It has been considered, but we don’t have any concrete plans.
If some developer experienced with linux audio and graphics
want to help out, that would speed things up (we have a dedicated
mac developer, and probably wouldn’t have made the mac release
without him). If not, we would have to do the port instead of doing
other improvements, so then it becomes an issue of what priorities
we want to have. Maybe it’ll become part of a poll sometime.
the mac developer can’t port the Mac OSX build to linux? (or doesn’t want to?)
Isn’t he still busy with the Mac version?
He’s of course still busy with the mac version until that’s done, what happens
after 1.5 is finished I can’t tell. There will probably be a need for some updates
and fixes for the next mac version after 1.5. But that he knows mac doesn’t
mean he knows linux. I don’t know if he does.
To port to linux we need knowledge of audio driver API’s (ALSA or Jack I guess),
what kind of graphics API to use (we use DirectX for windows, something else
for mac), maybe OpenGL, how OpenGL and X works together, how to handle
threads, plus perhaps some other details. And we need good knowledge of all
these areas to avoid problems and keep performance up. If someone can
provide experience on only one of those areas that will be valuable as well.
Myself I know at least some OpenGL, but I’m mostly blank on the other areas.
I wouldn’t mind learning though. It’s mostly a matter of what to spend time on.
heh… I wouldn’t recommend OpenGL. There are problems with drivers for Linux. I mean - they are hard to install. On ATI cards it’s not a big deal, since there are good Opensource drivers which are included with my Mandrake and possibly with other distros, but on nVidia it’s a bigger problem. If the official drivers are not present the OpenGL runs incredibly slow…
Rather try GTK or Qt. They’re the most popular interfaces for Linux platform.
GTK or Qt is not an option, Renoise is based on it’s own widgets and we’re
not rewriting Renoise completely for a linux port… We need simple direct
drawing to the screen, directly through the X server if that’s what’s needed.
Unless GTK has low level linedrawing, bitmap drawing etc?
no idea… My programming skills are incredibly low 
Though I think I will be able to learn a bit during vacations.
But maybe SDL or something?
Hm, don’t know if SDL is fast enough though. SDL is using
some other API in the background, so that’s another layer
of function calls…
I think a good idea would be to post some messages on linux audio mailing lists. I should sign somewhere anyway.
Not to be a simpleton,
but I’m always seeing programmer job ads on scene.org . Do you think you could find someone willing to autho the port there. I mean, once the initial port is completed, the current Renoise team could probably maintain it, right? It’s just working out the initial port that’s complicated isn’t it?
Probably so. The most important part is choosing the right tool for the job,
and after the initial port is done the necressary knowledge to maintain it
can always be obtained by some research. We’ll consider this idea after 1.5
is released (we really don’t need more to think about right now than just
rounding up this release as fast as we can).
Yeah… no matter what, we all want the release of 1.5 as soon as possible.
The interesting thing about ‘Linoise’ is that it would be probably the first commercial audio application for Linux. 
probably the first audio app ever to have active development on Windows, Mac OS, and POSIX. just thinking about a totally Linux audio workspace gives me a boner. 
but it’s true. even if renoise doesn’t get ported to Linux until v. 3, 1.5 is going to keep me happily distracted for a good long while.
Yeah, of course. 1.5 will kick ass for a long long time 
.
I can’t wait… After seeing the screenshots, reading the article, watching the movies etc, I can’t work in 1.281 anymore 