[LAU] how does ubuntu studio compare to jacklab?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 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