Turn-key Linux Audio distribution
Around 8 years ago, I sought to "scratch an itch, intending to solve the software installation, dependencies, and configuration issues then associated with Linux for music. At the time I was working in the Eastman Computer Music Center (ECMC) where the troubles of setup and use caused frequent problems for composers who wanted to run the most advanced tools. In a mixed environment of NeXT, SGI, OSX, Windows, and Linux, open source was (and is) the best thing going. My mentor and ECMC Director, Allan Schindler, already had his own in-house scripts and documentation (based on the Berkeley/IRCAM/CARL[BICSF] system), providing an excellent foundation for a complete music system on Linux. It was just a matter of organization and troubleshooting. I wanted to solve the installation problems once and (quite literally) for all, bundling together a complete music software installation system that any user could setup and use.
So TKLA was born. The project has taken a backseat to composing and teaching of late, but I intend to work on it again, making available the environment I use at the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center on Linux and Mac OSX.
Many of the ideas in TLKA found their way into other projects, particularly CCRMA's excellent PlanetCCRMA. One of the ideas in TLKA was the "turnkey" package (these have come to be called "meta" pakages), a top-level package containing no files beyond a list of dependencies. Through Linux's package managements system, one could ask for this empty package and the system would automatically install all dependencies. This idea came out of an interesting exchange with PlanetCCRMA's primary developer, Ferndando Lopez-Lezcano.
Turn-key Linux Audio has been featured in many places in print and on the web. Here are several:
Computer Music Journal (Computer Music and the Linux Operating System)
Slashdot.org (geek central)
Linux Journal (alongside other similar projects)
Desktop Linux ("A Practical Guide to get started using Linux")
Mike Raznick's Digital Audio And The Linux Operating System, PDF
