Linux Multimedia Studio: LMMS

What is LMMS?

LMMS aims to be a free alternative to popular (but commercial and closed- source) programs like FruityLoops, Cubase and Logic giving you the ability of producing music with your computer by creating cool loops, synthesizing and mixing sounds, arranging samples, having more fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more...

Applications like this are rare in Linux. The LMMS interface is great. It has very good usability and it also looks nice. When I fired up the program I saw two main windows, the song editor and the beat+bassline editor. I couldn't see where you import mp3 files (I was told later you can't). So you would have to convert the mp3 to ogg or other supported format. So as you can see. LMMS is not perfect, but it's still pretty good.
Yes this program still has very long way to go before they for a professional musician will be as good in comparison to FL Studio and Cubase as Gimp is in comparison to Photoshop for a professional graphic designer.
It's great music production software, for home users who just want to have fun creating cool mixes, sounds and loops. It is a free software and the quality of this software doesn't really justify paying money for other software,if you are not a professional making big money. In time this program could be one of the reasons to switch from those other OS.

Linux Unseen to the Naked Eye

People ask me all the time, is Linux an operating system? It's not. Its a kernel. The focal point of any operating system is its kernel but the kernel.

Let me put it this way...its like if you where to go over to your favorite Italian restaurant and get a pizza, the pan would be like your operating system. there are a lot of things that go into making pan pizza, tomato sauce, meat and cheese. well, the kernel is like the crust of the pizza. Without pizza crust, the meal doesn't exist. you have just a pan. a pan of just crust/doe would not sit well with most. so...without a kernel (crust of the pizza), an operating system doesn't exist (just a pan).Without programs (tomato sauce, meat and cheese), a kernel is useless (just crust/doe).

So when you power up say PcLinuxOs.93 or Myah Os 2.2 SE its not the Linux kernel you see but a GUI desktop. The O.S. PcLinuxOs.93 and Myah Os 2.2 SE are useing is called GNU.The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete UNIX-like operating system which is free software: the GNU system. Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel called Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as “Linux”, they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems.Linux kernel 1.0.0 was released in 1994. It had 176,250 lines of code.

So what is the furture of GNU/Linux? Its anyones guess. It does have a long future a head so long as they don't became what they hate most. People complain about monopolies like Microsoft limiting choice, and yet, it would appear that some in the GNU/Linux world would like to do the same.Locking someone into open source is just as bad as locking someone into proprietary.

No O.S. just Virtualization

Today in 2006 the choice of operating system is a critical one. People really use computers for applications, not the OS. An OS is only as good as its ISVs (Independent software vendors).

I had a crazy thought...what if we had a world of virtual machines. It's a technology that allows you to run multiple OSs simultaneously on one computer. In other words in a few years your choice of operating systems could become like Web browsers is right now. Many people Web browser have 2 or more installed on a system. AMD and Intel are shipping CPUs with hardware support for virtualization making virtualization run smoother and faster than ever before. Mac Linux or Win as we know today I feel will be for different.

something to think about.....

Need your favorite Windows productivity applications and plugins in Linux? Try Cross over linux.

Back in 2005. I talked about CodeWeavers’CrossOver Office 4.2 allowing you to install your favorite Windows productivity applications and plugins in Linux.Now there is CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Linux 6.0 that enable increasing numbers of popular Windows applications, including games, utilities, and the most critical workplace applications, to operate cleanly on Linux desktops. Note: not all Windows-based programs will work with CrossOver Linux.
This week CodeWeavers released a of the first public beta of CrossOver 6.0, with support for World of Warcraft and other big time games games like Counterstrike and Half Life 2.The Version 6 beta also sports many major improvements in the core of Wine since version 5 of CrossOver which includes fixes to Internet Explorer and fixes for many programs that would run but then crash, such as Microsoft Office 2000. It also includes Outlook 2003 fixes and it also has a new Windows XP "bottle"

CodeWeavers has also released a new public beta of CrossOver Mac. This new version enables Intel Mac users to run Windows programs on Mac OS X.

Note:It is a 60 day free CrossOver Linux Beta and there will be no support for this release...its free.If you have problems you have to direct all questions and reports to their beta center.

As of Sept.29th 2006 CrossOver's beta center