Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) will be the 15th release of the Ubuntu operating system.

Mark Shuttleworth, father of the popular Ubuntu operating system, proudly announced a few minutes ago the name and the goals for the next version of Ubuntu. Yes, we are talking about Ubuntu 11.10, dubbed Oneiric Ocelot and scheduled for release on October 13th, 2011.

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) will be the 15th release of the Ubuntu operating system. Ubuntu 11.10 will have three Alpha releases, one Beta release and a Release Candidate.

Until then, we have another version that should catch our attention and invade our computers, Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), which will be released on April 28th, 2011. Also, don't forget to leave some feedback about Unity!

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a fast and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default, every other package you can imagine available from the network, and professional technical support from Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies around the world.

For the next cycle, I think we’ll leave the oceanic theme behind. The “oddball octopus”, for example, is a great name but not one we’ll adopt this time around. Perhaps in 13 years time, though!


The objective is to capture the essence of our next six months work in a simple name. Inevitably there’s an obliquity, or offbeat opportunism in the result. And perhaps this next release more than most requires something other than orthodoxy – the skunkworks are in high gear right now. Fortunately I’m assured that if one of Natty’s successors is a skunk, it would at least be a sassy skunk!


So we’re looking for a name that conveys mysterious possibility, with perhaps an ounce of overt oracular content too. Nothing too opaque, ornate, odious or orotund. Something with an orderly ring to it, in celebration of the crisp clean cadence by which we the community bring Ubuntu forth.


There’s something neat in the idea that 11.10 will mark eight years since Ubuntu was conceived (it took a little longer to be born). So “octennial” might suit… but that would be looking backwards, and we should have an eye on the future, not the past. Hmm… an eye on the future, perhaps ocular? Or oculate? We’re certainly making our way up the S-curve of adoption, so perhaps ogee would do the trick?


Alternatively, we could celebrate the visual language of Ubuntu with the “orange okapi”, or the welcoming nature of our community with the “osculant orangutan”. Nothing hugs quite like dholbach, though, and he’s no hairy ape.


What we want is something imaginative, something dreamy. Something sleek and neat, too. Something that has all the precision of T S Eliot’s poetry, matched with the “effable ineffability” of our shared values, friendship and expertise. Something that captures both the competence of ubuntu-devel with the imagination of ayatana.

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Which leads us neatly to the Oneiric Ocelot.


Oneiric means “dreamy”, and the combination with Ocelot reminds me of the way innovation happens: part daydream, part discipline.


We’ll need to keep up the pace of innovation on all fronts post-Natty. Our desktop has come together beautifully, and in the next release we’ll complete the cycle of making it available to all users, with a 2D experience to complement the OpenGL based Unity for those with the hardware to handle it. The introduction of Qt means we’ll be giving developers even more options for how they can produce interfaces that are both functional and aesthetically delightful.


In the cloud, we’ll have to tighten up and make some firm decisions about the platforms we can support for 12.04 LTS. UDS in Budapest will be full of feisty debate on that front, I’m sure, but I’m equally sure we can reach a pragmatic consensus and start to focus our energies on delivering the platform for widespread cloud computing on free and flexible terms.


Ubuntu is now shipping on millions of systems from multiple providers every year. It makes a real difference in the lives of millions, perhaps tens of millions, of people. As MPT said, “what we do is not only art, it’s performance art”. Every six months the curtains part, and we have to be ready for the performance. I’d like to thank the thousands of people who are actively participating in the production of Natty: take the initiative, take responsibility, take action, and your work will make a difference to all of those users. There are very few places in the world where a personal intellectual contribution can have that kind of impact. And very few places where we have such a strong social fabric around those intellectual challenges, too. We each do what we do for our own reasons, but it’s the global impact of Ubuntu which gives meaning to that action.


Natty is a stretch release: we set out to redefine the look and feel of the free desktop. We’ll need all the feedback we can get, so please test today’s daily, or A3, and file bug reports! Keep up the discipline and focus on the Narwhal, and let’s direct our daydreaming to the Ocelot.

source: Mark Shuttlework Blog

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FIL (Film Imitation Lab) is a powerful script for old photo simulation.

FIL (Film Imitation Lab) is a powerful script for old photo simulation. FIL has a modular architecture and can use binary extension (plugins).

Current version: v1.7.1 (November 18th 2010).
Features:

• Old color simulation by using prepaered color processes
• Film grain
• Vignette simulation
• Defect lenses simulation
• Option indication
• Batch script execution
• Binary extensions (plugins) integration support.

Changes in FIL v1.7.1:

• New color process "Monochrome".
• New grain process "Dram Grain".
• GAL implementation and compatibility with GIMP 2.7.

There's one plugin in this first release, a four-band parametric equaliser.

Each section has an active/bypass switch, frequency, bandwidth and gain controls. There is also a global bypass switch and gain control.


The 2nd order resonant filters are implemented using a Mitra-Regalia style lattice filter, which has the nice property of being stable even while parameters are being changed.


All switches and controls are internally smoothed, so they can be used 'live' whithout any clicks or zipper noises.



This should make this plugin a good candidate for use in systems that allow automation of plugin control ports, such as Ardour, or for stage use.


Some FIL process bases on:

• Lomo Script by Elsamuko
• Vintage Look script by mm1
• Photochrom script by Elsamuko
• Highpass Sharpening script by drschwalbenmann

Download.

The Natty Narwhal (active development)
0.3.0-1	release (universe)
The Maverick Meerkat (current stable release)
0.3.0-1	release (universe)
The Lucid Lynx (supported)
0.3.0-1	release (universe)
The Karmic Koala (supported)
0.1.0-2	release (universe)
The Hardy Heron (supported)
0.1.0-2	release (universe)
The Dapper Drake (supported)
0.0.1-2	release (universe)

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MMA (Musical MIDI Accompaniment) is an accompaniment generator.

MMA is very versatile and generates excellent tracks. It comes with an extensive user-extendable library with a variety of patterns for various popular rhythms, detailed user manuals, and several demo songs.


MMA is a command line driven program. It creates MIDI files which are then played by a sequencer or MIDI file play program.


How good is MMA's output? Well, to start you might want to check out some of my own recordings. And here is a song created TOTALLY with MMA. Give a listen . . . I was impressed and I wrote MMA! My understanding is that Kara took an existing Yahama .sty file, converted it to MMA library format, wrote a MMA song file with a few chords, compiled, and that's about it. Very cool! Finally, here's another song by Kara, Sunshine Of My Life, which was done in studio with a MMA background track.

I have completed a complete CD of my saxophone playing with MMA backgrounds. Give a listen, and buy it, at Cedars.

People all over the world are using MMA on a daily basis. From Bach Fugues (really!) to Jazz to Country to Techno to just about anything you can imagine MMA's templating track system puts you in control of your music.


MMA is written in Python. You'll need version 2.5.0 or greater of Python for MMA to work (it will probably work with 2.4.x if you modify the initial script, but you're on your own). Please note that the 3.x Python series will not work with MMA.

MMA was in BETA for over 3 years and had over 24 releases before we decided that it was time for the 1.0 version (release 1.7 is now available). We continue to tweak the program to make it better ... but, right now it is a pretty nice piece of software. Please help the community by advising us of bugs, creating songs for distribution, and new and improved library files.

There are lots of other generators like MMA. The most popular are “Band In A Box” and “Jammer”. The problem with many of these programs is that they lock you into a proprietary format, work only with limited computing platforms, or insist on a silly GUI which limits your choices. You might think that the lack of a GUI is limiting, but we've found that MMA's method gives you a great deal of flexibility in setting volumes, patterns, etc.

MMA is free! Yes, this means you don't have to pay for it—more importantly it means that you can use (or even change) MMA in any manner you want. MMA is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

MMA is developed on a Linux platform, but should be usable on just about any modern computer system.

The main MMA archive is really all you need. It includes:

• mma - the executable python script,
• modules - the various python modules needed to run MMA,
• lib - a set of standard library files which contain over 900 MMA patterns for different rhythms,
• egs - a few simple demo songs and more complicated examples,
• docs/html - the entire set of documentation files in HTML format.

After downloading this file you need to unpack it (the directory “mma-bin-VERSION” will be automatically created). The magical incantation:

tar xzf mma-bin-*.tar.gz

should work just fine. Then run the one of the install scripts (either ln-install or cp-install). Read the file text/INSTALL for details, but we recommend using ln-install.

This will create the needed system directories and install the Python modules and the standard MMA library. The script has been designed for Linux ... follow these instructions for Windows and if you install this on a different OS, please let us know just what problems you had and your solutions.


This is a Unix/Linux tar.gz file.

Download (1.7MEG): mma-bin-1.7.tar.gz

Distribution Packages

To make installs easier for people with Linux systems we have created deb and rpm packages. These packages include the basic MMA distribution, plus the PDF documentation.

The packages will be installed in the /usr (not /local) directory structure.

MMA's only dependency is Python 2.4 (or greater), so there should be no dep problems with these packages. Please let us know if there are any problems.

Debian Package Use your favorite debian package manager (from a command line you can do something like:

sudo dpkg -i mma*deb).

We're not “real” Debian package makers ... so, shout if you find a problem ... better, mildly shout if it works as advertised!

Download (3.2MEG): mma_1.7_all.deb

RPM Package

A RPM based package for users with Redhat, Mandriva and other rpm based distros has been created using alien run on the the deb package.

Download (3.1MEG): mma-1.7-1.noarch.rpm

PDF Documentation

The documentation for MMA consists of 3 PDF files:

• mma.pdf - a 193 page printable manual.
• mma-tut.pdf - a short (21 page) tutorial.
• mma-lib.pdf - reference to the standard mma library.

The HTML docs supplied with the main distribution are extracted from the PDF files. You should have both sets if for no other reason that the PDF files look much nicer.
This is a Unix/Linux tar.gz file.

Download (1.5MEG): mma-pdf-1.7.tar.gz

Chord Documentation

In addition to the main reference manuals we have prepared an auxiliary PDF document listing in both text and standard music notation all the chords and scales supported in MMA.



This is a compressed Unix/Linux .gz file.

Download (49K): chords.pdf.gz

Current Developer Version If you are brave, you might want to try the very newest!

This package has everything in it that the “official” distribution contains. However, the pdf documentation, above, doesn't reflect changes ... the download comes with html docs which should document all the changes.

Install note: if you have an existing install using the .deb or .rpm package you should probably delete/remove it first to avoid confusion. The .deb/.rpm install is the /usr/ directory and the manual install for the developer versions install in /usr/local.

New command TRUNCATE will reduce the duration of the following bar(s). Makes it very easy to insert “short” bars or to split Grooves over a single bar.

Chord enhancement—polychords are supported!

Groove enhancement—specify filename with groove name.

Download (1.7MEG): mma-devl.1.7b.tar.gz

Some Examples

A Short Sample

For those who like to “try before you buy” (even if stuff is free), here is a real-life MMA file for the Cole Porter tune “I've Got You Under My Skin”. Depending on your browser settings, you may have to left-click the following links to download to a file.

Download (1K): ive-got-you-under-my-skin.mma

And here is the MIDI file created by MMA.

Download (27K): ive-got-you-under-my-skin.mid

Quality depends on your MIDI synthesizer. Here is a MP3 file generated via Timidity and some good soundfonts: ive-got-you-under-my-skin.mp3.

MMA Songs

This archive contains 714 songs which I've converted to MMA. They are mostly jazz standards, but a few country and Latin songs can also be found.

Legal gooblygook: Please respect other people's copyrights—these files are supplied for educational purposes only and should most likely not be used for public performance.

The quality of some of these tracks ranges from “not-so-good” all the way to “pretty-darn-good”. I perform for various functions in our community and use MMA generated tracks played on a synth when going solo with just my saxophone (not always solo, sometimes my dear wife sings as well). These are the same files that I use. Hire me for a reasonable fee to really hear them!


All the song files are packed into a single Unix/Linux tar.gz file.

Download (276K): mma-songs-1.7.tar.gz

Plectrum Track Example

The Plectrum track (available in MMA 1.5c and above) emulates a picked or strummed instrument like a guitar. Here is a short example file showing a few of the features:

Download (2K): PlectrumExample.mma

The MIDI file created by MMA.

Download (790 BYTES): PlectrumExample.mid

And a MP3 file: PlectrumExample.mp3.

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Open Sound System (OSS) is the first attempt in unifying the digital audio architecture for UNIX.

Open Sound System (OSS) is the first attempt in unifying the digital audio architecture for UNIX. OSS is a set of device drivers that provide a uniform API across all the major UNIX architectures. It supports Sound Blaster or Windows Sound System compatible sound cards which can be plugged into any UNIX workstation supporting the ISA or PCI bus architecture. OSS also supports workstations with on-board digital audio hardware.

Traditionally, each UNIX vendor has provided their own API for processing digital audio. This meant that applications written to a particular UNIX audio API had to be re-written or ported, with possible loss of functionality, to another version of UNIX. Applications written to the OSS API, need to be designed once and then simply re-compiled on any supported UNIX architecture. OSS is source code compatible across all the platforms.

Most UNIX workstations, thus far, have only provided support for digital audio sampling and playback (business audio). OSS brings the world of MIDI and electronic music to the workstation environment. With the advent of streaming audio, speech recognition/generation, computer telephony, Java and other multimedia technologies, applications on UNIX can now provide the same audio capabilities as those found on Windows NT, OS/2, Windows 95 and the Macintosh operating systems. OSS also provides synchronized audio capabilities required for desktop video and animation playback.

Updates:

OSS v4.2 Build 2004 for Linux (x86/AMD64) announced

* Added Xonar DS/STX support
* Fixed up Mplayer AC3 passthrough problem
* Support for Creative Labs XFi XTreme PCI Express cards
* Fixed Lynxtwo audio muting issue and crash when unloading the driver
* Fixes for new Linux kernel 2.6.33

Devices supported both by the open source the retail OSS versions.

ALI M5451
ALI M5455
AMD 786
AMD 8111
AMD Geode CS5536 (BETA)
ATI High Definition Audio (SB450)
ATI High Definition Audio (SB600)
ATI IXP200
ATI IXP300
ATI IXP400
Asus Xonar D1 (AV100)
Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1
Audiotrak Prodigy HD2
Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 Advance DE
C-Media CM8338A
C-Media USB 2/4/6/8ch audio adapter
C-Media USB audio adapter - model1
C-Media USB audio adapter - model2
CMedia CM8338B
CMedia CM8738/CM8768
CMedia CMI8788
Creative Audigy2 NX USB (BETA)
Creative AudioPCI (ES1370)
Creative AudioPCI97 (ES1371/ES1373)
Creative Ectiva EV1938
Creative Labs SB XFi Xtreme
Creative SB X-Fi 20K1 *EARLY BETA*
Creative SB X-Fi 20K2 *EARLY BETA*
Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 (Dell)
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy/Audigy2
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 Value/Audigy4
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS PCMCIA
Creative Sound Blaster Extigy (BETA)
Creative Sound Blaster Live
Creative Sound Blaster Live 1024/Platinum
Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1/Platinum IR
Creative Sound Blaster MP3+ USB
Creative Sound Blaster PCI128 (5880A)
Creative Sound Blaster PCI128 (5880B)
Creative Sound Blaster PCI128 (CT5880)
Crystal CS4280
Crystal CS4281
Crystal CS4610
Crystal CS4615
EGO SYStems RoMI/O USB MIDI interface (BETA)
ESS Solo-1
Ego Systems Juli@ *BETA*
ForteMedia FM 801
Generic ENVY24 based device
Generic ENVY24HT based sound card
Generic M Audio USB MIDI interface (BETA)
Generic USB audio/MIDI device (BETA)
Genius Sound Maker Live
Guillemot Maxi Sound MUSE
Hercules Game Theater XP
Hercules Game Theater XP+
Hercules Gamesurround MUSE Pocket (BETA)
Intel 440MX (440MX)
Intel AC97 (ESB)
Intel AC97 (ICH)
Intel AC97 (ICH1)
Intel AC97 (ICH2)
Intel AC97 (ICH3)
Intel AC97 (ICH4)
Intel AC97 (ICH5)
Intel AC97 (ICH6)
Intel AC97 (ICH7)
Intel High Definition Audio (ESB2)
Intel High Definition Audio (ICH10)
Intel High Definition Audio (ICH10)
Intel High Definition Audio (ICH6)
Intel High Definition Audio (ICH7)
Intel High Definition Audio (ICH8)
Intel High Definition Audio (ICH9)
Intel High Definition Audio (P35)
Intel High Definition Audio (PCH)
Labtec LCS1040 Speaker System (BETA)
Logitec Quickcam Pro 4000 (mic) (BETA)
Logitec USB Headset
M Audio Audiophile 192
M Audio Audiophile 2496
M Audio Delta 1010
M Audio Delta 1010LT
M Audio Delta 410
M Audio Delta 44
M Audio Delta 66
M Audio Delta DiO 2496
M Audio Delta TDIF
M Audio OmniStudio USB (BETA)
M Audio Oygen8 MIDI keyboard
M Audio Oygen8 MIDI keyboard
M Audio Revolution 5.1
M Audio Revolution 7.1
M Audio Sonica Theater USB (BETA)
M Audio Sonica USB (BETA)
M Audio USB AudioSport Duo (BETA)
M Audio USB AudioSport Quatro (BETA)
M Audio USB MIDISPORT 1x1 (BETA)
M Audio USB MIDISPORT 1x1 (BETA)
M Audio USB MIDISPORT 2x2 (BETA)
M Audio USB MIDISPORT 2x2 (BETA)
M Audio USB MIDISPORT 8x8 (BETA)
MIDIMan DiO 2448
MSI K7T266
MSI KT3 Ultra
National Semiconductor Geode CS5530
National Semiconductor Geode SC1200
Nvidia CK8
Nvidia CK8S
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP51)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP55)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP61)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP61)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP65)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP67)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP73)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP78S)
Nvidia High Definition Audio (MCP79)
Nvidia MCP4
Nvidia MCP51
Nvidia nForce
Nvidia nForce2
Nvidia nForce3
Nvidia nForce4
OSS Input Multiplexer
OSS MIDI Loopback driver
OSS loopback audio driver
OSS user space audio driver I/O module
Philips ToUcam Pro (mic) (BETA)
RME Digi96
RME Digi96/8
RME Digi96/8 PAD
RME Digi96/8 PRO
RME MADI (not supported yet)
SiS 7012
SiS 7018
SiS High Definition Audio
Sound Blaster Audigy LS / Live7.1
Terratec Aureon 7.1 Sky
Terratec Aureon 7.1 Space
Terratec Aureon 7.1 Universe
Terratec DMX 6Fire
Terratec DMX Xfire 1024
Terratec EWS88D
Terratec EWS88MT
Terratec EWX 24/96
Terratec PHASE 28
Trident 4DWave-CX
Trident 4DWave-DX
Trident 4DWave-NX
TurtleBeach SantaCruz / VideoLogic SonicFury
ULI High Definition Audio
VIA High Definition Audio
VIA VT5432B
VIA VT8233/8235/8237
VIA VT8233A
VIA VT82C686
Yamaha DS-XG YMF724
Yamaha DS-XG YMF724F
Yamaha DS-XG YMF734
Yamaha DS-XG YMF740
Yamaha DS-XG YMF740C
Yamaha DS-XG YMF744
Yamaha DS-XG YMF754
Yamaha PSR-1K USB MIDI Keyboard (BETA)
Yamaha UX16 USB MIDI interface (BETA)
Devices supported only by retail version of OSS
Lynx AES16 Studio Interface
Lynx AES16-SRC Studio Interface
Lynx AES16e Studio Interface
Lynx AES16e-SRC Studio Interface
Lynx-L22 Studio Interface
LynxONE Studio Interface
LynxTWO-A Studio Interface
LynxTWO-B Studio Interface
LynxTWO-C Studio Interface
RME Hammerfall (not supported yet)

Digital Audio Editors

Audacity - Audacity is a free audio editor. You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST plug-in effects.
Slab - SLab Direct to Disk Recording Studio. Mixer 64-16-8-4-2 stereo/quadraphonic outputs. Includes WaveEditing, effects send busses, stereo bus groupings, dynamic digital filters (per track), TCL/TK based drag and drop user interface, stereo effects API, VU metering, DSP - echo, chorus, flange, phase, reverb, rotary, limitor, et al, Continuous controller recording (mixdown sessions). MultiProcessing/shared memory mix engine.
MiXViews - MiXViews is a powerful Unix digital audio editing/processing program.
Snd - Snd can accomodate any number of sounds at once, each with any number of channels. Each channel of each sound is displayed in its own window, with its own cursor, edit history, and marks; each sound has a 'control panel' to try out various changes quickly, and an expression parser, used mainly during searches; there is an overall stack of 'regions' that can be browsed and edited; channels and sounds can be grouped together during editing; edits can be undone and redone without restriction ('unlimited undo'); Snd can be customized using an Emacs-lisp-like syntax; it can also be extended with user-supplied editing or display functions loaded at run time.
ecasound - Ecasound is a sound processing application designed for basic effect processing, mixing, multitrack recording and signal recycling. It supports OSS and ALSA sound drivers, wav, mp3, aiff, cdda, au, snd, raw and standard file streams (all can be used both as inputs and outputs). Effects can be combined both in series and in parallel, while effect parameters can be controlled in realtime with oscillators and MIDI controllers. The ecasound package currently consists of ecasound, a versatile console mode interface, qtecasound, a Qt-based X-interface, and various command-line utils suitable for batch processing.
SoX: Sound eXchange - SoX is a sound file format converter for Unix. It also does sample rate conversion and some sound effects. It's the swiss army knife of sound tools.
Broadcast - A multi-tracking digital audio editing program that supports:

• transparent, non destructive editing, unlimited tracks, full duplex recording
• automated fade, pan, polarity reverse, and mute
• 3 band parametric EQ with variable level,
• center frequency, and bandwidth console module grouping with unlimited groups possible
• fast wave displays cue point labeling during record, playback, and editing
• variable playback buffer for near realtime console adjustments variable output channels
• playback looping, hard muting, crossfade, normalize, balance, and concert hall reverb
• playback to an audio device or disk vertical zoom, horizontal zoom, track zoom, and selection zoom

SndObj Library" - Sound synthesis /processing C++ object-oriented library.
Aglaophone - Real time processing and analysis of audio signals
XMCD - xmcd is a full-featured CD Player software package, supporting standard play mode as well as CDDA extraction and real-time playback via the sound card DSP.

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MPEG Tools

MpegTV - Real-time software MPEG Player with audio support for platforms where OSS is available, it supports Linux, Solaris, SCO, BSD/OS and FreeBSD! With the MpegTV Player, your computer becomes a real multimedia system!
Alsaplayer - This is a new PCM player which is heavily multithreaded. It is plugin based and supports MP2, MP3, WAV, CDDA and socket based input types already. It supports output to OSS. Features include speed/pitch control (positive and negative), multiple active scopes, playlist support and real-time effects.
MpegEdit - mpgedit is an MPEG 1 layer 1/2/3, MPEG 2, and MPEG 2.5 audio file editor that is capable of processing both Constant Bit Rate (CBR) and Variable Bit Rate (VBR) encoded files. mpgedit can cut an input MPEG file into one or more output files, as well as join one or more input MPEG files into a single output file. Since no file decoding / encoding occurs during editing, there is no audio quality loss when editing with mpgedit. When editing VBR files that have a XING header, mpgedit updates the output file's XING header information to reflect the new file size and average bit rate.
XMMS - X Multimedia System (XMMS) is an MPEG-3 audio player with a cool spectrum analyzer. It's based on the Windows winamp MPEG-3 audio player (only the GUI).
mpg123 It is a fast, free and portable MPEG audio player for Unix. It supports MPEG 1.0/2.0 layers 1, 2 and 3 (those famous "mp3" files), and it has been tested on a wide variety of platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, i SunOS, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX and others. For full CD quality playback i (44 kHz, 16 bit, stereo) a Pentium, SPARCstation10, DEC Alpha or similar i CPU is required. Mono and/or reduced quality playback (22 kHz or 11 kHz) i is even possible on 486 CPUs.

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Video/DVD Players

XAnim - XAnim is a program for playing a wide variety of animation, video and audio formats under X11. It was written mainly for machines running Unix(or a Unix derivative)
MPlayer - MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies.
Xine - xine is a free multimedia player. It plays back CDs, DVDs, and VCDs. It also decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3 from local disk drives, and displays multimedia streamed over the Internet. It interprets many of the most common multimedia formats available - and some of the most uncommon formats, too.
Ogle DVD - The first opensource DVD player to support DVD menus, bookmarks, time skipping, multichannel audio, SPDIF output, crop & zoom video.
VLC - VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

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MIDI Tools and Players

KMid - KMid is a midi/karaoke player designed for X11/KDE capable of playing MIDI files with karaoke lyrics. It has a powerful MIDI mapper. It supports drag & drop interface, customizable fonts for Karaoke text and full KDE desktop integration.
STK - STK is a set of audio signal processing C++ classes and instruments for music synthesis. You can use these classes to create programs which make cool sounds using a variety of synthesis techniques. This is not a terribly novel concept, except that STK is very portable and completely user-extensible.
TiMidity - TiMidity is a MIDI to WAVE converter (MIDI renderer) that uses Gravis Ultrasound compatible patch files to generate digital audio data from General MIDI files. The audio data can be played through an audio device or stored on disk. On a fast machine, music can be played in real time.
Rosegarden Suite - The Rosegarden suite is a free musical notation editing and sequencing system for a variety of machines running Unix and X, in particular SGI IRIX workstations and PCs running Linux.
Tclmidi - Tclmidi is language designed for creating and editing standard MIDI files. With the proper device interface it will also play and record MIDI files. Since tclmidi is a language supporting function calls, recursion and conditionals, you can use these features for editing, sequencing and writing complex scripts.
CSound - Csound is a sound and music synthesis system, providing facilities for composition and performance over a wide range of platforms. It is not restricted to any style of music, having been used for many years in the creation of classical, pop, techno, ambient, experimental, and (of course) computer music, as well as music for film and television.
CMIX - CMIX is a computer music "language" designed to create and manipulate soundfiles, or files containing raw binary data which can be converted into sound on a computer equipped with a soundcard. It is somewhat similar to Csound.
Keykit - It is a programming language and graphical user interface for MIDI, useful for both algorithmic and realtime musical experimentation.
Direct Music - applications for the Direct Music API. Includes: midi player, MIDI sequencer and editor, virtual keyboard synthesizer, CMF file format player and FM patch editor.
UNIX MIDI Plugin for Netscape - UMP is a Netscape plugin for playing MIDI via Timidity.
aRTs - aRts simulates a complete "modular analog synthesizer". You can create sounds & music using small modules like oscillators for creating waveforms, various filters, modules for playing data on your speakers, mixers, faders,... aRts can process realtime midi input. A KDE GUI is provided where you can connect the modules - generators, effects, filters and output - to each other.
Bristol - Synthesiser emulation package emulating a couple of Moogs, a couple of Hammonds, a Prophet-5, Juno-6, DX-7, others. Uses a realistic emulated interface based on native X11 bitmap manipulation.

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Mixer Applets

Smix -

• auto detects supported channels (devices)
• active real time updating
• balance sliders for all stereo channels
• overall balance slider
• rec, mute, lock and solo buttons
• widely configurable
• save all settings in configuration file
• command line sound control

aumix - This is an audio mixer which can be used from the command line or scripts, or interactively at the console with an ncurses-based interface.
Xmmix - Xmmix is an audio mixer utility for the X window system using the Motif graphical user interface. It operates the input and output mixer section on many PC sound cards.
KMix - kmix is an OSS compliant, full-featured mixer. It displays all supported channels as sliders (one for mono channels, one or two for stereo channels), can mute channels and set the record source. Channels can be hidden. Additionaly it features an overall balancing slider, which affects all channels. Several options may be configured in an user friendly options menu. All these options can be stored in mixer profiles. These can be quickly accesed via a single key press. kmix is based on the Qt and KDE libraries and is available as part of the KDE multimedia package.
Mix2000 - Controls MASTER, BASS, TREBLE, LINE, DSP, FM, CD, MIC, Simultaneous Inputs, up to 4 channels. Fine adjustment via cursor keys, command line arguments. Works with Broadcast 2.1

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Trackers/MOD Players

Funktraker -
SoundTracker - SoundTracker is a pattern-oriented music editor just like the DOS program 'FastTracker'. Samples are lined up on tracks and patterns which are then arranged to a song. SoundTracker reads and writes the standard XM format and provides a nice GTK+ interface. A rudimentary sample recorder and editor is also included.
XMP - XMP is a module player. It was designed to play Fasttracker II Extended Modules plus a few other formats. In the current incarnation xmp is able to play standard Amiga MOD files, Scream Tracker 3 S3M files and, of course, Fasttracker II XM files.
XGMOD - Xgmod is a module player with an X interface for the GUS. A non-X version is also included in the distribution.
NSPmod -
MikMod - MikMod is a cross-platform mod player for Linux, SUN/Solaris and other OSes that supports the following file formats: MOD, MTM, M15, XM, S3M, STM, ULT, UNI

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Streaming Audio

The RealAudio System - RealAudio allows you to listen to and deliver live and on-demand audio-based multimedia over Internet connections of 14.4 Kbps and faster. UNIX versions of the Player, Server, Personal Server and Encoder are available.
Macromedia Flash - Plays Macromedia Flash media with audio in your Netscape Web browser.
IceCast - Icecast is a client/server system for mp3 streams. It's licenced under GPL, and should work under all unix systems. Have you ever wanted your friends to hear your mp3 files? Ever had a dream of being a radio DJ? Icecast makes it easy, and it's extremely low cpu and memory usage makes it the primary choice for network audio streaming.
Netscape Java Audio - Libmoss is a replacement for Netscape's implementation of (the Java class) sun.audio.AudioDevice(including some JRI native C code) which enables the Netscape Java VM to play sound.
NetStreamer - NetStreamer consists of a program to "receive" audio, and a program to "transmit" audio over Intranet/ISDN at 48Kbps. The NetStreamer sound-quality is 16 bit mono at 16 kHz. Both programs connect to a NetStreamer Server, a kind of reflector that takes care of the distribution of audio. Every transmitter contacts a Server at startup and claims a certain frequency somewhere between 88.0 and 108.0 MHz, and receivers can tune in on one of these transmitter frequencies.
Skype - Skype is a peer-to-peer based Internet Phone that provides PC-to-PC, Phone-to-PC and PC-to-Phone audio commnications. It also provides video conferencing as well.as well.
VAT - Vat is an audio conferencing application which runs over MBONE and is developed by the Network Research Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
RAT - The Robust-Audio Tool (RAT) is a tool designed to allow multiple users to talk to each other over the Multicast Backbone (Mbone) of the Internet. RAT is designed to be adaptive to network and host conditions.
NetAudio - NetAudio is a network based audio system designed like X-Windows. The audio server sits on the local workstation and clients can remotely execute and send audio data to and from the local audio server.
SpeakFreely - Speak Freely is a application for a variety of Unix workstations that allows you to talk (actually send voice, not typed characters) over a network.
FreePhone - Free Phone is an audio tool for the Internet developed by members of the High-Speed Networking group at INRIA. It supports MBONE and RTP protocols.
EsoundD- This program mixes multiple digitized audio streams and samples together for playback by a single audio device. Also allows monitoring of mixed output, and recording. Network connections to the daemon are supported.

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Speech Tools

Festival - Festival offers a general framework for building speech synthesis systems as well as including examples of various modules. As a whole it offers full text to speech through a number APIs: from shell level, though a Scheme command interpreter, as a C++ library, and an Emacs interface. Festival is multi-lingual (currently English, Spanish and Welsh) though English is the most advanced. Festival runs on FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris.
Emacspeak - Emacspeak is the first full-fledged speech output system that will allow someone who cannot see to work directly on a Unix system. It is built on top of Emacs. Once you start Emacs with emacspeak loaded, you get spoken feedback for everything you do.
Speech Codecs - Codecs for PCM, G721, G723, G728, GSM and DoD CELP speech compression
MBROLA - A speech synthesizer based on the concatenation of diphones. It takes a list of phonemes as input, together with prosodic information (duration of phonemes and a piecewise linear description of pitch), and produces speech samples on 16 bits (linear), at the sampling frequency of the diphone database used (it is therefore NOT a Text-To-Speech (TTS)synthesizer, since it does not accept raw text as input).
Wavesurfer- WaveSurfer is an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation. It has been designed to suit both novice and advanced users. WaveSurfer has a simple and logical user interface that provides functionality in an intuitive way and which can be adapted to different tasks. It can be used as a stand-alone tool suited for a wide range of tasks in speech research and education. Typical applications are speech/sound analysis and sound annotation/transcription. WaveSurfer can also serve as a platform for more advanced/specialized applications. WaveSurfer can be extended through plug-ins or be embedded in other applications. Another option is to control it remotely.

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Games

DOOM - the best selling "shoot-em-up" game with 3D, animation and music
Abuse - Yet another action adventure game from the authors of Doom.
Quake - The next game from the authors of DOOM to watch out for!. Again, music and effects are available under the OSS API.
Maelstrom - Linux (UNIX) port of the Macintosh asteroids-like game.
Xmame - X-Mame is the Un*x version of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, a very cool arcade (coin-op) video game emulator. This latest release is capable of playing 629 games (including duplicates and bootlegs). Sound support is also provided via the OSS drivers.
XGalaga - Remember Galaga? Sequel to the world's first color video game, Galaxian, Galaga and it's ancestor have been staples of the computer gamer's diet for more than 15 years.

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Miscellaneous

LinRad: Linrad is a software radio application for doing "ham radio" on Linux. Linrad receives a signal in digital form by reading a device. Currently Linrad operates with a wide range of audio boards for which Linux device drivers are available and in the future boards sampling directly at RF frequencies will be available.
Snack- The Snack Sound Toolkit is designed to be used with a scripting language such as Tcl/Tk or Python. Using Snack you can create powerful multi-platform audio applications with just a few lines of code. Snack has commands for basic sound handling, e.g. sound card and disk I/O. Snack also has primitives for sound visualization, e.g. waveforms and spectrograms. It was developed mainly to handle digital recordings of speech, but is just as useful for general audio. Snack has also successfully been applied to other one-dimensional signals.
Executor - Executor 2 is a MacOS emulator that runs on Linux and supports audio. It runs either on SVGA or X-Windows.
Virtual 2600 - An Atari 2600 Emulator. Supports Linux/UN*X, SVGAlib, X11 and DOS

XPortShot RT - XPortShot RT is as GTK based real time oscilloscope simulator, capable of displaying multiple channels of data.
GSI - GSI gives applications, through a very simple API, sample playing with stereo, 3D, doppler effects, music playing (MIDI, HMP, MUS), cd playing.
XSR - xsr is a lithe program based solely on Xlib (so its fast and small) that reads in audio data from the soundcard and displays it on the root window in an entertaining and neat fashion. it also does fourier analysis and looks really cool. it is fast enough to run in the background without interfering with anything.
Dynamic - Dynamic - Dumps your audio cd's to /dev/dsp or file. Audio data is read digitally and passes the cpu on its way to sound card and file. Allows forward, reverse and reverse squared play. Pitch control is available. Further more cd samples of arbitrary length (1 frame to the whole cd) are selectable via a time code gui. Dynamic records exactly as it sounds - real time editing is recorded.
SGI AudioFile Library - This Audio File Library is an implementation of SGI's Audio File Library (AL), which provides an elegant API for accessing a variety of audio file formats, such as AIFF/AIFF-C, WAVE, and NeXT/Sun .snd/.au. This version implements most of the calls in SGI's version.
Sunsite Linux audio apps - various other audio applications for Linux archived at SunSite's web server.
Linux MIDI & Sound Applications - A very comprehensive site of Linux (and UNIX) audio applications mantained by Mr. David Phillips. This is perhaps the "best" site for audio enthusiasts on UNIX.

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