Cooking the Jam

(Wikimedia commons CC-BY-SA)
Work on the Fedora Jam spin has been continuing over the summer, reaching a steady boil. What's new since my last post? Most of this has gone into packaging software... Brendan Jones has been pushing an effort to get things in for review. These packages will be available for all Fedora users and as many as possible are going to make it into Fedora 18 (particularly if it keeps getting pushed back...). Some random highlights:
  • Non is a suite of tools including a DAW and MIDI sequencer and advanced mixer that all integrate together via Jack.
  • Giada another looper will join SooperLooper
  • drumkv1 a drum kit synthesizer released this week.
  • Plug! Jonathan Underwood is packaging the Plug application for Fender Mustang amps.
...and many others which can be found in the Audio Spin Tracker bugzilla.

On top of this Jørn Lomax has been working on a Jam-control app which will streamline enabling and disabling Jack and Pulseaudio when you need them. Jørn is also keeping the nightly compose afloat, a tricky task before the spin receives official approval and can run on Fedora Project servers.

It's not all sweetness yet. Theme-ing still needs a bit of tweaking; the focus is audio creation, but we want to take care of your eyes as well as your ears.
More importantly Jack and Pulseaudio need to work smoothly. Work is going into this over the next few days. Some people's response to Pulseaudio is to rip it out, but as Pulse becomes more commonly the default for non-pro audio this is going to cause more problems. While it's an option for the Jam spin doing this would leave regular Fedora users out in the cold. But there's hope, Pulse-on-Jack works in Fedora 16, so it will be made to work in Fedora 18 too.

A splash of Jam...
The Jam is at a boil, now it just needs stirring.

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