On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 11:24 PM, Moshe Werner <moshwe@gmail.com> wrote:
I would like to hear your opinions on what distro is solid for audio work and has a reliable rt kernel.
Also I would appreciate if you could explain the degree of difficulty and learning curve of the specific distro.
I used openSuse for a few years, from the early JAD days up to version 11.3, when the situation with sporadic updates to audio apps finally convinced me to shop around. After trying Ubuntu for a while, I finally settled on Arch. There is a learning curve, mostly due to differences in package management and Arch's emphasis on centralized text based config files, but for me the transition made much easier by the documentation in the wiki, and the forums are generally very helpful and active. There are packages for the RT kernel available or you can compile from very easy to follow build scripts. The rolling release is great and most audio apps are available as build scripts. This has allowed me to keep my own repo of packages which I use to keep a consistent installation environment across three machines, while I run Ubuntu on my netbook for convenience sake.
Short story: happy ex-openSuse current Arch user here.