[PD] Distro Doubt

[david golightly]

This conversation comes up again and again (I've been the culprit a couple
of times myself), and everyone has a different opinion.  I personally think
it's a tragedy that CCRMA decided to base their Planet CCRMA distro on
RedHat, which many agree is an unwieldy distro ill-suited to real-time audio
work.  Debian based distros like Ubuntu, DeMuDi and dynebolic are much
leaner & meaner.   However, I can confirm that it looks like DeMuDi (as of
relatively recently) is no longer maintained, so I agree that you're best
off running a "pure" Ubuntu system, albeit with some modifications...

Ubuntu is great because everything mostly works "out of the box."  You can
get things done right away while you're learning to use it.  But as you've
probably already learned, most Linux distros are not very audio-friendly,
for several reasons.  Linux can be a very effective OS for audio, but first
you have to get your hands dirty, and if you're new to Linux this can be a
bit intimidating.  Lots of info you find by googling around is old &
obsolete.  What I wish I had when I first started:

http://ubuntustudio.com
-This will tell you all you need to know about setting up your ubuntu box
for audio use.  Follow these instructions, and your life will be much saner.

linux-audio-users mailing list:
http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
-These people can help with all your questions relating to getting
your system set up, if you run into difficulty

Hopefully, this message will be one for the archives...

Good luck!

David


On 2/16/06, derek holzer <derek at x-i.net> wrote:
>
> My suggestion would be to use Ubuntu to get a basic installation, and
> add the DeMuDi packages on top of that. Ubuntu should streamline the
> hardware detection & configuration process quite nicely. The DeMuDi
> packages could be part of Debian (Unstable/Testing?) already, so it's
> just a matter of updating the sources you download from.
>
> Fedora is nice but very bloated, and not all the PD externals are there
> yet. And RedHat/Fedora do things in their own special way, which can
> make it difficult for non Fedora-users to help you out. OTOH Debian is
> pretty standard, and shares many similarities with a lot of other
> distros, so you can find help in a lot more forums, etc.
>
> Dynebolic is OK as a live CD, but pretty much impossible to reconfigure,
> so I'd skip it for a permanent installation unless you need something
> working RIGHT NOW ;-)
>
> good luck,
> d.
>
> Renato Fabbri wrote:
> > I´m migrating from windows to linux, but to which
> > distro?
> > I intend using PD, sequencers and softsynths.
> >
> > A friend highly recommended fedora core 4 and the
> > ccrma pack, but I heard about GeeXboX, dyne:bolic, and
> > DeMuDi, which all are called "multimedia distros"..
>
>
>
> --
> derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
> ---Oblique Strategy # 193:
> [blank card]
>
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