A few weeks ago I promised to bring in some more general news from the world of Linux audio software development. Alas, my plans were ambushed by the happy intrusion of the release of Renoise for Linux, but I'm back on track. As promised, here's more straight reporting on the world of Linux sound and music software, starting with some news about recently released music notation programs.

Four years ago I wrote an article for the Linux Journal about my use of Linux software for music instruction. A lot has changed since then, so I thought I should update that article to reflect my current use of Linux in my work as a music teacher.

In this article I've selected what I consider to be some of the past year's outstanding achievements in the world of Linux music and sound software. It's not really a "Best Of 2007", it's just my personal choices for what I found most interesting and significant in the past year.

There are a lot of great sound-related applications for Linux, from basic audio drivers and sound servers to sophisticated mixers, editors, and special effects engines. Which is not much consolation for the user who just wants sound to work on her system, and these days everything old is new again--once again, getting sound to work correctly, or at all, is almost as fun as in the olden days.

KDE’s default sound subsystems, aRts (Analog realtime synthesizer) has been part of KDE since ages. I really appreciate the quality of lots of software it comes with, however aRts is a real disappointment.

DRM-free music sells at a much higher rate online than protected music, according to UK-based digital music store 7 Digital. In fact, customers buy it four times as often as they do DRMed music. As a result, almost 80 percent of the store's sales are of DRM-free content.

The request S4.2500 is the Mercedes S600 of digital music players: big, powerful, built like a tank. And expensive. This music server runs $18,500...It's basically a rock-solid Linux computer coupled to a Lynx Studio Technology sound card of the sort used by professional recording studios.

Have you ever dreamed of building your own music studio? I know you did and it may come true someday (or not), but until then here are some very interesting 100% FREE, Open Source Linux distributions with enhancements and features aimed at music, sound and even video production.

"One of the largest surveys of music consumers to closely examine the question of Digital Rights Management (DRM) has an important two-part message for the music industry."