OSMLinuxAudioDistroShootout

From OSMwiki

Welcome to the OSM Linux Audio Distro Shootout page. (a.k.a "The awesome lads")

There are many Linux Distro's relating to Audio/Visual, but how well do they tackle the issue of a full out of the box hit the ground running multimedia production suite...

Contents 1 Criteria 1.1 Measurements 2 Hardware 3 Distro's 4 Tweaking 5 THE TABLE

Criteria

We aim for simple installation, configuration, and use. And for lowest latency with and without some apps working (we still lack the protocol to measure).

• Pita : a.k.a. Pain In The Ass factor. The amount of clicks plus times striked the enter key to get from A to B in the most standard way. Example: 64studio is 17 Pita from scratch to get installed. It is 12Pita to get jack to work in realtime

Measurements

• Ease of use

Measured by the Pita from logged in for the first time to get Ardour working.

• Ease of installation

Measured by the Pita from uninstalled to installed and logged for the first time. (The installation should be the most standard one)

• Lowest latency

Lowest latency possible on JACK without XRUNS, running just qjackctl.

• Lowest live latency

Lowest possible latency while applying some live effect to the input. (The criteria has not yet been established) Noises and clicks should be annotated too

• Preinstalled software
  • Ardour (Recording)
  • Rosegarden (Sequencer)
  • Hydrogen (Drum Machine)
  • Zynaddsubfx (Soft synth)
  • Nekobee (TB303 clone)
  • Linuxsampler (Sampler)
  • Fmit (Tuner)
  • Gtick (Tap tempo)

Hardware

We should put down here the PCs we offer for testing. They should be as diverse as possible, if possible, music-oriented hardware.

• A ( Trece8 has it)  : CPU 64bits Pentium D (2 x 2.8 GHz) ; 4Gb RAM 667 MHz ; M-Audio Audiophile 2496 ; SATA II drives, onboard VGA card (VIA).

• B ( Guitarman has it) : CPU 64Bit Pentium D (2 x 2.8 Ghz) ; 1GB RAM 533 Mhz ; Behringer UCA-202 (USB Audio Interface) ; SATA II drive ; onboard Intel Video.

• C ( Trece8 has it)  : CPU 32bits Pentium 4 2.40GHz ; 1Gb RAM 133 MHz ; Onboard Ensoniq 5880B ; PATA drives ; nVidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400

• D ( Seegwen has it)  : CPU 64bits AthlonXP 3200+ 2.20GHz ; 2Gb RAM 333 MHz ; Presonus Firepod(1gen) ; 1 PATA/1 SATA HD ; Radeon 9200

Distro's

- Ubuntustudio

- 64studio

- AVLinux

- Fedora 10 w/ ccrma

Additional information on how to test liveCDs by running them from your hard drive can be found here:

Running LiveCDs From Your Hard Drive

Tweaking

- limits.conf and putting yourself in the audio group

- The almighty RT kernels

THE TABLE

This table is stolen from here in hopes of converting it to a table that is useful to us.

Distribution	Test version	Base distribution	Test version build date	PC for testing	64 Bits?	Unstable?
64 Studio	3beta3	Debian	2008-06-09	A, D	Yes	Yes
Ubuntu Studio	9.04	Debian	2008-11-30	A	Yes	unknown
Fedora + Planet CCRMA	11	Red Hat	2009-06-09	A	Yes	Yes
CrunchBang + patches	9.04	Ubuntu	2009-01-19	A	unknown	unknown
dyne:bolic	unknown	none	2007-09-22	unknown	unknown	unknown
pure:dyne	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown
Musix	unknown	Knoppix, Kanotix, Debian	2007-03-05	unknown	unknown	unknown
AVLinux	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown	unknown