> So, anyway, how are you guys handling these issues? Do you install > from scratch? Do you install audio on top of an existing distro? > Which one? RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, etc? Does Planet > CCRMA work well for you? What about Agnula? How do you upgrade > individual packages? How do you back out the upgrade if there's a > problem? Do you manage a separate "test" environment to keep from > bringing down your DAW? The PlanetCCRMA flow works very well for me on my slower 500MHz box. Fernando's adoption of apt to handle all the dependencies and the fact that he creates the binary distribution for us works very well for me on this machine. Frankly, without Fernando I think I wouldn't be using Redhat anymore. On my faster 2.6GHz box I'm using Gentoo. Obviously this requires a faster box since you're building all of the code on your machine, but it has been the most stable distribution I've used so far. emerge again handles all the dependencies which saves me a lot of time, so as long as I stay with the 'stable' flow for most things like Mozilla, Evolution, etc. then all of the necessary stuff has been very stable. What I like about Gentoo vs. Redhat is that most everyone's straight CVS code builds without having to modify anything. Under Redhat you have to fiddle with configure options sometimes. FYI - I wouldn't call my use of Linux a 'DAW' anymore. I tried. It didn't work, mostly because of my sound card choice. Linux audio now plays an important support role in my work, providing interesting soft synths and audio processing programs. My DAW is still Windows Pro Tool s and likely will be for a long time to come. (Upgrading hardware this week. Too much money!) However I do all email on Linux, most of my browsing, and once in a while even a bit of gaming. Yesterday I installed a DVD-/+RW drive and got xine working. Now I'm movie capable too. All this keeps my fragile Windows XP environment much cleaner and working better. Cheers, Mark
