September 15, 2009, 10:05 am
When I began collecting links for the Linux Sound & Music Applications pages I frequented a variety of announcement and news services. Some of those services are no longer with us, some have been superceded by more comprehensive and modern channels, and a few have remained as primary sources for new and updated Linux audio software. SourceForge is one of those long-lived services that have remained relevant to my searches for new and interesting sound and music applications, so I decided to surf the Forge to find recent and maybe some not-so-recent developments in the world of Linux audio.
The following article represents only a small fraction of the software I discovered. However, it also represents the greater part of the viable software that I found. SF lists projects that are at various stages of development, including those at the “idea” stage. Fortunately there’s no need to waste time looking at file listings – SF nicely indicates activity in a project’s files base, and a quick glance at the activity metrics will tell the tale of the project’s liveliness. As a matter of fact, the majority of projects I investigated had no files uploaded yet to the public files areas or to CVS/SVN repositories. Ideas are still easier to make than plans, plans are easier to make than to realize, and realization is still the result of long and often intense labor. Nevertheless, I don’t bemoan this situation, I’m happy to see what ambitions and concepts are out there. Indeed, some of the projects I discovered were truly “out there”, but in this article I’ve focused on three of the most practical and completely developed productions. Two of these projects were unknown to me until I found them on SF, and one is a long-standing projects with a strong history of development that I simply hadn’t got around to profiling.
