Hi @ll, I thought that it might be worth mentioning sidux as a distro for linux audio. I do not want to start up another of these "my distro simply is best" threads and I try to keep things outlined briefly. I know that people at ubuntu have been doing a great job in that ubuntu is a nice beginner's distro but looking at recent postings about some audio specific problems I have to say that this might well be a ubuntu made problem, caused by their attempts in making things work for ubuntu (and ubuntu only). It means that a genuine debian package might not have caused the problem but the ubuntu specific adjustments might have. There are very good reasons to have a closer look at sidux. Amongst other things: there are packages for dssi-vst, RT kernel, Rosegarden etc. which can be installed conveniently via apt-get. Sidux can be found here: http://www.sidux.com See what this distro is all about. The sidux manual is covering all important aspects of an install and there is a lively irc-based chat for immediate and helping support as well. You can browse the support forum for users named brummer and makke to get their postings about some audio packages and RT kernels. One of the most important advantages of sidux is that it is not just another distro that seeks its own way of doing but instead it is 99,9% pure debian with all of debian's advantages, including the *.deb package system. Unlike ubuntu there are only very few packages that are sidux-only specific (mostly some scripts to make life easier with the standard debian packages) and that is what makes it much more "debian compatible" than ubuntu. I have never been able to compile a kernel successfully let alone optimize it for RT operation, so it was of great relief for me to simply install it in parallel to my "ordinary" kernel. Compiling audio applications myself has ended in great frustration to me so it was a relief to see there are the packages available that I need. Regards, Crypto.