[LAU] good linux distros for audio

[Jostein Chr. Andersen]

Den Sunday 22 February 2009 17:29:16 skrev Michiel:
...
> Which Linux distro is regarded as a good and reliable choice for audio?
> Playing, recording, gaming, voip, etc.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only person on earth that's satisfied with 
Ubuntu as a Sound Studio platform. The thing is: I have no problems - at least 
not more than with other distros. In my experience, no audio distro functions 
right out of the box so far (perhaps JAD did om my old P-4 from 2002, but I'm 
not sure). I do compile all the basic apps by myself (not the real time 
kernel) like Jack 1.9*, Ardour, Rosegarden, Audacity, Linuxsampler (and 
related), lots of other stuff and loads of libraries and so on. 

Most distros suffers from being outdated quite fast, but on the other hand: A 
music studio should be reliable and stable and one should be able to produce 
expected results every time, so perhaps this outdated thing is not so bad 
after all.

I use Kubuntu 8.10 (with KDE 4.2 and a stock 2.6.27-3-rt kernel) on my dual 
core 1.6 Lap top (with an external USB sound card) and Ubuntustudio 8.04 with 
it's stock rt-kernel on my stationary machine.

In my experience, the hunt for low latencies and no xruns usually turns out to 
be trial and error until the right balance between the machines capabilities, 
giving everything sound related high run time priority and a low latency as 
possible. I have tried Musix, JAD, 64 studio and Ubuntu the last 12  months or 
so and can't say that one is better than an another regarding real time. Exept 
for JAD, wich is the only distro that works for my old p-4 machine.

Jostein