[LAU] how does ubuntu studio compare to jacklab?

[Robert Persson]

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How does Ubuntu Studio compare to JackLab?

The reason I asked is because I want to set up a workstation that
(hopefully) will be dedicated to audio and video, although I might
still find that I need to use it for graphics, research, writing,
email etc.

The relevant factors that I am aware of so far include the following:

1. Ubuntu doesn't ship with wineasio. This means, if I have understood
this correctly, that I would have to patch and compile wine myself to
get working asio and jack support, which would in turn mean that I
would have to do patch and compile it again and again every time a new
version of wine appeared in the repository. I don't want to be
worrying about that kind of stuff. If wineasio were made available in
a 3rd-party repository, this would probably cease to be a problem.

2. JackLab ships with a kernel better optimised for realtime than the
ubuntu low-latency kernel. However a realtime kernel for Ubuntu is
available from a 3rd party repository.

3. Between Ubuntu and its 3rd-party repositories, and between SuSE and
its 3rd-party repositories, you can probably get more or less anything
you want, but is one nevertheless more comprehensive than the other?

4. SuSE uses rpm and yast. That used to be more problem-prone than
dpkg and apt. Is that still the case?

5. Ubuntu Studio ships with Gnome as the default desktop environment,
although you can easily switch to KDE or XFCE. JackLab ships with
Enlightenment as the default environment, but with KDE also installed
(have I got that right?). KDE is slow and bloated (although I still
like it for general purpose workstation use). Gnome is not as slow,
but it is relatively inflexible considering its complexity; if I don
need to use the workstation for graphics then Gnome would be useless
because you can't manage fonts. I could live with XFCE for audio and
video stuff, but not for much else. I'm not at all familiar with
Enlightenment. Theoretically I should just be able to log into
whichever environment suits the need of the moment, but in practice I
have found that KDM doesn't play well with Gnome, nor GDM with KDE.
Would switching from Enlightenment and KDE in JackLab, depending on
what I was doing, cause me any problems? Will the better optimised
KDE4 make KDE a viable option for working in time-based media?
Is one distribution more stable and reliable than the other?

6. Are the binaries in one better optimised for more powerful
processors (a pentium 4 in my case) than the other? Would this make
much of a difference in any case?

7. I have found the community of Ubuntu users to be less knowledgeable
than, say, that of Gentoo users. For instance I have not managed to
get solutions to technical problems with Ubuntu on IRC. I have had
better luck on the forums, although this has not been nearly as good
as the help I used to receive on the gentoo-user mailing list in the
days when I was using Gentoo. (That said, I haven't had too many
serious problems with Ubuntu). How does the SuSE community compare in
this regard?

8. Are the packages for one distribution (including those from the
principal 3rd party repositories) more stable and reliable than those
of the other?

Are there any other factors one ought to consider?

Best
Robert
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