I want to have a look at Ardour and if you could point
me to an OS and how
to install what, then that'd help me a lot.
I'd recommend ubuntu:
www.ubuntu.com
It's good for beginners and laptops :)
Take a look in the wiki there on how to install software...i think there
is a special site about audio software as well...
for low latencies look here:
http://fort.xdas.com/~kor/oss2jack/install.html
hope that helps
Sönke