[LAU] Until now Debian seems to be the right decision :), better performance than Ubuntu

[Simon Wise]

> What repositories should I use to set up a stable DAW? Btw. my list is
> attached and I will compare it with your suggestions I already received
> later.
> Is there a repository including JACK2 from svn?

To use jack2 you should be using sid or perhaps testing, not stable.

Debian installs with only the 'main' archives enabled. First thing to do is add 
'non-free' and 'contrib' archives to your sources.list.  You will note that 
there is quite a few documentation packages in non-free, as well as the various 
distributable but not open-source firmware blobs for important bits of hardware.

The inclusion of jack2 was done in such a way that you can switch between them, 
without changing anything else. It was decided that they are alternative 
versions which will each remain available, along with any other implementation 
with a compatible API. Packages may also depend on one or the other if this is 
really required. This was tricky and wasn't fully ready before the freeze for 
squeeze several months ago. A mixed stable/testing system will be asking for 
trouble here.

So - if you want to use the current DAW packages that are part of debian, 
especially if you want to run jack2, you need to be using sid and not using 
stable. Then they are part of debian main, no other repositories required.

Definitely DO NOT use http://www.debian-multimedia.org, the changes it makes to 
the various libraries and mplayer etc will give you mp3 encoding and a bunch of 
codecs that are not in debian, but the cost is it will often break the DAW 
packages that are not maintained in this repository ... they rely on those 
libraries in the debian form.

For using those codecs install an alternative distribution like Mint and chroot 
or reboot when you need them.

>
> Until now it's an upgraded, minimal system, just a stable install,
> excepted of Evolution and dependencies, those are from testing.

See above, to use jack2, and the huge amount of work done in the last 9 months 
by debian multimedia maintainers you can't be using stable, and a mixed system 
will get you into trouble sooner rather than later. This work is continuing very 
quickly, but will not be in stable until wheezy becomes the new stable in 2013. 
In debian terms "stable" means unchanging, frozen, fully predictable, security 
related fixes only ... for a three year lifespan while "unstable" means 
changing, volatile, updated with new work, versions and such like and "testing" 
means the candidate for the next stable.

I can't help with evolution.

>
> For Debian I still need to set up a xorg.conf, hopefully it will keep in
> good shape ;). I suspect many issues regarding to the way X is handled
> today.

This is where I find aptosid is useful to install my minimal debian. Not quite 
minimal, but there isn't much extra if you use the 1 cd xfce version, then add 
gnome or KDE if you prefer them. It is almost entirely pure debian except their 
kernel (you can use the debian one if you prefer), a few bugfixes and a few 
scripts to hold back broken versions of updates so a dist upgrade brings you 
fully up to date

Simon.