Totes ready to assume that yes, professionals are upgrading to Windows Server 2012r2 at $300/yr. and going along with the chicken-sacrifice ritual that also explains the urban farming boom.
And yeah, the windowsy bits in distrowatch Debian sectors, give or take a little local biz. hardening and repo mirroring juice. (Or note Israel’s insistence that for their version of EMEA Windows they insist on a few fixes. UAE like to order a ‘same.’ Nigeria skipped on their insistence on a localization, and just look…well, there it is. Almost no Mossad there but 4 out of 5 people want to be entrepreneurs.) Fedora 25 is evidently lovely down to the LVMs.
I work at MS (luckily not in a department that makes these decisions, thanks) but it basically sucks. On one hand you have the constant fear of security gaps in an increasingly complicated OS, and on the other hand you have turning folks’ computers off while they’re working. If it makes anyone feel better, the corporate IT’s reboot schedule is even more draconian than the outside world’s, so we all feel the pain of it as well.
Audacity is freeware and quite useful. IIRC they have very good auto noise reduction and other audio clean up tools. I’ve used it plenty. Particularly at home because I don’t need to or like to pay out for expensive software packages when I can avoid it. Or to supplement what I’m already working with.
But its hardly inline with, or as good as full on professional software. The industry standard is Pro Tools. Sometimes Adobe’s products replace it, but typically only for video. Both are Mac and Windows only. There are a variety of other software lines that are used in concert or in place of that. Particularly in the music business. Most of those are Mac and Windows only. There are freeware and Linux equivalents, but again frequently not as comprehensive, stable, or usable as the headline professional software lines. And where they do exist they, and Linux do not cleany slot into the sort of large, complicated, networked editing and studio workflows used in professional operations.
I never said you can’t do those things on Linux. Just that the best, preferred, industry standard software is frequently unavailable. And Linux being Linux you’ll never have an easy time building a studio or lab around it. Or fitting some Linux machines into the mix. So where they exist. They exist for very particular purposes, mostly test beds for web developers in the places I’ve worked. Seldom touching video or audio work.
So while I’m sure a Church you worked for had a professional operation on the order of NBC News and successful TV production companies I’ll stand by my statement that I’ve never seen a Linux setup in a professional production office.
They could just, you know, set the hours when reboots are allowed and download security updates under Windows 10 or even turn off their computer when not using it and reboot that way…
Still haven’t seen it in non-professional settings either. I’m willing to be bet the Linux box you did some audio work on wasn’t a dedicated a/v station. Circumstance is what circumstance is, and with restricted budget you make do with what you’ve got. I’ve done shoots, for pay, with bodged together camera stabilizers made from steel pipe and the plates from a free weight set. Done shoots with skateboards for dollies. Doesn’t make either appropriate or standard equipment. And you’re not likely to see either in a dedicated video operation.
A Linux box you happened to do some A/V work on isn’t what’s mean by “work station” in this context. The only Linux machines I’ve seen in Video units or Audio studios are test bed machines, or the occasional engineer/programmer’s machine in operations that specialize in publication via the web. They aren’t used to make video and audio. They’re used to make what you watch video and audio through.
We recorded, processed, and uploaded audio (not video, though - the
then-pastor was against that) from a dedicated, quad-core linux
Mint-powered workstation. State of the art back then what with its 16gb of
ram and all. Was a big deal to us 10 years ago. And I know we weren’t the
only non-profits to do it; I was in regular contact with counterparts at
what would be a megachurch by Canadian standards. All Linux shops, all the
way.
I understand that there are Windows-exclusive packages such as Reaper which
offer even greater detail of control with regards to audio processing.
However, for the vast majority of uses, Reaper is overkill. In the video
side of things, OBS Studio is a gold standard for live streaming events and
performs best under Linux.
The majority of working professionals I’ve ran into own apple hardware,
dual-boot windows and linux, and make use of open source software.
For what? Radio or broadcast? The web? Local use as in CCTV or over speakers? The web? Distribution on physical media? From what? A live studio (church) situation? Non live studio? Heavily location shot/pre-recorded material? Music performance? Or recorded and mixed in studio.
What you’ve likely experienced there is a vary particular use case for which a non-standard setup is either called for or more cost effective in some way. And it’s in what we call institutional media. Where in things be weird.
I’m talking about full on production units. Multiple, often dozens, of work stations of various levels. Including highly dedicated studio or editing bays. Both online systems based on networked workflow and simple offline stations. Complex patch racks, decks for physical media, archival material. Broadcast hookups for fiber and satellite. Places where the primary or exclusive work is A/V based. Your not finding many Linux systems in that. Whether it’s video. Audio. Broadcast. Or post. Music. Or what have. And it’s not at all a good argument to say that Linux would be better or even appropriate for that sort of work.
The movies you are watching are likely not made on Linux. The music you are listening to is likely not made on Linux. The TV you are watching is likely not made on Linux. The funny web video you are watching is likely not made on Linux. Not the podcasts, or the radio, or the commercials. There are/were no Linux boxes in film school.
These days most full facilities seem to be built out with Windows. I haven’t seen a Mac exclusive place in a while. Though there are usually macs around for certain people or tasks. Freelancers/independant guys have traditionally mostly stuck with Mac. I use Windows. I freelance infrequently, never liked Mac. And also like my primary machine to pull double duty for gaming. So I just stayed with windows. But it’s starting to look like Macs for freelancers are going out. Seen a lot of grousing about the new models being inadequate or insufficiently upgradeable. Or not cost effective. While the last desktop revision is starting to hit end of life in terms of top end performance.
To round it back up to my original point. Linux is not the default, appropriate, or better option for A/V work. And it is foolish to argue that if you are doing that particular “serious” thing that it should be done on Linux.
That you can do it on Linux. And that some people do. Doesn’t change that. And Is something I never disputed. None the less it is uncommon and I despite having worked in all sorts of video and audio. At all sorts of levels. Institutional, professional, corporate. Freelance. In house. And knowing a lot of people who do this work far more frequently than I’ve been able to manage. Haven’t seen it.
Yes, it has given me notice and let me choose when to restart, but when you have an automated job that will take several days and you can only delay the update for two days that is little use.
It’s not like I don’t restart Windows after such a long job anyway.
Likely at some point after other updates are installed it will re-enable that task but either way the updates get installed and you have to manually reboot.
Ape the 40±year-old mainframe systems that have file generation numbers (version numbers to the uninitiated). Always open the file with the highest generation number by default…
Updates would be simplified to copying updated versions of files. New processes starting would use the new code, existing processes with the older version in memory would continue as before.
Not necessarily foolproof unless you can tear down and restart important (system) processes when necessary.
A little extra housekeeping to tidy down old versions of files would be required (if you were tight on disk space).
Regression by deleting the high-generation file…
no money
I shelled out 30 cool bucks for Scrivener for Linux. Shelled out 25 for
Torchlight II (Linux). Etc, etc. Just because Linux is uncommon in America
doesn’t me Linux users won’t buy software.
I think Microsoft got it into their head that they could-- and should do this sort of thing when they started taking down botnets.
I myself use Windows, on occasion, in a dual boot scenario. Most of my “important” work is done in MacOSX. So perhaps I’m disconnected from the whole experience of “microsoft choosing to abuse this power”
