[ardour-dev] Newbie Here

[Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano]

On Mon, 2004-08-09 at 17:33, Brandon Daggerhart wrote:
> I don't do mailing lists, so I hope I'm doing this email thing right.  I have 
> been recording for several years now, and have never been interested in DAW 
> recording before because of the outragious costs of most decent recording 
> software (such as Protools, Nuendo, etc).  I recently built a computer though, 
> with the plans of building a DAW.  I use a Delta 1010, have 512 megs RAM, use 
> an Athlon ASUS XV700 motherboard and 2500 Processor. 

Sounds good to me. 

> I would like to try out 
> ardour, but I don't know the slightest thign about it, or even about LINUX.  
> Does Ardour have an install package of any sorts, or would I have to know all 
> about the codes adn such necessary to unzip and install things on LINUX.  

Well, you will have to learn a bit about Linux, I'm afraid :-)

There are several options you can consider. First, there are several
popular flavors or distributions of Linux available (for example,
Debian, Fedora, Mandrake, Gentoo and many many more). You will need to
decide on one to install on your computer (or ideally you can test
several to see which one you like best). Each one has advantages and
disadvantages. Most of them have package collections or have modified
versions of the base distribution that add the required audio packages
you will need. 

> Also, what is a good distribution for ardour that would work with the hardware 
> I use?  ( I understand that some distributions have had problems with 
> Athlon-based hardware).  For that matter, how do I even get a version of 
> LINUX to use?  My DAW I've build (or, am building), is not hooked to the 
> internet, so I would need to burn something to CD I assume. 

Some options you have:

For Debian: the Demudi branch of the Agnula project. They have cdroms
available.
[http://www.agnula.org/]
For RedHat or Fedora Core: Planet CCRMA (the one I manage so I can't be
very objective :-). Planet CCRMA has cdroms as well but you will find
the latest versions of packages at a given time in the online
repository.
[http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/]
For Mandrake: Thac's RPMS for Mandrake, AFAIK no cdroms are available
[http://rpm.nyvalls.se/]
For Slackware: AudioSlack, audio packages for Slackware.
[http://www.audioslack.com/]
Gentoo: has ebuilds for most of the interesting audio packages
[http://www.gentoo.org/]

Check the archives of the linux-audio-user mailing list, there was a
thread recently about the "best distro for audio"...

-- Fernando