azslow3
Why Komplete Kontrol is not going to be more popular than Logitech Gaming Keyboard? No way, never...
 

What's this have to do with the price of tea in China?  
Of course Komplete Kontrol won't be as popular as a gaming keyboard.
We (DAW users) are a small fragment of the general-computing population.
That gaming keyboard will be nowhere near as popular as a conventional (business) keyboard.  
 
Nobody is saying Linux isn't valuable...
The beauty of Linux is it's flexibility.
The "Achilles Heel" of Linux is it's flexibility.
It's just not a full-featured DAW platform.  That's thousands of man hours away.
 
 
 

Ok Im confused
http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-windows-10-will-not-be-sold-as-a-subscription/
 
Microsoft: Windows 10 will not be sold as a subscription
At its press event today, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users during its first year of availability. There was some confusion, however, when Microsoft's Terry Myerson started talking about Windows 10 "as a service." Did that mean that after that first year of free availability, Windows 10 would cost an annual fee? I asked Myerson for clarification after the presentation, and he confirmed that there will be no additional fees attached to Windows 10, whenever you buy it.
 
Myerson clarified that Windows 10 users will still get free updates and support for the lifetime of the OS, exactly like past versions of Windows (like XP and Windows 7's Service Packs, for example). There's no subscription model for updates or support or continuing to use the OS. Myerson's reference to Windows "as a service" simply meant that Microsoft plans to update the OS with smaller, more regular updates rather than the big, chunky updates of past Service Packs.
 
A year after Windows 10 is first available, it will no longer be a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users. Microsoft will then sell Windows 10 the same way it has sold past versions of Windows. MS hasn't set a specific price yet, but Myerson said the price will likely be comparable to past versions of Windows. Windows 8 costs $120 on Amazon, for instance.
 
Update: It seems there's still confusion. It is very clear from this post that for the first year it's available, you can upgrade to Windows 10 for free if you have Windows 7 or 8. You will not pay for it. After that year is up, nothing will happen to your Windows 10 license. If you do not upgrade within that year, however, you will have to pay for an upgrade. The offer expires after a year, not the upgrade.
 

The thing about Linux folks is they are endlessly curious and inventive. It seems more about the journey of creating something useful as opposed to striking it rich. As I said upthread I'm willing to bet with the release of Bitwig a lot of dudes are hacking away at builds to cater specifically to audio (there are already distros that do this that gswitz told me about that although probably not up to what most of us need it shows that the community is willing to figure this type of stuff out and offer it up to the world for free/cheap).
 
Now that they have an extremely robust DAW to tinker and test their distro, tools, apps, drivers, etc with I'm guessing the quirks and gaps in the Linux platform for audio that have made it impractical thus far are going to get sorted. Seeing as how Linux is kind of modular and obviously open source what makes it an excellent platform for task specific things like web servers and databases could make it a much more streamlined backbone for audio.
 
The challenges would likely be...
 
Interface and MIDI drivers but many of the generic stuff they put out for other hardware works great so that shouldn't be a huge issue... especially if the manufacturers play along (and they now have a good reason to with Bitwig out).
 
Getting VSTs and other stuff to work but since many people seem to ALMOST get these types of things working using Wine if the coders created a version of Wine or something similar dedicated to plugging the holes that currently exist then that's solved.
 
Making sure that they pay specific attention to hardware interactions so everything runs smoothly like HDD/RAM/CPU/Ports all working in sync without any disruption.
 
By removing all the extra frivolous crap MS and Apple put into their OS's to serve the masses and starting with a simple, basic build that ONLY deals with audio (but that can have extra stuff added from the repositories as usual) it could end up being a WAY more trouble free for recording/mixing than Windows or OSx could even dream of acheiving with their "One Size Fits All" approach.
 
And since it's open source with a strong, highly intelligent/skilled community when problems arise there is no patenting/licensing/corporate secrets crap holding back advancement (well not as much).
 
Of course I could be totally wrong but it's nice to think about.

jih64

Doktor Avalanche

Hardware support? I have pretty much everything working.

Doktor Avalanche
 
As soon as I can get Platinum working in Wine (almost there not quite)
 

 
My point exactly
I have everything working perfectly, and didn't have to do anything but double click to achieve that, not hours, days or weeks or more of messing around trying to get something to work :)
 

Doktor Avalanche
 
About time you installed it again, works well even for windows users and straight out of the box
 
 

 
lol, no thanks, been there, done that, brought a tshirt and coffee mug, literally. And from my experience, and by your own admission above, it certainly does not work "straight out of the box", not for things other than the basics. There is no comparison to be honest.
 

Very strange conclusion. How many Linux or Apple apps do you have running in Windows? From that can we safely conclude Windows does not run very well?

And those who are banging on about driver support Linux has excellent support, in a lot of cases the drivers are better than windows. Those saying it's a toy or too fiddly haven't installed it recently. That old reputation needs to go.

As I know nothing about operating system care and feeding, nor can I code, I am perfectly qualified to comment
 
I've always felt the operating system was something to leave as soon as possible so you can get into your application. If I boot up Live on a Mac or Live on Windows, I'm running Live - not OS X or Windows. Sure, Live depends on those underpinnings, but I don't care what the underpinnings are. The program acts the same way.
 
This forum is proof that Windows was not designed with high-level, professional audio streaming in mind. Look at all the tweaks and conflicts we have to deal with to "bend" Windows to our liking. Although the Mac is better in many respects from the OS standpoint, it has other limitations.
 
I've always thought it would be great if someone came up with a Windows variant that stripped away all the crap we don't need and was optimized specifically for media applications. You would dedicate a computer to running it, and all it would do is run audio and music software and go online. It would be conceptually like an MCI 24-track...a box that does one thing, but does it well.
 
Maybe a "Linux Media" operating system would do this. Or maybe not. What do I know?

Well the Ubuntu studio distribution trashes all over windows for latency. It's especially built for low latency. Many of the drivers are far better written than windows versions., esp the open source ones.

Doktor Avalanche
Well the Ubuntu studio distribution trashes all over windows for latency. It's especially built for low latency. Many of the drivers are far better written than windows versions., esp the open source ones.

What's the lowest round-trip latency you can achieve under that distro?

Can't answer that right now (I'm using Sonar in windows )... it's significantly lower... I'll have a go when I get a chance.... 

I'm only really starting out with Linux stuff and I've only played with the most consumer friendly (ie: Windows dum dum) version of Ubuntu and my experience is... it is not as smooth for many thangs than my Win7 install (on my laptop which is me gen use machine). However once it is up and running there are certain things that are WAY faster. Most notably data transfer. I can move files around MUCH quicker on the same system in Ubuntu than Windows and writing data to disk seems faster. Other stuff like internet load times, boot up, starting programs seems to take longer.
 
I think if I got SMRTerer about Linux and did a custom build I could get it running smoother but I don't have the time or skills.
 
My point is though that I think if someone, somewhere really put some effort into creating a solid distro for modern music production the fact that data can be moved around so smoothly and quickly (which why it is desirable for web servers and servers in general) it could be absolutely awesome for streaming audio.
 
I am no tech though. I just think it is worthwhile for a curious and adventurous company like Cakewalk with a curious and adventurous consumer base (like us Sonarites) to explore the benefits of Linux.
 
Heck I bet many of the Bakers are Linux nerds who could knock off a solid distro specifically for Sonar for us as a hobby project. The userbase could help too.

The thing is, there are just as many (if not more) Windows users who are endlessly curious and inventive too. There's a huge amount of free open source software available for Windows. I don't know exactly what % of the market Windows has worldwide but I'm pretty sure I've read it's somewhere in the region of 90%. That's a lot of users, and a lot of tinkerers. I'm not saying Linux doesn't have its place, but it will always remain a niche market. 
 
I'm sure there are Linux builds geared toward audio Beepster, and I'm sure they will get better. But the reason why they will remain a small niche is that the number of people who use their computers purely for audio is very small. I'm pretty sure most people reading this do most of their computing on the same computer their DAW is installed on. I have a laptop I use for business tasks but for everything else, I use my big beast of a desktop, primarily because it's big and powerful and a joy to use. I've tried editing photos on my dinky little laptop and it just annoys me. So my consideration is not just for audio but for all the other software I run on it. 
 
I don't think the profit motive is a bad thing when it comes to software development. When you have a coherent team of full time developers working in close proximity with each other under a unified design strategy with a steady stream of cash, you're going to end up with a far more polished and usable product. 
 
One thing I've found about open source software is that the documentation is usually not up to scratch. You get the feeling it's been written as an afterthought by tech-minded people who aren't trained in the art of explaining something clearly to the layman. For comparison, look at the documentation available for Adobe's stuff. Well written manuals and a wealth of professionally produced tutorial videos available free for users on their slick, expensive website. That's the difference between open source and a commercial company with large support and marketing budgets.