it, perhaps after an update so 
something. My experience is that will normally show itself with 100% use of one 
core and the fan speeds coming up, though. Restarting X or at worst rebooting 
after such an update stops such problems and they don't come back in my 
experience.
I haven't had any resource use problems from any desktop, even GNOME3, 
affecting audio work in Audacity from any desktop environment on my 4 core 
machines, though on those I can actually edit audio while rendering video! 

> Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 00:25:14 +0200
> From: Ralf Mardorf 
> To: ubuntu-studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
> Subject: Re: GNOME2 function comes to GNOME3, with a third party
>   extension   package
> Message-ID: <1307399114.2677.1.camel@debian>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> 
> On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 21:52 +, Luke Kuhn wrote:
> > I'm still playing with GNOME3 UI options, and just found another one, the 
> > "frippery" extensions for gnome-shell.  Since gnome-shell is written 
> > largely in Javascript, a good Javascript programmer can make quite a few 
> > customizations of it. This package includes six changes, of which I am 
> > using five in gnome-shell. They are written explicitly to bring GNOME2 
> > functionality to GNOME3, and by the way are visually stunning-especially 
> > the traditional GNOME menu themed in the GNOME3 transparent smoke. This 
> > package was enough to make me switch from Unity to Gnome-shell with these 
> > extensions added.
> > The pertinant extensions, from the author's website are listed below:
> > "Move the clock: Move the clock from the centre of the panel towards the 
> > right. This isn't a very significant change, but it was the first extension 
> > I wrote. One minor annoyance is that the width of the clock changes with 
> > the time so the indicator icons move about a little.Favourites in 
> > panelPlace a launcher for each favourite application in the panel. It isn't 
> > possible to manage the list from the panel: instead you can add, remove or 
> > move favourite applications in the dash and the panel display will update 
> > to match."
> > "Applications menu in panel: Replace the Activities button in the panel 
> > with an Applications menu. The menu is implemented using facilities 
> > supplied by the shell so it doesn't behave exactly like a normal menu."
> > "Shut Down menu: Replace the Suspend item in the status menu with Shut 
> > Down. The dialog that this invokes includes all available shutdown options: 
> > suspend, hibernate, restart and power off.
> > An a really big one:
> > "Bottom panel Add a bottom panel, including a window list, workspace 
> > switcher and message tray button. Because the workspace switcher is 
> > arranged horizontally the keybindings for changing workspace have been 
> > altered to ctrl-alt-left/right. The message tray button shows and hides the 
> > message tray, as the hot corner is hidden by the panel. Right clicking on 
> > the workspace switcher invokes a dialog to set the number of workspaces."
> > 
> > I am not using the "disable dynamic workspaces" extension, as dynamic 
> > workspaces, always one more than in use, are reliable on my systems.
> > Here's the author's website:
> > http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html
> > 
> > Here's the package:
> > 
> > http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/gnome-shell-frippery-0.2.0.tgz
> > I now plan to download some Javascript tutorials, in hopes of being able to 
> > replace the "applications" text in the upper right corner menu with an 
> > Ubuntustudio button, still triggering the new-old menu system.
> 
> Somebody wrote that GNOME3 occupies 1GB RAM. Could you please run top
> and verify/falsify this statement?
> 
> Thank you in advance!
> 
> Ralf

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

GNOME2 function comes to GNOME3, with a third party extension package

[Luke Kuhn]

I'm still playing with GNOME3 UI options, and just found another one, the 
"frippery" extensions for gnome-shell.  Since gnome-shell is written largely in 
Javascript, a good Javascript programmer can make quite a few customizations of 
it. This package includes six changes, of which I am using five in gnome-shell. 
They are written explicitly to bring GNOME2 functionality to GNOME3, and by the 
way are visually stunning-especially the traditional GNOME menu themed in the 
GNOME3 transparent smoke. This package was enough to make me switch from Unity 
to Gnome-shell with these extensions added.
The pertinant extensions, from the author's website are listed below:
"Move the clock: Move the clock from the centre of the panel towards the right. 
This isn't a very significant change, but it was the first extension I wrote. 
One minor annoyance is that the width of the clock changes with the time so the 
indicator icons move about a little.Favourites in panelPlace a launcher for 
each favourite application in the panel. It isn't possible to manage the list 
from the panel: instead you can add, remove or move favourite applications in 
the dash and the panel display will update to match."
"Applications menu in panel: Replace the Activities button in the panel with an 
Applications menu. The menu is implemented using facilities supplied by the 
shell so it doesn't behave exactly like a normal menu."
"Shut Down menu: Replace the Suspend item in the status menu with Shut Down. 
The dialog that this invokes includes all available shutdown options: suspend, 
hibernate, restart and power off.
An a really big one:
"Bottom panel Add a bottom panel, including a window list, workspace switcher 
and message tray button. Because the workspace switcher is arranged 
horizontally the keybindings for changing workspace have been altered to 
ctrl-alt-left/right. The message tray button shows and hides the message tray, 
as the hot corner is hidden by the panel. Right clicking on the workspace 
switcher invokes a dialog to set the number of workspaces."

I am not using the "disable dynamic workspaces" extension, as dynamic 
workspaces, always one more than in use, are reliable on my systems.
Here's the author's website:
http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html

Here's the package:

http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/gnome-shell-frippery-0.2.0.tgz
I now plan to download some Javascript tutorials, in hopes of being able to 
replace the "applications" text in the upper right corner menu with an 
Ubuntustudio button, still triggering the new-old menu system.

  
-- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Re: Ubuntu Studio 11.10 Oneiric artwork brainstorming/discussion

[Luke Kuhn]

In my experience any wallpaper must not have a tendency to hide icons on the  
desktop, except of course for those users who do not set Nautilus (2 or 3) to 
draw icons on the desktop. I have played with a great many wallpapers but 
always go back to the old KDE3.5 "soft-green"(with my customized UI based on 
Ubuntustudio, theme little changed since Hardy) The reason is this: It is easy 
on the eyes, does not kill sleep afterwards at night with sky blue, and does 
not hide icons. When I used actual forest photographs the icons disappeared 
into the busy underbrush.
I looked at some of the other wallpapers in this thread and the "soft-blue" as 
I call it with ubuntustudio logo looked like one that would work well for a lot 
of people and fit the blue theme.  One work on blue wallpapers: according to 
sleep scientists, they are excellent for people working in the morning but will 
delay sleep long after shutdown for us night folks, as light blue is the color 
the eye uses to signal "daytime." That was why I stopped using blue wallpapers. 
On the other hand, for folks in short winter days there may be nothing better.

> Just as a general observation: I like the simplicity, as I believe the
> current wallpaper is too busy/distracting (as in, it gets visually in
> the way to using the computer). So, style-wise, I like the direction
> of non-obstructive simplicity.
> 
> 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

RE: New icon set to use

[Luke Kuhn]

I just looked at this icon set, I don't really like the conversion to squared 
icons of the iPhone type myself. If anyone wants to keep the old icons, they 
will need to find a way to re-name the icon theme. Simply renaming the folder 
in /us/share/icons never worked in my prior experiments, presumably due to 
theme index issues.
Although I have never built my customized UI into debs as of yet, I wonder if I 
should learn to do so and eventually create a PPA somewhere for the UI I have 
developed during the Natty cycle, under a new name or something. It is the 
existing Ubuntustudio theme with some blue elements changed to a turquise(that 
could be reverted for a PPA), the existing Ubuntustudio icons, GNOME3 with 
compiz/unity(unity will be ported to GTK3 this cycle, simplifying matters here) 
and the cube, and cairo-dock with the original ubuntustudio menu on the left 
and a row of launchers for media apps. I am keeping this interface, with a 
little creative theme renaming(Ubuntustudio-legacy?) it could be installed 
right alongside the upcoming Ubuntustudio UI from a PPA, rather in the manner 
of installing GNOME3 in Natty but far simpler.  
A possible advantage of XCFE will appear in older, Pentium 4 class machines 
doing media work: Avoiding the increased resource use of the newer GNOME 
interfaces, a problem I find ironic given that the whole UI state of flux seems 
to stem from the lightweight proprietary OS that had to be developed for the 
iPhone, a very low powered device. This could help with latency issues. Back in 
2008, I ran the Ubuntustudio theme with XFCE on a Pentium 3 for audio, and had 
just one problem: minimized windows disappeared entirely. I might have kept 
that on bigger machines had it not been for that.

  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Re: Design concepts for Ubuntu Studio 11.10: Cairo-dock vs Docky

[Luke Kuhn]

I haven't tried AWN, I have had good results with the PPA versions of 
Cairo-dock, and they now support the network-manager applet, even with the 
indicator patch (should without it as well.)  They have both a systray and 
notification area, a logout applet, even a workspace switcher that in my 
opinion still needs a lot of work.
I see a report that AWN has a lot more dependencies than Cairo or Docky. Docky 
does not offer anywhere near as good "panel replacement" functionality as 
cairo-dock, at least as of a couple months ago.  Docky had few options for 
replacing core gnome-panel functions, they sometimes didn't work, I found Docky 
was good for one thing: bringing back all the program launchers I used to put 
in gnome-panel, enough to justify it's use in gnome-shell or unity, not enough 
to replace the previous panel.
The original reason I switched to cairo-dock was to allow removing all of mono 
from my systems, but I found cairo-dock far superior for graphics, 
configurablity, and function. It also seems to consume less system resources 
then Docky, being much less likely to appear in my Conky setup among the top 
four CPU users. The version in the Ubuntu repos at that time had bad opengl 
bugs when used with the opengl renderer, but the developers had just released a 
new  version to their PPA, which solved the problems. Don't know if that has 
reached the ubuntu repos yet.
The real "killer applet" for cairo-dock, in my opinion, is the main menu applet 
which calls up the entire Ubuntustudio menu set if it is installed, and can be 
set to use the "distributor-logo" icon instead of the default icon. That means 
having an Ubunbtustudio button that works, and which can be put on the left 
side of the string of icons. 
With as many windows as I often have open editing audio, video, and stills for 
titles all at once, I find the "cube" plugin for Compiz to be the best 
workspace manager I've ever tried-even when using two monitors.
> Subject: Re: Design concepts for Ubuntu Studio 11.10
> Message-ID: 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> So in tinkering a bit this weekend it looks as though AWN brings ALOT
> of depends. I'll look into what is actually needed. (ie if i can just
> pull actual depends and not recommends and file any depends that
> actually aren't needed) Also, there's no currently
> functioning/packaged network manager applet.
> 
> Docky doesn't accomplish as much of the "panel replacement" requirements as 
> AWN.
> 
> So, going forward in the coming weeks I will simply try to copy our
> GNOME UI using XFCE.
> 
> This will get me more familiar with how XFCE packaging settings work.
> We will still look toward a new custom UI.
> 
> I intend on calling for artwork and reaching out toward the
> Xubuntu-devs in the next week or so.
> 
> -- 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Re: Short version: Possible UI cairo-dock/Unity/compiz

[Luke Kuhn]

If Ubuntustudio goes to XFCE, it should be no harder to install GNOME3, Unity, 
and cairo-dock in 11.10 or 12.04 than it was to install XFCE in 
ubuntustudio-hardy, as I in fact did for a slow 500MHZ web-and-audio editing 
machine.
 By 11.10, certainly by 12.04,  they should all be in the Ubuntu repos and not 
in PPA.  If nobody else mantains the Ubuntustudio theme for GNOME 2 and for 
GNOME 3, I will locally keep it working myself, porting over any changes from 
the XFCE (or whatever) version that suit my fancy and hopefully finding a place 
to publish the result.  I've yet to build debs, though at various time I've had 
to compile things like audacity or even kdenlive from source. Most of my own 
code is shell, modded images, plymouth script code, modded schemas, that sort 
of thing. I've edited C source when Audacity had that compressor bug a few 
years back and I had to set my compressor settings as the default.
Wayland could get interesting, could be some fancy session management if Unity 
uses it, GNOME shell does not, XFCE does not, and you want to toggle between 
them. Again, I will keep the whole works installed and make it work somehow. 
  -- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel

Short version: Possible UI cairo-dock/Unity/compiz

[Luke Kuhn]

A longer version of this with screenshots was too big for the list, so here's 
the short of it:
Here's my suggestion for the next UI, I am using a version of it right now.

Cairo-dock with main menu button on the left, icon for menus ubuntustudio 
button.  This ishow I got back the full Ubuntustudio menus that are lost in 
both gnome-shell and Unity.
Compiz/Unity, compiz outperforms Mutter  and is more configurable
Apply my bugfix in ubuntustudio-look to get white text in Unity:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntustudio-look/+bug/741331
Port ubuntustudio theme to include gtk3, I am using a rough version but have 
gtk2 and gtk 3 apps looking almost alike.
When GNOME 3's version of nautilus is brought in, set it to manage the desktop 
and draw icons, will work essentially the same as the previous nautilus. I am 
using it now, along with GNOME3 versions of everything I use for which they are 
available except GDM and the network manager. I can run Unity or gnome-shell 
with almost identical function and nearly the same appearance.  
-- 
Ubuntu-Studio-devel mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: 
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel