As you know if you’ve been watching my other sites or Twitter, I have spent the past few weeks in a shakedown cruise on openSUSE 11.2. You can see the details here and here. I’m still doing a lot of testing on the main algorithmic composition appliance, but I expect to have a release ready some time the week of November 16th.
AlgoCompSynth 0.9 will be openSUSE 11.2-based, feature the full openSUSE 11.2 KDE desktop, and will only run on 64-bit machines. I haven’t established a minimum memory requirement yet, but I’m sure it will be at least 1 GB and could be 2 GB. It will only be distributed as a live DVD or USB image – I don’t believe a virtual image, even on a Xen host, will deliver the kind of performance that audio applications require.
In addition to all of the audio processing software and algorithmic composition software in previous appliances, I am adding more graphics software, and I am adding animation and video editing software as well. The new AlgoCompSynth will include all of the packages described in Crafting Digital Media: Audacity, Blender, Drupal, GIMP, Scribus, and other Open Source Tools
You’re probably wondering why I used the plural – “Appliances” – in the title. That’s because there is a second, more limited appliance, under construction. The working title is “VIDEO@znmeb”, and it will include the 2D graphics software and several video and animation packages:
- avidemux
- blender
- cinelerra
- Synfig Animation Studio
- PiTiVi
- Kdenlive
- Kino
- LiVES Video Editing System
- Open Movie Editor
VIDEO@znmeb will be a 32-bit appliance, use a stripped-down Gnome desktop, openSUSE 11.1 and will be distributed only as a LiveCD. I believe it will run in 512 MB but I think 1 GB is more realistic. I expect to have this appliance available for download on – wait for it – Friday the 13th – aka 2009-11-13.
