[ardour-users] Recommended distros

[Michael T D Nelson]

Ruben Lopez wrote:
> But I don't know how these distros perform regarding 
> latency/real time issues/other audio-related issues.
> 

Hi Ruben!

First, let me say that I'm probably not that much more experienced in 
these matters than you. Personally, I use a PlanetCCRMA set-up, on 
Fedora Core 3.

Anyway, here is my understanding of the situation:

Each of the distributions can be as good as any other - some of them 
just take (a lot) more customising to get the performance you might want.

In particular, you may have to recompile your own custom kernels for low 
latency. You probably want to make sure you have up-to-date versions of 
ALSA, JACK, Ardour, etc. Also, you might choose to install/use a 
lightweight window manager, rather than a fully fledged desktop 
environment like KDE or GNOME.

Distributions like PlanetCCRMA, or Demudi are put together with these 
considerations in mind. They will almost certainly save you time.

I think that the best option is to get a fast Internet connection, 
download and burn a bunch of CD images, get a nice big cheap hard disc, 
and install a few. Why not?

When I first started with Linux, I had a "winner stays on" distro 
competition - I installed two Linux distributions side by side, and 
replaced one every few weeks. That way, I tried out quite a few options. 
You can use the same /home partition for each one.

Regards,
Michael