![]() ![]() But there are plenty of complete Linux systems that you can download for free, or buy on CD-ROMs for near the cost of production. Confusingly, Free Software can be sold, while software that can be downloaded at no cost often places restrictions on user freedom. The sense in which 'free' is used by the GNU project is not the same as in 'freeware': it refers to developer and user freedom rather than zero cost. It builds on the considerable work of developers who had dreamt for many years of making a free UNIX, many of whom worked on the GNU project. In fact Linus Torvalds still leads the project to this day, more than 10 years after he began it, but the operating system has been contributed to by thousands of people. It's a common misconception that Linux was created by a lone student in Finland. By contrast, Mac OS X belongs to Apple, so we are unlikely to see other companies contributing significantly to it. Because Linux belongs to everyone and no-one, it is now being invested in by many of the big UNIX companies, including IBM, Sun, SGI and HP. The UNIX family, which includes Mac OS X and Linux, has long been the mainstay of university computer departments, but the original UNIX concept has fragmented into many incompatible proprietary versions. Each tradition has its own ethos, and licenses the software it creates in very different ways. There are two traditions in software development: the work done in universities and by individual developers, often shared among research teams, and the proprietary code created by commercial entities which is usually a trade secret. Meanwhile, the computing power available to individuals continues to grow at rapid rate, meaning that off-the-shelf hardware can now process multiple tracks of digital audio in real time, something that not even the most well-equipped studio could do a generation ago. As more and more people have come to depend on computers for earning a living, a migration of some sort from the legacy operating systems becomes essential. In the network era, computers that crash, lose data and work inconsistently are no longer acceptable. In the case of PC users, Microsoft would like to see their customers move to the NT-based Windows XP, while Apple has also abandoned its existing codebase with the launch of the UNIX-based OS X. Rosegarden is a sophisticated MIDI + Audio sequencer, which also incorporates a high-quality score editor.Most of the desktop computers in the world run a derivative of Windows 95 or the Mac's System 7, and it's a fact that the manufacturers of both know that their time is up. That dedicated hardware might be like a computer inside, but it runs an 'embedded' operating system that is tailored for the purpose, with rock-solid reliability. If you use a computer at all in your recording setup, you'll know that the performance and stability of machines running general-purpose operating systems hasn't yet come close to that of dedicated studio hardware. The AGNULA project is creating what is possibly the first computer system tailored specifically for musicians - and it's all based around the Linux operating system. ![]()
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