[linux-audio-user] The best distro for music creation

[tim hall]

On Sunday 04 December 2005 01:28, Mark Knecht was like:
> 1) If I want *exactly* what Fernando provides on the Planet site, no
> more and no less, then PlanetCCRMA is the best I know of. It's well
> supported in the audio area by a great guy. It has a good mailing list
> with helpful people. (Of which I hope I'm one once in awhile anyway.)
> Overall very positive, but it has two downsides:
>
> a) If you need ANYTHING that's not part of the Planet apt system then
> be prepared for RPM hell. At least that's my experience. Email, DVD
> stuff, etc.
>
> b) Pick your Fedora version and be prepared to upgrade, upgrade,
> upgrade. Every release of FC# is an opportunity to rebuild your system
> from scratch. I know some folks report that they just do an upgrade
> and it works for them but I'm sure that not a single one ever worked
> for me.

That's an interesting appraisal. Rather than wave my DebPomPoms, I'd like to 
offer this by way of comparison:

1) If your hardware is useable with the drivers available under Debian's 
strict definition of 'free' then AGNULA/DeMuDi is a good all round solution. 
If you're happy to use the softwares and versions that Free selects to be 
included in the distro, which gives you a fairly wide choice of useful 
applications, then you'll enjoy not having to worry about fiddling around in 
order to make things work. Other positives similar to CCRMA.

a) If you need anything that's not included in DeMuDi itself, you can get it 
straight from the Debian repositories.

b) It usually upgrades reasonably smoothly.

The catch? Well, I've been using it 3 years and never looked back. If I had 
time, I'd build a Gentoo system, based largely on reports from this list. I 
run on recycled tower systems, so I can afford to be a bit gung-ho about it.

c) Some hardware either isn't supported or can be a complete PITA to get 
working. If you fall into that category, you may suffer as much pain and 
hardship as someone using any other system. Fortunately it shouldn't take 
weeks to figure out whether it's likely to work or not.

d) Debian is notorious for always being slightly out of date, this has 
improved a bit since the release of 'sarge'. However, if you want to run the 
latest or CVS versions of, for example, Ardour, Rosegarden or some of the 
wonderful new applications discussed on this list you're going to have to get 
your hands dirty doing some real compiling. It's at this point you have to 
decide whether you actively like the way Debian does things (very 
command-line oriented, GUIs are often optional extras and are expected to 
behave themselves, for example). I can imagine there is a point where you 
might as well be running Gentoo. I just haven't reached that yet. ;)
-- 
cheers,

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim