[Ardour-Users] not upgrading...

[Ralf Mardorf]

Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
> On 12/16/2009 11:53 PM, Mark Greenwood wrote:
>
>> Get it working. Then leave it alone. Do not think that the latest new
>> feature will help you bring your ideas to life - it will not. It will
>> only take up your time, time that could be spent playing music.
>>
>> I know professional studios who still run Atari STs with Cubase
>> version 1, because it works. They're not interested in the latest
>> features, they're interested in making music.
>>
>> Linux is a marvellous thing, but getting a Linux DAW to work is a
>> large investment of time. Once you have it working, leave it alone.
>> Leave it alone until the hardware stops working. It's the only way.
>>
>> This is my advice. See rule 2.
>
> sound advice, certainly. this approach will keep users sane who don't 
> want too much of their energy tied up with computing issues.
>
> and here's the *but*:
> it doesn't really work in an open-source ecosystem, if you want 
> support from developers and exchange with fellow users, because the 
> latest and greatest is where it's at, with all the associated loss of 
> productive time.
>
> in my view, time spent on getting the latest updates to run (and 
> filing the appropriate bug reports en route) is my free software 
> license fee. in doing so, i lose studio time, but i contribute 
> directly to the improvement of the software, by finding bugs and 
> helping (and getting help from) others on mailing lists and irc.
>
> that does not invalidate your advice, though. to each their own.
> but can i suggest that the less people follow the latest development 
> and provide feedback and quality assurance (yes, that's us who have to 
> do it :), the more they should be encouranged to contribute financially.
>
> 0.02€,
>
> jörn

Multi-boot ;). "Never change a winning team!" I would recommend to have 
a Linux installation that, if possible, is fine and to keep it untouched 
(and to have some backups too), but as Jörn hint at, the Linux community 
needs users to test software and to write bug reports. I'm testing 
Qtractor on Suse and 64 Studio and I do agree that it sometimes is to 
time-consuming, thus I allow myself sometimes to have a rest for 2 or 3 
weeks, but then I again will test latest version each day or several 
versions at one day, just by making music. Doing this often isn't a 
PAIN, but a pleasure, because very often developers just eliminate bugs, 
that especially occur on my system. There are two sides to every 
question ;).
Dunno, but I guess it will be possible to have a stable and a latest 
version of Ardour parallel installed on one system, at least it will be 
possible by having a chroot, but maybe a --prefix= or something similar 
easy to do, would work too.
Btw. virtual machines and chroot aren't the way I prefer, also different 
versions by --prefix=  at least can conflict because of dependencies. I 
guess a multi-boot is the most comfortable way to keep a stable set up 
and also to test latest Linux software.

My 0.02€,
Ralf