Attack of the Pod Penguins: Not Why, Why Not?

Producing a podcast on Linux is easier than you think, thanks to some versatile tools. Our podcasting series starts with an intro to the fundamentals.

By Tony Steidler-Dennison, LinuxWorld.com, 08/08/06

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It's not that no one thinks of multimedia and Linux in the same frame. Many do. They're the Linux and FOSS evangelists, determined to remove all vestiges of proprietary software from their computing lives and yours, too, if you understand what's best. They're the engineers, fascinated with the challenge of bridging proprietary (and often very secret) hardware to the community of open source users. They're small commercial interests, focused on maximizing Return On Investment by minimizing the cost of entry into a burgeoning multimedia market. And, they're users, dabbling in open source for the first time, wondering how on Earth to make that sound card work like it did in Microsoft Windows.

Plenty of people think of Linux and multimedia in the same loose context. Few actually pair them for any useful purpose. Hardcore use of open source multimedia tools doesn't even approach what it could be in the computing world. With two other venerable computing platforms, it's difficult for some to imagine why anyone would need to use open source multimedia tools. It's not that they think it's impossible, or even particularly difficult. The problem is history. Both Microsoft and Apple have sizeable code bases including easy-to-access hooks into multimedia hardware. On the Windows side, hardware designers create new multimedia toys with that code base in mind. On the Mac side, hardware manufacturing is strictly controlled to conform to the Apple standards. While Macs generally take the upper hand in multimedia, both platforms deliver pretty consistently. It's not tough to see why open source-created multimedia hasn't made it onto the world computing stage. Most can't understand why it's necessary.

I've thought a lot about this in the past few years. Most of my weeknights and nearly all of my weekends have been filled with open source multimedia tools. I qualify as any one of the users noted above at any given time: engineer, evangelist, small business owner, and user. As a user, I rip CDs and listen to streaming blues broadcasts. As evangelist, I believe, heart and soul, that the world would be a better place without proprietary software, that the gains from computing should not be exclusive to those who can afford software. Or hardware. Or the seemingly endless cycles of proprietary upgrades required for both. As engineer, I've hacked my kernel and dreamed of schematics for a new sound card. I've also run a business on open source tools, albeit a small one, but one that measures real profit in triple-digit percentages. In all those roles, I tend to see widespread use of open source tools in multimedia delivery and creation as the next great plateau in wide open source adoption. It's still a destination somewhere up the mountain—the next base camp, as it were—but it is within sight.

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