[LAU] Audio distros

[Ralf Mardorf]

Not this again ;)!

My apologies, but I'm searching for a distro comparable to old Arch Linux  
or old Ubuntu Studio.

For another thread Gene was talking about "black magic" and indeed some  
"things" are "occult" in the sense of "hidden" ;). FWIW, all ADAT channels  
of my RME card, that aren't working for Linux, are working for my FreeBSD.  
The Xfce menu icon of FreeBSD only, is replaced by a pentagram, for me  
it's just some kind of asterisk, without any super cow powers, but perhaps  
this does the magic. The next Xfce install will get the same icon ;D.

I dropped my old Arch, regarding to too many issues with the unfinished  
switch to systemd.
Following the mailing list I had the impression, that the transition is  
complete and that there are no serious issues any more, but trying to  
install it yesterday, I suspect that mails regarding to issues simply are  
rejected.

I still try to install the current Arch Linux later today, but seemingly  
the transition to systemd isn't finished yet and perhaps the next wicked  
transition already will be enforced in a hidden way. Just an assumption, I  
don't claim that it is that way.

While my request regarding to pppoe for the install doesn't pass list  
moderation, eth0 isn't up and doing it as usual doesn't work, I read rude  
words about request to keep Wayland optional. It seems to be, that some  
people using X anyway need to install Wayland.

Fortunately there's a German Arch Linux forum, where it's still possible  
to get help, but I also need clarification in what direction Arch Linux  
will go in the near future and I prefer a distro with a sane mailing list.

Debian and Ubuntu still have good mailing lists, but as for Ubuntu Studio  
I have several generations installed, from 10.10 Maverick to 12.10  
Quantal. The performance on my machine dramatically slows down with each  
release. Quantal for some tasks already is unusable, a lot of the  
non-audio desktop apps I need are buggy and this isn't an issue for my  
machine, but the troubles are common, for many users.

Last time I monitored the poll the most used distros were Arch Linux and  
Ubuntu Studio. Yes, that are my distros too, ok for 2012 and perhaps ok  
for 2013. But how will those distros continue?

Regards,
Ralf