Presentation + A debian-based for audio creation and production, stage technics and video blend (or "the future of TangoStudio")

[Aurelien <orl@ammd.net>]

Hi all of you,

First, let me quickly present myself: I'm Aurélien Roux, member of the
french Free and Freak Arts Cooperative "AMMD", in which I work as a
multitask guy: musician (in several project implying free softwares),
sound guy (we own a studio with a Debian-based workstation), teacher for
the "use of GNU/Linux for musical creation, live-diffusion and
production", as well as for stage lights management, and sys-admin/dev
(we have developped several pieces of free software - mostly crappy - in
the contexts of the artistical projects we care about, and we also
patched several others for the same purposes).


I'm thinking for several years about "building a real-debian-based
distribution for audio creation and production, stage technics and
video" that would fit my needs, and that I could advice to my students,
friends, ...
I've been testing several others distributions like UbuntuStudio,
64Studio (when it existed), kxstudio, AVLinux, but all of them presented
some problems I finally had to solve by myself, and I finally always
switched back to Debian and customized my system the way I need.

There is an exception, though, called TangoStudio, a distribution created
several years ago, based on Ubuntu, and which was really a good
distribution, which I could advice to my students as it was both
functionnal, stable, free (DFSG) and easy to use/install (whereas Debian
official cannot be adviced for audio pruposes to someone beginning).
TangoStudio's main dev has stopped to work on it in April, and by that
time a discussion occured which resulted in the idea of keeping it
alive, but to work on a 2.0 version, based on Debian. 
We're several people who want to imply ourselves in it, with
different profiles, but let's say I'm probably the most informatic of
them.


I've been searching for some days the solutions we might chose to build
such a distribution, and after spending time on simple-cdd, live-build,
or again remastersys, Charles Plessy finally told me to check Debian
Pure Blends, and I must admit what I'm talking about is clearly a blend.
After looking a bit, it seems to fit perfectly an existing blend, which
is the Debian-Multimedia one, and from the discussion I had with some of
you on IRC this morning, I think I'm not wrong.


So, here it is, I'd be interesting in knowing whether that project could
enter that blend, and myself at the same occasion. It's a true question
for me as I'm just discovering that blend stuff, and I don't want to do
some mess in something already working, or whatever.


There are also some people wanting to involve (semi-dev like me, or 
bêta-testers, or again people with communication/web skills, the ones who
were involved in TangoStudio). From the discussions on IRC this morning,
it seems that blends shouldn't be restricted to dev only, but could also
be opened to "specialised users", so they could join the blend too, but
once again, I don't want to do too much mess.



To end up, we're currently listing all the features that were in
TangoStudio and that appear to us as "essentials" for that type of
audio/lights/video specialised users. The list is not complete by now,
but clearly, it has to deal with:

- having realtime property, priorities, memlock, open file numbers and
  so on preconfigured,
- avoiding pulseaudio by default
- having several packages not in debian yet (Non quadrilogy, Tapeutape, 
  Tranches, Q Light Controller...), and maybe having an experimental
  branch for bleeding-edge softwares to be tested ; also having several
  packages compiled with different options from Debian official (this
  might be discussed)
- a (graphical) installer with more options/questions than it has by now 
  (like what GUIs do you want: XFCE, LXDE, TouchScreen GUI, none, or
  again what softwares pack should be installed at installation time:
  audio production, audio for live, video, base-system, and so on),
- a selection of preconfigured WM from the Light-Gnome that TangoStudio
  had, to a very light Openbox, without forgetting that touchscreen
  thing which is more and more used in live conditions (sound guys often 
  can't make the difference between an OS and the WM they use)

and first of all, this "blend" or "distribution" or "Debian Custom"
should be packed as iso files, so that anyone might install it easily
(as TangoStudio did).


Well, here it is. It was long, sorry for the convenience, and
congratulations if you read until there!

Regards,

-- 
Aurélien