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Progress on Plasma

ubuntustudio.org

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Re: Progress on Plasma

#91

Post by aibara »

kevinherron wrote: post #63
flyingpenguin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to defend Gnome because I also can't stand it over KDE most of the time, but I think GNOME is built for one actually useful thing... laptops. Gnome feels good on a computer with a single small display.

I actually find that GNOME is worse on laptops. My X1C6 is running at effectively 1600x900 and the amount of vertical space wasted by the height and padding of GNOME/GTK titlebars and widgets drives me crazy. With KDE on a laptop I just set up the dock vertically on the righthand side and I'm good to go. GNOME's workspace switcher/overview thing is better than anything KDE has though. It's much closer in function and…

Maybe there's some extension to fix this now, but I always hated how GNOME's workspaces were just small boxes on the opposite side of the overview button/hot corner. And even more so that they were a row, not a grid. KDE's exposé-like grid that separates all the windows on all the workspaces is so much more useful to me (not sure if that's enabled by default though).

Re: Progress on Plasma

#92

Post by brnt »

Jonnax wrote: post #3

Personally I consider the KDE the only DE that feels like it can compete with an OS like Windows or OSX. It's just a lot of small things that add up to make it feel cohesive. Like how the file explorer has a built in terminal that follows the folder you're in. A lot of people call that philosophy bloat. But honestly I've got a PC with 32 GB of RAM and a laptop with 16GB. Like the Ubuntu Studio people have said 50MB m…

What KDE can compete with I don't know, but I do know its the only DE I can stand and actually enjoy using. And I compare it not only with Gnome, but Windows and MacOS too. Highly recommend you take a look if you don't know it (recently).

Re: Progress on Plasma

#93

Post by type0 »

mixedCase wrote: post #71
simonh wrote: post #59

Why is it that the basic unit of distribution for anything Linux is a Distro? Want to serve web applications? Here’s a server distro. Want to work on penetration testing? Here’s a distro. Want to develop embedded systems? Another Distro. Creative arts? Distro again. The OS level fragmentation of Linux is maddening, when you consider that what these actually all are is different operating systems. Why does the Ubuntu…

Some people want or need a tailored experience that they don't have to configure much if at all. e.g. making Linux suitable for near-real time audio work, restricting Linux to a set of well-tested stable packages for high uptime, making it as close to a standards desktop experience where the expectations are set by Windows and MacOS, making it sandbox absolutely everything by default because you have reasons to be ex…

> I use Arch btw.

Why not Gentoo? It's Fun Too

Re: Progress on Plasma

#94

Post by brnt »

laumars wrote: post #50
bananamerica wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you said, you got a PC with 32GB of RAM and a laptop with 16GB.

I'm still rocking a 7 year old Samsung Chronos with 8GB RAM and KDE5 flies. There used to be a time when the real world footprint between KDE and XFCE was significant but that's not been the case in a long time. These days the footprint of your average desktop chat client has dwarfed the difference in memory usage between most of the major desktop environments. So if you're looking for places to cut corners that woul…

I'm using KDE (Kubuntu 20.04) on four laptops turning 10 this year. They are AMDs first gen APU, so they were nothing fancy when they came out. KDE runs just fine, with animations. Main thing to upgrade was an SSD for a really speedy setup.

Re: Progress on Plasma

#95

Post by andai »

zests wrote: post #39
andai wrote: post #7

People who use KDE, what's your favorite distro? I wanna give ita shot.

Why does choice of desktop environment impact choice of distro? I ask as a question out of my own ignorance. I started with arch and I just bolt on whatever desktop environment or window manager I want.

I like to get a comfy "out of the box" experience, which can differ quite a bit between distros, especially how smoothly it all fits together.

Re: Progress on Plasma

#96

Post by laumars »

brnt wrote: post #94
laumars wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still rocking a 7 year old Samsung Chronos with 8GB RAM and KDE5 flies. There used to be a time when the real world footprint between KDE and XFCE was significant but that's not been the case in a long time. These days the footprint of your average desktop chat client has dwarfed the difference in memory usage between most of the major desktop environments. So if you're looking for places to cut corners that woul…

I'm using KDE (Kubuntu 20.04) on four laptops turning 10 this year. They are AMDs first gen APU, so they were nothing fancy when they came out. KDE runs just fine, with animations. Main thing to upgrade was an SSD for a really speedy setup.

That's the one upgrade (SSD) I did too.

Re: Progress on Plasma

#97

Post by mih »

komuher wrote: post #46
andai wrote: post #7

People who use KDE, what's your favorite distro? I wanna give ita shot.

arch

Another arch-er here.

The main reason I moved to arch was KDE Plasma 5. When it first came out version 5, was buggy, but usable enough to be a daily driver. A rolling release made it easy to get the latest updates and I haven't needed to revisit my decision since the last 5 years.

Re: Progress on Plasma

#98

Post by blinkingled »

cycloptic wrote: post #47
blinkingled wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but I hope it's not the same kind of resources - https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HarfBuzz... Gnome developers have their head buried deep and firm in sands at this point.

Harfbuzz isn't a GNOME project. It's used by GNOME, KDE, Chromium, LibreOffice, and several other projects. The entire open source text rendering stack depends on it at this point.

https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2019/05/25/pango-future-dire...

> Using Harfbuzz for font loading means that we will lose support for bitmap and type1 fonts.

It's not as straight forward.

Re: Progress on Plasma

#99

Post by fit2rule »

qppo wrote: post #18
fit2rule wrote: post #4

As a longtime user of Ubuntu Studio on a very productive DAW, this is welcome news - XFCE has certainly been a great choice for the last few years, but KDE has a lot more to offer, especially now the resource usage is comparable. I have a feeling it'll also sway MacOS DAW users to take a closer look at just what Linux has to offer pro audio users - amazing latency specs, even when compared to Mac, which has tradition…

Is this a joke? There's so much overhead in getting a working setup compared to MacOS, and only one of the major DAWs even runs natively on it. The tools are far from "excellent" compared to the offerings on MacOS and even Windows. I can't even get the Jack server to start on my Ubuntu machine. It's not snobbiness, the software isn't there and what is there is user hostile. I know the reply to this comment is "have y…

This is not a joke, but I don't think you could've even tried Ubuntu Studio as a professional - seems more likely you sniffed at it as a hobbyist and couldn't deal with it.

I haven't found it to be any hassle to get a working, stable and low latency setup with Ubuntu Studio AT ALL, but then I've chosen my hardware properly: Presonus for everything. Its amazing, and very good latency - exceeding even the results I get when I put a Mac on the same chain.

56+ channels of digital audio, countless external synths and effects, literally hundreds of onboard synths and fx and processing plugins, including some stuff that you won't get elsewhere. (Plus: sources for everything in case a professional engineer in our studio gets the urge to extend functionality between sessions...)

Yes, it works out of the box very well. Far less stress than getting a recent new UAD acquisition going on our iLok'ed Mac DAW, even.

(Catalina, FFS!)

>On Mac I install software and double click it. I plug in my interface.

All you do with Ubuntu Studio is install it and maybe do a package update using standard onboard tools. After this, the system is ready to go, out of the box, without too much fuss - all the apps you need to start recording multitrack professional audio - nothing extra to install, no iLok, and literally hundreds of amazing plugins, fx, synths, and so on to explore, already installed.

Ardour is easily a productive professional DAW, like any other, and REAPER is even native on Linux now, with a very easy single binary to download and double click .. matching your user needs on MacOS, even.

You should really give it a try if you haven't done so yet. Your prejudice for the mainstream might be keeping you from having an honestly astonishing experience.

Re: Progress on Plasma

#100

Post by fit2rule »

veridies wrote: post #52
qppo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a joke? There's so much overhead in getting a working setup compared to MacOS, and only one of the major DAWs even runs natively on it. The tools are far from "excellent" compared to the offerings on MacOS and even Windows. I can't even get the Jack server to start on my Ubuntu machine. It's not snobbiness, the software isn't there and what is there is user hostile. I know the reply to this comment is "have y…

I agree with you, unfortunately. Obviously Linux has a great deal of flexibility, but the basic tools one relies upon for audio editing either aren't there or are significantly handicapped. I once tried a basic project idea on my linux laptop to see how well I could get it to work; after three days it was almost usable. The same project took me an hour on my Mac with Logic Pro X.

Either your experience is really not so up to date, or you are being disingenuous about your own professional skills with Ubuntu Studio. Perhaps you have shitty hardware that requires vendor proprietary drivers - I don't. All my digital I/o is supported by Linux out of the box on JACK. I don't have to configure anything to get my 56+ channels of digital I/o (Presonus) working - just wire up to JACK and get on with work.

Another thing: in my configuration, REAPER runs better on Ubuntu Studio than it does on Windows - and not to forget that out of the box you have everything in a base Ubuntu Studio install, ready to go. Literally hundreds of plugins, already installed. Tons of usable DAW apps onboard, ready to go. No iLok, no downloads, no Catalina-style upgrade disasters disabling everything that was once working - oh, but we do have sources for everything, though.

Now, what you describe matches my experience with Mac recently, specifically after a Catalina upgrade in which absolutely nothing worked and that particular part of the studio was not production-ready for days of paid customer time until it all got sorted. Good thing we had REAPER on Ubuntu Studio to use for tracking while a junior engineer struggled to get the MacOS DAW back in shape ..

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