Unfortunately old versions set a group nobody in init scripts, while it's required to be audio for alsa to get anykind of control to it. This made initscript's useless. This version has also a lot of other improvements (almost all the timidity++ related bugs are merged into this). And it's part of arts deprecation process. Please test properly (preferably more than just compile test).
FYI, It's a bit early so you can wait if you want but considering the prev. stable is entirely broken I wouldn't.
Sparc stable even though early: 1. Converts from .midi to other formats fine; 2. Unlike other versions, this version can play .midi files directly to the audio device without distortion. Thus, it can actually be used as a .midi player (useful for testing lilypond if nothing else).
Here's a zipped MIDI file you can test to play if you want.. http://dev.gentoo.org/~ssuominen/caldream.zip (unzip first :-)
ppc stable
amd64/x86 stable
ppc64 stable
Stable for HPPA.
arm stable, closing
