
Please review my distro (if you are a musician) - todoesverso
http://gnuguitarinux.sourceforge.net
======
jasonkester
You've clearly put a lot of work into this (congrats, by the way), so why not
spend a little time making the product site look a little nicer?

My first instinct when I saw the site was "abandoned open source project" and
a strong desire to click away. Reading the intro text didn't really tell me
what your thing was. Only after looking at screenshots, lists of pre-installed
software, the title of this post, and making a few leaps did I understand what
you're actually trying to accomplish.

So instead of "mumble-mumble-low-latency-mumble-mumble", how about
"[BetterName] - A linux distribution for recording musicians" or similar,
followed by a list of _benefits_ to said recording musician.

Here is what an OS website needs to look like:

<http://www.ubuntu.com/>

Yours doesn't look like that. At all. It looks like every other sourceforge
homepage, which means it looks terrible. Get a domain name (for a better
product name), spend $400 on a 99designs contest, and spend 20 hours building
a nice looking site for your project.

For the effor you've put in thus far, your project deserves it.

~~~
todoesverso
I'll do my best to clarify what GNUGuitarINUX is in a few words, Regarding the
name, what is wrong with it, is it hard to pronounce? I just wanted to honor
the GNU project and the linux project. I would be more than happy if I could
come up with a name that has GNU, Linux, Debian and guitar in it :)

~~~
jasonkester
Try this: Ask any of the 500 people who have visited your site today to tell
you the name of that Linux flavor for Guitar players. I'd be surprised if a
single one got it right first try.

Now imagine it was called "Hendrux - a GNU/Linux distro for recording
musicians". Pretty much all of us would be able to repeat that back to you
(though a few might misspell the name).

Names have value. They send messages. GNUGuitarINUX sends the message that
"The author thought this was a good name, so chances are the project itself
will be every bit as opaque. Best stay away unless you have a lot of time to
spend getting it working."

~~~
todoesverso
True, I'll see if HackerNews help me with that ;)

------
cschep
Please change the name, you've obviously put way too much work into it to have
it flounder because of it.

~~~
todoesverso
I guess I could add a "a.k.a" any suggestion?

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Hendrix?

:)

~~~
pessimizer
The estate is _very_ litigious. Maybe try "Hendrux."

~~~
nandemo
Hendrix state suing a random Linux guy would be as absurd as Beatles' Apple
Corps suing Apple Computer.

~~~
pessimizer
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer>

~~~
nandemo
That's precisely what I meant.

------
dejb
I play guitar, work on linux servers all day long and have professional
knowledge of music software... and I can't understand from your description
what this actually does. Is it a plugin, host or controller? Does it require
other software to operate? What actual guitar playing related functionality
does it have? You might want to add this to the opening sentence or at least
the opening paragraph.

~~~
todoesverso
Its a live linux distribution, you burn it into a CD or a thumb drive, boot
your pc, and plug your guitar. Then you'll be able to use rakarrack which is a
realtime effect box. But thanks for the advice, I'll update the opening
sentence

~~~
jasonkester
That's a lot more helpful. Way better than:

 _"It has a real-time configured kernel and the whole system configured to
obtain the smallest latency possible. Everything is configured (or at least
should be) to work out-of-the-box."_

... which doesn't mean anything to anybody except you.

Work on that "elevator pitch" description carefully. Get it down to 10 words,
then stick it up top in 36 point font so that people stumbling across your
thing can figure out what it is.

~~~
niclupien
Well, if you are familiar with other audio distribution out there (ubuntu
studio, 64 studio), this mean a lot.

This is a system (obviously a linux one) configured for low latency (save me
lots of time and messy config) work out of the box (no other download required
to go and play)... say no more, i get it.

But i agree that i was looking for something more elaborated, something which
tell me exactly what it use and what it does. Why should i use it over ubuntu
studio etc.

------
jasonkester
More feedback (since I would actually use this if I could figure out how).

How about some instructions on how to install it? I see a download link that
gives me an .iso file. And I see this:

 _Also as live-build (v2.0.3-1) uses squashfs v4.0 it generates an ISO that
can be burn into a CD the usual way or it can be dd-ed directly into a thumb
drive, which is pretty cool._

... which means nothing. Evidently, it's possible to install it. And it's
cool. That doesn't help.

Look. You've spent a lot of time and effort building this thing, but then you
just stopped. If you weren't on HN asking for feedback, you'd have lost me a
long time ago. But I'm trying my best to actually learn about this thing and
try it out, and you simply haven't given me enough information to do so.

------
nphase
Awesome! Now I have another distro to play with (also: AVLinux,
<http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html>) for getting rove
(<http://github.com/wrl/rove>) up and running with my monome
(<http://monome.org/devices>)

------
tyrmored
Sort of unrelated, but looks like you just gave me a nice big list of Linux
audio programs to check out :)

~~~
noonespecial
For even more goodness, check out AV Linux.

<http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html>

------
mfukar
Sir, you get an A in my book just for the effort!

I've been looking for a way to get a small guitar recording studio going at
home, and I got so frustrated with Cubase messing with my audio card that I
sort of "gave up". Nobody writes low latency drivers for Windows, in fact,
they've seem to have given up on real time recording. (Disclaimer: I'm still
on Vista)

I will definitely be giving this a try as soon as I get home!

~~~
ZenzerNet
Try Reaper at www.reaper.fm - you can try it free. It's awesome!

------
pufuwozu
How are you meant to pronounce it?

~~~
todoesverso
No idea, I speak spanish and its quite easy :) could be something like "new-
guitar-inux"?

~~~
spcmnspff
The GNU is usually pronounced "gah-new" rather than "new".

<http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt> "But, when it's the
name of our system, the correct pronunciation is "guh-NEW" -- pronounce the
hard "G". If you talk about the "new" operating system, you'll get people very
confused, because we've been working on it for 17 years now, so it is not new
any more. [Laughter] But it still is, and always will be, GNU -- no matter how
many people call it Linux by mistake. [Laughter]"

