[Ardour-Users] Which distro best supports Ardour using the Delta 44 (ICE1712)?

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 7:56 AM, James P. Early <earlyjp at cs.oswego.edu> wrote:
> Wow, I certainly came to the right place! I very much appreciate all
> the fine suggestions. I, too, am inclined to think that the
> introduction of Pulse Audio has complicated the setup of this card
> under Ubuntu, as evidenced by the multiple "workarounds" that have
> been released (with varying success).
>
> Noel, I think I'm going to take your advice and try Gentoo with the
> pro audio overlay. I appreciate your offer for additional details, and
> I will contact you directly when the process is further along. These
> audio-related distros are convenient, but I learned so much more when
> I was managing my own installations. I want to try reconnecting with
> what's "under the hood."
>
> Once I get the system up and running, I think I'll give Kxstudio a try
> (Thanks, Paul!). I'm intrigued that they have seemingly integrated
> pulseaudio with jack, although I'm not sure if my Delta 44 is fully
> supported. We'll see.
>
> Again, please accept my sincere thanks for your help.
> ~Jim
>

James,
   Forgive my late input here, and this is nothing but my opinion, but
I fear that you're possibly focused on the wrong question about how to
choose a distro. It's not really about which distro (or more
accurately which release of a distro) supports Ardour and your sound
card. I suspect that *any* modern distro, kept up to date and properly
configured and assuming no hardware incompatibilities, will support
the combination you are interested in. The real question is about how
*YOU* install & maintain that machine.

   In the _long_ run what really matters is:

1) Whether the distro has active support for Linux pro-audio apps.

2) How comfortable *YOU* are with the administration of the distro.
(Both audio & Linux/distro updates)

   I'd encourage you to look into what's involved in keeping the
machine up-to-date and historically how well the distro handles
running new revisions of the apps you want to run. For instance, WRT
Ardour, if the devs choose to move to add a new library then do you
have access to that same library, etc.

   In my case I use Gentoo and personally I'm pretty happy I do.
However it's not always the most easy distro for beginners and your
first Gentoo install could take you days to get running. That's a
pretty significant cost if you're not serious about learning about all
Gentoo has to offer. Once you do get it working you never have to do
another 'install' because Gentoo is a rolling distro. I update nearly
every day using only a few minutes a day.

   Anyway, I'm hopeful you'll make a decision that works for you in
the long run.

Cheers,
Mark