OSNews

1. A computer product is 'dead' when it's no longer in production. Something like AmigaOS, comical though its adherents may be, is still not technically 'dead'. BeOS is, no matter how many people use it. If the OpenBeOS people manage to get a working 1.0 out the door it will no longer be dead, but it may be as irrelevant as AmigaOS. And this is coming from someone who still writes Atari 2600 code every now and then Latin's a dead language too even though lawyers and priests like dropping in a phrase here and there. It doesn't make it less useful, just less *used*.

2. I've been spoiled by Cool Edit as well, but when I compare Audacity to the 1.x Cool Edit releases I remember (1.34 and 1.52) it stacks up pretty well. It certainly isn't Cool Edit Pro, but I have done already done multitrack projects in the 0.9 versions without missing any features. Nonetheless, I can't advise anyone doing audio professionally to use Linux, not just for a lack of apps (I've heard tell that people have gotten Soundforge working under Wine... whoopee) but for a lack of driver support for things like Darla/Gina/insert woman's name here audio cards. I would also not recommend Windows XP; the few pro audio engineers I know who don't use a Mac are using Windows 98SE, believe it or not.

But of course most users of audio software aren't professional at all (hence the market for products like Cool Edit 2000) and Audacity can fit that market pretty nicely just like the Gimp fits the Paint Shop Pro market to a T. The pro vertical app stuff will come later, as it already has in Hollywood. And keep in mind that only 3-4 years ago, you were nuts if you weren't using a Mac for audio engineering. Stuff changes, and it may be that something more like Ardour ( http://ardour.sourceforge.net ) is where Linux pro audio will come from if one of the big Windows or Mac players doesn't make a port first. People are using Linux to produce songs from start to finish, and while few if any of them are pros, it was the hobbyists that popularized first DOS and then Windows for audio despite the Mac's dominance.

3. It never ceases to amaze me just how bad audio is using off-the-shelf sound cards under Windows. Across the room from me is a 900MHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM, a GF3 and onboard sound, and when you're playing any kind of audio (mp3, wav, movies, whatever) all you have to do is open a compose window in Outlook or scroll an image in Paint Shop Pro or sign onto AOL for it to skip like crazy. One of my pro audio buddies tell me that it's just a matter of the video card grabbing too much bandwidth on the bus, but even turning off accelerated video doesn't get rid of the problem completely.

It's easy enough to bash Windows, though, but something to consider: I was just now listening to an mp3 in xmms under Linux using the KDE sound server. When I was scrolling through this story, it gave little skips as well, not as noticeable as the Windows version but definitely there. I knew enough to adjust the priority of processes and stuff to make it stop, but Joe Random Music Guy is not going to. I haven't seen this problem happen under BeOS or MacOS (never tried OSX) and it doesn't happen under Linux unless you use the KDE sound server. Maybe it's even fixed in more recent versions, I don't know.

4. I find myself recommending Linux for more and more projects these days, but I still don't hesitate to recommend Windows when it's more appropriate (e.g. anything involving MIDI, videoconferencing, most things involving digital audio, anytime the user might expect to use AOL, anything that would involve converting a shitload of Visual BASIC or Powerbuilder code, and anything that depends on a hardware manufacturer's API that only works under Windows.) Nonetheless, Linux with KDE is getting to be a really good general purpose desktop that random corporate users feel more comfortable with than the default XP look and feel, but it has holes. Audacity just plugged one, but it's more suited towards the home user who will probably be downloading the Windows version anyway instead of pirating Soundforge. I have more thoughts on the state of real-world (i.e. not vertical market, but Joe User) desktop Linux at http://www.kudla.org/linux if I can stroke my ego a bit more.