MESSAGE
| DATE | 2001-12-08 |
| FROM | marco
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| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] Committee or Good Project
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> We need to have like an Artists committee to take an inventory of
> what is available, and to start to work with the tools, to do real
> work, and promote the fact.
I would love to participate in the development of a series of
lecture/demonstrations/live tutorials for the end user of creative
products already available under Linux. I would hope these
could be instrumental in promoting the present sexyness of Linux(1) and
in getting more people excited about using free software. Everyone has
their own reasons for first wanting to get involoved and often the
reason is a peice of software be it the OS, the server, the firewall, or
some application.
Linux right now is a very attractive platform for the creative
person, and there is already so much good mature software, the promotion
of this fact seems to me as crutial as working to fill in the certain
pieces in the software and compatibility map which are missing. I don't
think the free software world should be the slightest bit embarassed as
to where it stands in respect to the huge commercial applications, but
this view has to be known. Too often linux is dismissed on the, "oh the
gimp can't do CMYK, or know about AdobeRGB colorsapce, it's not as
good."(2) I say it's different and often better, someone should
consentrate on the positive aspects and these positive facts could be
demoed.
Of course most people using linux have had to fight through hours
of installation and information gathering on their own, but the whole
point would be to get more people excited and involved (turned on ? :)).
Before even coming to an installfest someone could get an image of what
they can expect and ultimately why they would want Linux at home or in
their company. Each demo would also introduce people to the issues
surrounding opensource (gif, video codecs, hardware coompatibility, etc.)
Possible sexy subjects could include:
--Perl + Gimp is a very powerful tool no matter on which side
of the computing world you reside. Couldn't a demo on creating animated
gifs in the gimp turn someone on to using Linux in the first place? and
a little script-fu or perl scipting seal the deal?
--I have some experience with 3d modeling, rendering and motion graphics
under Linux,(using a mixture of free and open source tools). Blender
(not open-source but free as in you don't have to pay) is reason enough
for some one to want to install linux at home. I can frankly say anyone
even contimplating spending the money on one of the commercial 3d
applications is crazy not to at least check out what is availble for
free under linux. There are an amazing number of strong tools.
--The list of audio applications and tools is also incredible, just name
what you want to do. The computer music world has been developing under
unix for years (something about the mathematicians liking bach and going
to composition school and learning to program). I could come up with
some cool demos
--Often a creative project using free software has to use multiple
tools. Graphics or multimedia people are trained in art school to use
macromedia's, digidesign's or adobe's killer apps. They get turned off
by what seems to be the confusion of multiple small tools.(3) I think it
would be crutial in these demos to walk a project from begining to end.
It is possible to make pdfs using linux right now. The chain of
small tools necessary can be daunting, but easily demonstratable by a
knowledgeable person. There is a debate to be had on what subjects
deserve live presentation, and which are best demostrated on a webpage.
Two important links I assume many of you already know:
http://www.linuxartist.org and
http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linuxsound/ .
Looking forward to your thoughts,
Marco
PS I footnoted some stuff cause this was getting really long, sorry if I
ramble.
(1) Sexyness is crutially important in driving people's desires.
Sexiness in computers is power and ease (or as the commercial OS
and software vendors have known for years, the illusion of power and
ease). There is little wonder why the largest computer graphics houses
are using Linux render farms on the back end to create the graphics for
the biggest Hollywood movies. What most people don't realize is that
you can have a largely indentical set of front end tools at home also
for free.
(2) Another problem for professionals with the gimp is the color space
issue. It seems totally insane, but as I understand it, the gamma
values for the individual colors in say Adobe RGB are treated as
industry secrets. You can already change these values for an image in
the gimp, thus you have the ability to match any colorspace, but you
just can't know exactly what values Adobe uses. By staying in sRGB (s
for standard?), on my macs, I feel I have resolved most problems.
Another case of companies convincing the end user that certain things
are incredibly complicated when in reality they are just hiding
standards. projected etc. here>
(3) I think many people using macs unfortunately think of free software
as tiny little apps that don't do much but risk creating dreaded
extention conflicts with their several hundred dollar adobe or macro
media packages in the ever precarious system folder (lets not even talk
about the horrible response OSX's interface has gotten from the creative
mac user community).
Linux on Mac also borrows some of that platform's sex appeal. I used
to live in DC. Very active in the LUGs there is a man named Billy Ball
who wrote some of the Linux Unleashed books and who would bring macs
loaded with linux to every public appearance of the dc area LUGS. There
was no greater head turner than his cube or his imac running free
software. I brought my titanium running yellow dog to Ruben's last
installfest but didn't get to show it off ;)
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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