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Red Hat Software Businesses

New Red Hat Multimedia Oriented Distribution 209

Posted by CmdrTaco from the do-you-hear-what-I-hear dept.
ezadro writes "I just spotted this article at LinuxToday about Redhat being directly involved in a new distribution that will be known as ReHMuDi, which stands for Red Hat Multimedia Distribution." The goal seems to be a system for professional audio composers and engineers. Don't expect it for awhile- they have 24 months scheduled to do it, although it looks like releases will start by the end of 02.
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New Red Hat Multimedia Oriented Distribution More

New Red Hat Multimedia Oriented Distribution

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  • I just spotted this article at LinuxToday about Redhat being directly involved in a new distribution that will be known as ReHMuDi, which stands for Red Hat Multimedia Distribution.

    I'm not a Linux user, so I may be wrong, but I seem to recall there being a Debian-based distro that someone was working on called "Demudi".

    Sounds like duplication of effort, one of the common features of Open Source projects.

    Has anyone used Demudi? How ready is it for prime time?

    --saint
    • Linux is a great server OS. It's even a great desktop OS, if you know what you're doing. But professional audio?

      It's nice to dream, but for now and for the forseeable future, the software just isn't there. There's barely enough professional audio software for Windows... Linux just doesn't compete.

      Until the software's written, there's no point in making a distro to pretend that it is.

      Besides, about 98% of professional audio tweaks use Macs. The other 2% use Amiga. :)

      • Re:why must Linux be all things to all people? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by uebernewby ( 149493 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @01:58PM (#4005225) Homepage
        Until the software's written, there's no point in making a distro to pretend that it is

        True. However, we've recently seen it *is* possible to use *nix for pro audio, provided you tailor your *nix of choice specifically for the purpose. Apple did endless tweaking to theirs and right now, if you use apps that were specifically written for it, such as Ableton Live, OSX is quite a stellar performer.

        Whether any software company is actually going to take the trouble to write for Linux is a different matter entirely, but I'd sure like to have PD run on something that performs a little better than vanilla Linux.
      • Because when Linux is everything you need to the right people you can save money not having to buy certain O$'s or spend exuberant amounts of $$ on something like a Mac. Not to mention with more open source support for pro audio others would get involved in improving existing software for the community and thus inspire more creativity. The more money a starving artist can save on software packages the less he/she would have to work and have more time to play. Eh?
        • If they set it up so musicians who do create can create can upload music onto their site, or give music away for free, like mp3.com does.

          I think Redhat could easily make money from this because music unlike art, everyone can appreciate.

          An Open source music portal site could be created after enough musicians are using the open source software. It could really grow into a real community.


      • We know the software is not there, if Redhat makes the software, it can work.

        We need a fruityloop or reason like tool, We need a protools like tool, a cakewalk like tool, and a file sharing tool so we can create music and then upload it onto a network or even an extention of redhats site, and redhat can do something like Mp3.com to make profits.

      • No, you're a bit wrong here. Software is there, but is too fragmented. (Ok, take it as this distribution has a year or so to come out, so they will probably invest in that)

        Base meaning of this distribution is putting together all of that in one package that fits all. As I presume, there will be some new ongoing projects to go with that (also suggestions and co-work with musical departments institutes that are contributing to project). But still major thing it will be tweaking everything together to make a sencible one-way distribution (as Lycoris) and show coverage of that department. I don't know, but I presume that this project will include some framework application on desktop to connect all applications as user expects (my guess) and to ease productivity.

        Main problem of linux audio was, there was no applications, at least until I've searched whole Internet to get a software for real time multichannel recording and software for editing wave files.

        Getting distribution in that way, well it's just another LSB-audio to show others what it can be done in this department, and making place for some commercial applications that will probably follow this move. (I think that movie industry would be glad to cover that deparment also as they did CGI).
      • <SARCASM>
        Windows is a great server OS. It's even a great desktop OS, if you know what you're doing. But why replace it?

        It's nice to dream, but for now an the forseeable future, the userland software for a free, open source operating system just won't be there. There's barely enough software for DOS...a free, open source operating system just wouldn't compete.

        Until the userland software's written, there's no point in making a free, open source operating system that pretends to supplant Windows.

        Besides, about 98% of professionals use Windows. The other 2% use Macs. :)
        </SARCASM>

        Answer: Because they can.
      • It's nice to dream, but for now and for the forseeable future, the software just isn't there.

        Not true. Check out Ardour [sf.net], Audacity [sf.net], Ecasound [www.eca.cx], MusE [muse.seh.de], or some of the other 10,000 apps on Dave Phillp's Linux Sound and MIDI Apps page [linux-sound.org]
        • or some of the other 10,000 apps on Dave Phillp's Linux Sound and MIDI Apps page

          That didn't come out quite right. I meant to add that obviously not all of these are mature, usable programs; however it is constantly becoming easier to find free software to fulfill your sound/MIDI needs.
        • Those can't compete with finished windows/osx software. If you tryied Cakewalk and CoolEdit Pro you will not like them, though they are nice for the casual user.

          Until we figure out a way for developers to make money for developers (in any field, not some fields) things are going to be scarce/fragmented.

      • 1. linux will never be anything but Linus' pet project.

        2. ok, so it may be a nice server OS, but it will never get on the desktop

        3. ok, it may be a desktop OS, but it will never ever enter the professional graphics and 3D animation market

        4. ok, it may be used by many of the major animation houses, but it will never be a professional audio platform

        see a pattern developing? This whole "there is no software" argument is great, but here's a little secret (I feel confident saying this, as I am a developer) - people actually write software! Software that does not currently exist, can come into being through the efforts of mere mortals. Of course a relatively large software company getting into the market has absolutely nothing to do with this...

      • Besides, about 98% of professional audio tweaks use Macs. The other 2% use Amiga. :)

        Hmm... I guess more people are using various Ataris than Amigas for sound. I recently talked with some guys that still use Atari Falcon for (professional) music recording.

        But your point stands correct. I have yet to see audio apps for Linux that can compete with the ones available for Mac/Atari/Amiga/Wintel.

      • It's nice to dream, but for now and the forseeable future, the software just isn't there

        I dunno. There seems to be a lot [condorow.net] popping up all over these days.

        They give it two years. That's a while, especially if they put a couple of engineers into helping out projects they want included.

        There are a couple of MIDI sequencers out there. I'm not a musician, so I haven't played with them, but Rosegarden is from Guillame Laurent, one of the guys behind gtkmm. There's a sound font editor -- [all-day-breakfast.com] Smurf [sourceforge.net]. I was just talking with someone about some mixing/synth software that's supposed to be pretty good for Linux, though the name escapes me ATM.

        A host of improvements in Linux 2.6 (which should be out by then), including much better latency (better than Windows) and ALSA (with good hardware mixing and hardware synth support) are just around the corner.

        Finally, a Linux box is a nice, stable, you-can-depend-on-it-to-just-work system. If you've got a team, you can tie together boxes to do interesting processing on the audio. Linux is inexpensive, and free (as in beer) software is very attractive, compared to the normally pricy software in the audio field.

        Having open source drivers usually means that even old hardware stays supported. This can be a big deal to musicians, who often have a lot of expensive, old audio hardware that they'd like to keep using.

        I'd say RH could make a pretty good play. This is assuming that RH is willing to support this to musician types, that they're willing to make a decent setup environment to handle all this, and that they're willing to fund development to fill the few holes in the lineup.
    • I am definately a Linux fan, however the one place I have really seen it lack (even more than in the friendly desktop area) is in the multimedia arena. I know there are tools for it, but you really have to look around and piece together a reasonable solution.

      Personally I think this is great seeing as how BeOS is now defunct and they really had the most promise of a really good multimedia development platform. Mac is great for graphics, but I don't know how good the sound is. It will be nice to have an open source option which is viable. Too bad it will take 24 months. ;-)

      • Re:Overlap. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Hanok ( 581838 )
        Well, actually Mac is pretty much THE system for professional audio. Most of the heavy pro audio applications such as Pro Tools from Digidesign [digidesign.com] have been released for PC/MS Windows and Mac. Real professionals seem to be counting on Mac audio workstations rather than PCs. For me the reasons seem obvious. As a Gnu/Linux user I wish Redhat good luck in this project. Linux-based systems make a good and stable platform for multimedia applications as well as anything else. Perhaps in the future the doors will be opened for heavy duty audio applications for Linux also.

    • Re:Overlap. (Score:5, Informative)

      by cyba ( 25058 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @01:34PM (#4005125) Homepage

      Actually they work together with Debian guys. Here's some information from http://www.agnula.org/ [agnula.org]:

      AGNULA's main task will be the development of two reference distributions for the GNU/Linux operating system completely based on Free Software (i.e. under a FSF approved Free Software license) and completely devoted to professional and consumer audio applications and multimedia development. One distribution will be Debian-based (DeMuDi) and the other will be Red Hat-based (ReHMuDi). Both will be available on the network for download and on CD.

    • They're both part of the AGNULA [agnula.org] (A GNU/Linux Audio distribution) project. (DeMuDi's home page [demudi.org] mentions the AGNULA project as well.)
    • Sounds like duplication of effort, one of the common features of Open Source projects. But that's the great part about it. Give a thousand monkeys a paintbrush and eventually...
    • From the horse's mouth:
      "AGNULA's main task will be the development of
      two reference distributions [agnula.org] for the GNU/Linux operating system completely based on Free Software (i.e. under a FSF approved Free Software license) and completely devoted to professional and consumer audio applications and multimedia development. One distribution will be Debian-based (DeMuDi) and the other will be Red Hat-based (ReHMuDi). Both will be available on the network for download and on CD."

  • fp (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    well, aint the european union supporting some multimedia version of debian to?
    • Yes they are. Here a short snippet from the Agnula web site:

      "One distribution will be Debian-based (DeMuDi) and the other will be Red Hat-based (ReHMuDi). Both will be available on the network for download and on CD."

  • demudi? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bomb_number_20 ( 168641 )
    this seems awful similar to the Debian Multimedia Distribution [demudi.org] slashdot covered a awhile ago?

    • Re:demudi? (Score:4, Informative)

      by MADCOWbeserk ( 515545 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @01:33PM (#4005120)
      this seems awful similar to the Debian Multimedia Distribution [demudi.org] slashdot covered a awhile ago?

      But the difference is that Redhat will box it, and support it. This might put Linux in the hands of music professionals who wouldn't consider using anything that isn't well supported. Personally I am not sure if Redhat will pull this off. It is more likely that a sound equipment company or 3rd party will come up with a better Linux dist for these purposes, ie. someone who understands the market better.

      Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himeself could not eat it? HS
      • Damn, you stole my .sig

        Marge, come'ere, this guy does the best Flanders! He's got the moustache and the did-ly.

        Cheers.

      • yeah; im kind of concerned about red hat actually. demudi is old news, but (to me at least) agnula and rehmudi aren't. the articles say there are to be 2 distros- 1 rh based, another debian based; with, as you say, the red hat distro being boxed and supported.

        the interesting thing is that the agnula project announcement [agnula.org] is dated June 16th, and there is a news story on the Demudi site saying they are now officially part of the agnula project. to me, this seems a bit like 'embrace and extend'. this is going to be a big area in the future for linux- it is already growing and widely used in animation and there is the potential for huge profit.

        my initial impression (not being any sort of expert) is that demudi has been quietly plugging away for a long time now and already has code available. red hat can come in, box it and work with agnula to sell it and carve out a niche for themselves without (it seems to me) really doing much.

        based on this- i think that red hat can pull it off, because they have the support and connections of the agnula project and the work already done by the demudi team.

  • Perhaps the worst name in technology history?

    Looks like 3L33T speak, takes a minute to think of how to pronounce. Why not "Redhat Media" or something like that?

  • Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MADCOWbeserk ( 515545 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @01:27PM (#4005089)
    Can't wait to see this, I hope that it is headless, and can be controlled by pedals and synths like a Roland box. If small linux boxes can duplicate the power and features of sage sound enquipment, it will make for some cool possibilities.

    Too much /., retinas burn...
  • When I clicked on comments the only two comments I see are about how demundi was already announce or something, and the ad was "Don't be another development clone. Sourceforge improves visibilty to root out duplicated development projects."

  • The goal seems to be a system for professional audio composers and engineers. Don't expect it for awhile- they have 24 months scheduled to do it, although it looks like releases will start by the end of 02.

    How do they expect to make money from this? It's such a small market. Granted, in small professional markets you can usually charge a lot for support, but I just don't see business case here.

    "By developing a release specifically designed for professionals in the musical industry, Red Hat wants to enable authors and composers, as well as simple amateurs, to free themselves from technological and cultural constraints," declares Franz Meyer, Director for Southern Europe at Red Hat, before adding "By giving more freedom to artists, our aim is to expand the global nature of music even further and to extend the concept of Open Source Software to Open Source Music."

    Not really related to my previous point, but I just have to say in response to this: "Barf me".

    • expand the market by makeing a much cheaper solution that is useable by just about anyone. It's not unthinkable that they are trying to come up with a product that will be geared towards the ever growing number or DJ's and musicians. There would probably be a greater number of musicians if the tools were cheaper and easier to use. I'm just takeing this from the quote that you used, expanding music further and geard towards music professionals kinda gave me that impression.

      • There would probably be a greater number of musicians if the tools were cheaper and easier to use.

        Well, musicians and DJs aren't exactly known for their deep pocketbooks. Presumably they are planning to make it free, so I doubt they're going to get too many people on the low end signing up for support.

        And even if they did get EVERYONE to sign up for support at $100/year, I doubt there are enough amateur musicians and DJs who would use this that would end up paying for the development. 2 years times 5-10 developers + overhead = $1-2M.

        I dunno. This sounds like a fiasco in the making to me. Maybe they'll prove me wrong.

    • Digital Audio Workstations (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iankerickson ( 116267 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @03:41PM (#4005588) Homepage
      First off, let me say I'm glad they didn't blow a lot of money on a naming consultant. That ugly acronym they settled on must have saved them millions of dollars...

      Soundtracks, film scoring, and even some album production is being done increasingly on DAWs, pronounced just like it's spelled. A typical configuration is a tricked-out PowerMac (Sun Ultras used to be the platform of choice) with maximum RAM and a fast RAID array (i.e RAID 0 -- don't laugh, I'm not kidding. RAID 0 is used to lower latency on the drives) and a MIDI adapter, for both driving sound modules and inputting music on a master keyboard. Add a copy of ProTools, some Mark of the Unicorn software, a DAT drive, a CD-burner, a mixer, some rack effects, and maybe a high-end audio PCI card for when you hit the limits of the Mac's decent but not that great on-board audio. This is not a sub-$1000 iMac rig were talking about here. If you want a good DAW, you go to the bank in your best suit and tie and apply for a loan.

      Of course this makes no sense to an amatuer composer/musician. You might ask what's wrong with a stock PC with a good sound card, a quality microphone, UltraATA disks, a MOD Tracker with WAV/MP3 export, any old MIDI synth with velocity-sensitive keys, and CD-RW/DAT drive? Nothing really, if you want you music to sound like it was created on a computer. But that's not what a real DAW is for.

      A DAW has to be _FAST_. The software used (like ProTools) is used to edit and master a gigantic audio file of CD-quality sound. Document sizes are often routinely in the gigabyte range, unless you're just editing small leadins for TV or commercials. You can use MIDI and samples to provide voices in the soundtrack, but the goal of a DAW is to have total control over the audio in the file, just like you have over a photo in Photoshop. It should be just as easy to work with a "real" audio recording (like a studio session recorded with a real orchestra) as it is to use sythentic music (samples from a microphone or synth, MIDI sequences, etc) and tweak the finished product to sound completely natural, as if real musicians had played it that way start to finish in the first place.

      So any latency you have in the DAW can put skips or glitches in your recorded input. You need a workstation with enough RAM to avoid paging, fast disks that don't cause the CPU to have to wait (DMA/SCSI), and good all around performance to prevent bottlenecks: fast OS, fast graphics, fast CPU, fast audio chipset, etc.

      Linux is perfect for this, because comparatively MacOS 9, MacOS X, and all versions of Windows except CE are complete pigs. Linux just lags in solid support for audio input, mixing, MIDI, and audio applications, etc. the way Macs and PCs do.

      This distro isn't something you sell to end users (though they may) but to OEMs and VARs who want to sell Linux-based DAWs but want a vendor for the operating system beside Apple, Microsoft, or Sun. Other people have mentioned how poor musicians and DJs are. If you could make and market a Linux-based DAW out of PC parts with comparable performance to a ProTools rig and a substantially lower price, you could make a place for yourself in the market and do pretty well. Anything in the music equipment world that is both "really good" and "pretty cheap" and word gets out. Selling distro CDs just raises money and hopefully creates good PR for the concept of Linux as a good enough OS for a DAW.

      • OK, I'll buy into all that, but I have to again ask the question: How does Red Hat make money on it? They're going to give it away. Their primary business of the corporate market is of sufficient volume, plus the support contracts, that they might be able to survive on that (although that's not even assured).

        But this is such a narrow market that the volume is essentially zero on the high end, and very low on the low end. I mean, how many amateur musicians are there in general, and of that, how many would be willing to put out money for this?

      • So any latency you have in the DAW can put skips or glitches in your recorded input. ...Linux is perfect for this, because comparatively MacOS 9, MacOS X, and all versions of Windows except CE are complete pigs.

        Except Linux has traditionally been horrible for latency. There is work being done to make the kernel both interruptable and low-latency, and it shows a lot of improvement in the patches available for 2.4. The necessary patches are still not in the mainstream kernel, IIRC, but they may make it into 2.6.

        Furthermore, you are totally incorrect when it comes to Windows and Mac OS. Classic versions of both OSes suck for latency, but OS X is great, and Win2k (and presumable WinXP) do rather decently when it comes to low-latency audio. At the moment, Mac OS X wins under the non-ideal conditions that are likely to be expereinced in the field. (PDF here [jhu.edu], Google html [216.239.37.100])

        I think Linux has one really tough competitor in Mac OS X when it comes to this arena. Apple already has mindshare, market share, and a kick-ass audio subsystem. Linux has none of those three, so it'll be an uphill battle. After ALSA is standardized and rolled out completely, maybe we'll talk.
      • Ignore my comment abotu Windows 2000 beign sufficient, I was not paying attention to it properly. Apparently MS still sucks. =)

        Still, my comments about Linux and Mac OS X still stand.
  • I think this is a cool project, and I wish them the best of luck. However, the article failed to mention how Red Hat would be making money off of this. Selling support packages doesn't seem to work. And since the article says that the product will be distributed free of charge, they can't make money that way either. I suppose that they could sell boxed copies, but I don't know anyone who actually buys those (I just DL the ISOs).

    Can someone who knows more than me explain how they hope to profit off this project?

    Steve
    • Selling support packages doesn't seem to work.

      No, selling support packages to independant, DYI geeks doesn't seem to work. Same goes for selling them box copies.

      What we're seeing is an effort to shift away from just selling to the hard-core expert-level user. Let me back up: we use several software packages at work where the majority of the cost is from support and consulting. They can get away with this because it's a useful but somewhat arcane system and, at the end of the day, it's worthwhile for us to pay for both the licenses and the support (rather than have someone learn it, which would be overkill).

      I suspect that the target audience for this has other things on their mind. If you can keep the whole process simple, easy and attractive to the end users (from a bottom-line perspective as well as a usefulness perspective), they will buy your product.

    • Re:Step 1: Collect Underpants (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BurritoWarrior ( 90481 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @02:03PM (#4005250)
      I suppose that they could sell boxed copies, but I don't know anyone who actually buys those (I just DL the ISOs).

      I buy boxed sets about twice a year, from different linux companies -- SuSE, Red Hat or Mandrake. can I burn the ISOs? Yep, but I like to give back to the community and since I can't code, I buy their products to show my support.

      • I suppose that they could sell boxed copies, but I don't know anyone who actually buys those (I just DL the ISOs).

        with this logic, the guy must be an engineer: "I - a dork on /. - do not buy boxed distributions, my friends - most likely also /. dorks - do not buy boxed distributions, ergo, nobody buys boxed distributions."

  • Why don't you read the article before commenting? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Then you would know about the Agnula project, of which Demudi and Rehmudi are two off-shoots. It is cited in the first sentence of the article. Agnula itself is old news on Slashdot [slashdot.org]...

  • Uhhh, this is an established project... (Score:4, Informative)

    by pheph ( 234655 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @01:35PM (#4005133) Homepage
    I've been paying attention to AGNULA [agnula.org] for a while now and used DeMuDi (the debian based audio distribution) for some time. While the project could definitely use some serious corporate funding, we really don't need Red Hat Making Life More Difficult [opensoars.com]

    • Red Hat trademark (Score:5, Insightful)

      by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @02:25PM (#4005329) Homepage
      Red Hat is not trying to make anyone's life more difficult. They are just doing what they are required to do by law if they want to keep their trademark.

      Considering that their trademark is just about the only thing they own (they give away everything else under the GPL) I'd say they have the right and duty to defend it. You can distribute copies of their distribution - just don't call it Red Hat.

      On a more philosophical note - I wouldn't mind living in a world without copyright or patent laws. Neither of them protects my rights to be free from violence or fraud. On the contrary - patents and copyrights are a deal with the government to use the force of the courts underwritten by police violence to go after people who are doing something that doesn't harm anyone.

      But trademark is different - it serves an important role in protecting me from fraud. How can trust in a vendor be built without a means of identifying his products that has some protection from fraud? It doesn't seem practical to put this burden on me as a customer. This tradeoff between two freedoms is therefore justified.
      • I guess what it really comes down to is reality. If we wanted to sell copies of Red Hat Linux 7.3 on eBay, or on our website, how are we going to do that now? Are we going to call it Pink Cap? Or XXX XXXX? Or Pontific Linux 7.3 [opensoars.com]? And if so, how are customers going to easily know what they are getting? How are they going to find what we're selling? Many other distributions allow the sale of their discs so long as it is understood that what is being sold is a copy.

        I would also like to note that while writing this I have tried to remain somewhat impartial (OK, so I used bold in a few places ;) ). I really just wanted to let everyone know what Red Hat is doing and what it means for the community, not cast judgement on them. If anyone has any suggestions for better wording to achieve that, please let me know!

        • Why not just call it "pink tie [cheapbytes.com]"?
        • Conversely, what's to stop me producing my own buggy, insecure distribution, and selling that as Red Hat Linux 7.3? What protection does the consumer have from people trying to rip them off?

          Simple - Red Hat owns the trademark on "Red Hat Linux", and can tell me to stop, on pain of being sued.

          They can only do that if they prevent people from using their trademark - you know that a company must defend their trademark, or risk losing it.
        • I guess what it really comes down to is reality.

          I assume you mean the reality of you wanting to make more money. You will have to do that within the limits of existing laws, whether you agree with them or not. There are lots of laws I don't agree with but trademark law is not one of them.

          Are we going to call it Pink Cap? Or XXX XXXX? Or Pontific Linux 7.3[opensoars.com]?

          It seems you have answered your own question.

          "Pontific Linux is a verbatim copy of Red Hat Linux 7.3. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat inc."

          And if so, how are customers going to easily know what they are getting?

          That's your problem. Spend the time and effort to build your own reputation capital.
      • Your argument has sound economic underpinnings:

        Patents & copyrights protect unlimited goods. Unlimited copies of "Red Hat Linux v7.0" can be made. Patents & copyrights are an artificial mechanism to facilitate the trading of `Intellectual Property' in a market designed to trade limited goods.

        But the name "Red Hat" can only be used to unquiely identify one thing, thus is a limited good and fits well into a standard market system.

        Bryan
      • Patents were designed to guarantee a limited monopoly on an idea. This is very important- say you are a small inventor, with this great new idea. You go and start trying to sell it, and 3 major corporations rip off your idea, and you get pretty much no return on it. What do you do next time? Just keep the idea to yourself, it's not worth it. So patent laws promote innovation in the marketplace. Not to say they haven't gotten completely out of hand, but the purpose they were designed for is still important. Also, with regards to both patent and copyright, you are right, for the consumer, these laws have neglegable benefit. But many individuals are also producers, so these laws are important for them.
        • So patent laws promote innovation in the marketplace

          It's interesting to discuss whether patents create an overall economic benefit for society - but that is not my point. Economic benefit is not everything. Patents and copyrights do not promote freedom. Trademarks do, with some reasonable tradeoffs.

          There is no such thing as the "freedom" to make money with a business model based on government backed violence to limit another individual's freedom. It may be justified in some cases but you should always keep in mind that it's a compromise, an an inalienable right.
      • Red Hat is not doing OSS a favour. I preffer to use any other distro that tries to keep directory structures as the should be, standard packaging systems (debian, slak tgz's), etc.

        Anyone can choose what they like of course.
    • I would respectfully disagree with your position on reselling "RedHat Linux". You can distribute Linux any way you want as permitted by the GPL, but RedHat has a right to their trademark. You have to call your distribution something other than RedHat. Only RedHat has the right to use the RedHat trademark.

      This isn't "making life difficult", it's the way business is done. You make yourself look like an ass when you attack RedHat for requesting that you respect their trademark.
    • you're a very small person, very small.

      that page is even smaller,.

    • Misunderstanding (Score:3, Informative)

      by pheph ( 234655 )
      The page in question [opensoars.com] outlines the threatening letter to distributors of Red Hat CDs and what it means to distributors. It is the truth with some research. I don't like it, but I thought you should know about it, and I'm sure Red Hat would like you to know about it as well.

      The page is not anti-Red Hat, but pro-knowledge. I'm sure many people who stumbled on the site didn't know Red Hat's policy on copied CDs.

      Red Hat has made our life a slightly more difficult. This is what they have done. We are not trying to slam them, or tell them they are wrong, or even had another choice, but this is how it is.

      • If you really have that much of a problem with RedHat then don't resell it. It's simple as that. Whining on you website about it is not only immature but unprofessional as well.
      • Comply to their claim, after all it's their choice of dealing with supporters that way:
        put the description on ebay like this:
        "3 cds set from the compagny wich uses ridiculous red outfit as a logo and has such way of dealing with his supporters" with a link to that page there.
        Then make a similar link to distribute mandrake cds but with high praises regarding their behaviour.
        In a while, rh will back up from this behaviour.
    • Red Hat is not making anything more difficult. You are. You are confusing consumers. RedHat has a right to the use of their name. if you want to sell their GPL CDs call them something else. Because your CDs do not come with support. Red Hat Linux CDs do.

    • Please read what I've posted and, more importantly, what I have not. By threatening CD Distributors with Trade Mark infringement, Red Hat has made selling exact copies of their CD more difficult.
      Do we like it? No.
      Is it right? Probably.

      Businesses tend to get involved and complicate what it is we love to do.
      Most of us loved to use napster, and the RIAA got involved.
      Most of us loved to surf the internet, and the advertising agencies got involved.

      All I am pointing out is that companies tend to complicate things. Whether any of us like it or not is nearly beside the point. I really enjoy DeMuDi as it stands, and I probably would have/will enjoy ReHMuDi, but with Red Hat involved, it has the potential to change things. Maybe I'll contribute thousands of lines of code, but when it comes time for me to sell a product based on it, I will be denied the ability to associate it with ReHMuDi, a project I personally (may have) helped to create and promote.

  • Remedy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 )
    Ohh I get it. rehmudi... remedy.
    Man, that's a bad acronym.
  • Multimedia is not just audio
    only agnula (audio) website linked
    where is the Rehmudi website?

  • The obligatory... (Score:3, Funny)

    by zurab ( 188064 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @02:05PM (#4005258)
    Redhat also announced its complex innerworkings of its business plan regarding their multimedia distribution. The general outline of the plan is as follows:

    1. Make Redhat Multimedia Distribution.
    2. ???
    3. Profit
    • actually, being how redhat has managed to stay in business as the world of linux has constantly shifted, I'd say they know what they are doing
      • actually, being how redhat has managed to stay in business as the world of linux has constantly shifted, I'd say they know what they are doing
        Or NOT. Like similar bandwagon goldminers [yahoo.com], RedHat is surviving on cash made when they went public. Look at the cash flow [yahoo.com]. All those numbers in () are not a good thing. It is a rough time for techs and RedHat certainly doesn't show clear indications of how they are going to shine (be profitable) soon. They've likely got the momentum to take them the long haul, but it may be in for rough waters ahead.
    • The first time I remember seeing this joke was when Eazel was going under, and it was something like:

      1. Write a file manager and give it away for free
      2. ???
      3. Profit!

      But I went searching for this post yesterday and I couldn't find it in any of the eazel-related stories. So can anyone clear this up? Who posted this joke the first time, and when?

    • Also the obligatory: is it free as in RMS's version of Free, or free as in I can link anything into it--including proprietary software, software licensed as free for non-profit use, or any other license?

    • 2. sell it

      RedHat sells software. They are, in fact, profitable. It's amazing the sort of thing you have to explain to people.

      • RedHat sells software. They are, in fact, profitable. It's amazing the sort of thing you have to explain to people.

        Umm... no [yahoo.com]. They lost $5.1 million last quarter and and $98.5 million within the last twelve months. Mind you, that's on just $77.1 million in sales a year.
  • Hopefully this distro will encourage companies like
    steinberg (cubase) emagic (protools) to make their software available for linux.

    I doubt it though, but if it does I can imagine myself sitting behind a rocksolid computer in the studio with a cool desktop manager.

    I won't be running redhat but gentoo, unless ofcourse the redhat people and the software manufacurors decide that the audiosoftware will only run under this distro.
  • The artist crowd is not predisposed to working with the intricacies of Linux (it ain't there yet folks) and given the large opposition every time discussion turns to making Linux easier to use, I can't really see the point.

    If I'm missing something, please enlighten me (and others, I'm sure)

    • I don't really understand this either. I think dumbing linux down is a bad idea, but building an easy to use windows-like distribution (are there any at that level or near it yet?) wouldn't be a bad idea. The problem is selling it. I wouldn't use it because I like things the way I have them set up, not someone else's way.

    • Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Salsaman ( 141471 )
      The artist crowd is not predisposed to working with the intricacies of Linux

      I disagree. They were predisposed to working with the Atari ST and Amiga (check out some of the fine music around the net composed with these two machines) when those systems were popular. This will be no more difficult, and given the advances in GUI technology since then, probably even easier.

  • As a Musician, if Redhat can manage to bring the right tools, such as fruityloop and reason like tools, something to edit stuff like protools, etc, and make it all open source.

    This could really help linux, I know I'd love to be able to make my music in linux. I'll buy the redhat multimedia linux if its reasonable in price, meaning under 200 bucks. Redhat should also provide services geared towards the needs of musicians, maybe even create a peer to peer music sharing network to allow musicians to share their music in an open fashion.

    Oh by the way, Redhat if you are reading this and Need a beta tester, please reply
  • The idea of a free OS that is completely optimized for audio/video is a neat idea, the problem will be getting professional quality audio software available. I wouldn't dream of switching from a Mac or Windows until you could get a version of Cakewalk, Logic, or Pro Tools on it. If the companies that make these tools (arguably the top 3 multi-track recording software packages) ported them to linux, that'd be nifty, but since most people who do audio recording via software use one of these three, it'll be tough to crack the market.
    • I wouldn't dream of switching from a Mac or Windows until you could get a version of Cakewalk, Logic, or Pro Tools on it.

      Before long there may be free software projects that will be just as good if not better than the commercial competition. Ardour [sf.net]'s stated goal is to make ProTools irrelevent, and the project is led by the extremely clueful Paul Davis. It's undergoing active development, though it supports many features right now.

      MIDI seems to be a weaker point: MuSE and Rosegarden are two sequencers I know of, but I've never tried them.
  • ... more than audio authoring.

    As long as it's being referred to as multimedia authoring, let's talk about video, graphics and 3D modelling too!

    I think all of those things being tied together into a single distribution could work nicely especially if integration is made a large point of focus on this. ...and I'd definitely use it.

    I have a camcorder with a 1394 port. I'd love to be able to download my video, edit the frames with GIMP changing my broom handles into lightsabers! Perhaps I could do some 3D modelling and rendering to create a droid or two and overlay them into the scene as well? Next thing you know I'm fighting an invisible "remote" with broom handle!

    Sound is only PART of the project...

    Hell, for that matter, I could at least be able to make commercials or something commercially viable like that.

    All I'd want from the distribution is a relatively flexible range of supported hardware that doesn't compromise quality of output and performance... that way I know in advance what I'm buying and can build a tool that will serve my purposes best.

    So anyway... yeah... why stop at music?
  • Never say "It can't happen" because I just glanced at the list of charter members and supporting companies for RealNetworks Helix development community effort... and RH is one of them. For those who don't recall, Helix platform is a client/server combination for producing and publishing streaming content of all types, not just Real files. Oh, and BTW they're going to "open source" it all thru their development community...
  • Suppose Red Hat is doing this for name recognition, or better yet
    they are doing it for a weak vendor lock in type thing.

    Say all the people who download this and use someday switch to linux completely. Who do you think they will go to for their home computers and such. Also, if companies start using this distribution who do you think they will buy support from? IBM, I don't think so.
  • ...because this eliminates one of the last reasons I have to still run Windows. Get software that can match ProTools, Sound Forge, Vegas and Acid (the latter three are from Sonic Foundry) and I will gladly take Windows 2K off of one of my machines. Gladly. One of my big complaints about Linux is that there is no decent pro-level audio tools for Linux. Hopefully ReHMuDi will fix that. One less Windozer==one less headache.
  • LMFAO, I fell off my chair when I read the name.
    I think people will actually buy it to say "Oh, yeah, I'm running Rehmudi Linux" when asked.

    ROFL.
  • say what you want about there distro, but rh has the coolest logo.

  • BeOS was created for this... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) <bc90021&bc90021,net> on Saturday August 03, 2002 @03:38PM (#4005575) Homepage
    ...and it never caught on with the intended audience. I hope that this project has better success, and/or that OpenBeOS [openbeos.net] is successful where the original failed.

  • we need a standard audio API (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iebgener ( 592564 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @03:50PM (#4005610)
    What linux needs for audio is a standard API. This is problem today, there is 2 reference implementation of audio (OSS/Alsa) and alot of plugins architectures. OSS is slowly dying since the kernel will be moving to alsa > 2.4, and alsa is in a beta stage today. To any major audio software maker like native-instruments [native-instruments.com] this is a major show stopper. Until this is resolved nobody will want to write a large audio application.

    What I would like to see is a implementation of ASIO and VST to linux. That yould help alot since the protocol is already tune for audio. And porting any original program like cubase or reaktor would be alot more easier. Same thing for VST which is already a standard plugin interface, and the IRIX part is already done...

    • I agree that fragmented audio APIs are a problem. I am an advocate of PortAudio [portaudio.com], a well-designed audio i/o library that provides good performance on several platforms. It supports (or support is in development for) OSS, ALSA, ASIO, WinMME, DirectSound, JACK, CoreAudio (MacOSX), MacOS9, and sort of BeOS. It doesn't do MIDI, but hopefully some day PortMIDI will.

      VST is a problem because though it is theoretically platform-independent, plugin writers write windows-specific stuff into their plugins anyway.

      LADSPA is a widely-used plugin format on Linux, and Steve Harris has written many high-quality plugins for it.
    • Alsa is not really in a beta stage. I'd consider it production-quality.

      The alsa folks are the sort of people that never reach 1.0 until the thing is perfect.

  • This will fill a huge void. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Saturday August 03, 2002 @05:13PM (#4005891) Homepage Journal
    Since BE died, a number of musicians I know have gone onto windows or mac for their audio editing. Most of them tried linux once or twice but the lack of easy to use software was the main reason it was only "tried"

    Most of them used Redhat, which doesn't come installed with ALSA plugins. Redhat needs to include support for OSS sound drivers and ALSA plugins out of the box if they want this to fly.

    I don't think there's a lack of quality audio software out there, heck linux even has a mp3 scratching system that could give finalscratch a run for its money.

    So yeah, basically if redhat ships this distro with all the "cool drivers" installed, a nice gui, and loads of tools, this thing should do well.
    • I don't think there's a lack of quality audio software out there...

      It depends how we're defing 'audio software', really. I'm an amateur musician, and MIDI software is my thing. I use Cubase - have done ever since the Atari ST*. There's in nothing even vaguely close to this quality available for Linux.

      Now, sample editing and what have you is really not what I do, so I can't comment on that. But MIDI software is still drastically lacking. That's OK - I'm hardly shocked. Cubase has been developed over about fifteen years or more, by people paid to do nothing else. However, it does mean that when picking out a MIDI platform, Linux doesn't really figure at the moment.

      Cheers,
      Ian

      *Sad oldie rant here: I actually believe that my Atari 520STFM, modded with a 512k upgrade, a 20Mb hard drive and connected to the hi-res Mono monitor was the most musically productive MIDI set-up I've ever had. Couldn't really tell you why - the fact that it was all nearly silent is one reason, plus there was something about that mono monitor that was simply 'right', in an undefinable way. Single-tasking too - nothing else interrupted you. Hell, writing this I'm slowly convincing myself to head off to eBay and take another look...

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