Multimedia Linux Distros Review

Electronic music creation /audio edition oriented distros

Here you will find reviews of some multimedia GNU/Linux distros. While many if not all of them allows video edition and graphic design, we have focused on them regarding their capabilities for music creation and audio edition. Deliberately are omitted distros which support and development have been discontinued.

Ubuntu Studio:

Interesting but the sound system has some problems

It comes with a very good pack of applications, but the whole sound system, sorry to say this, sucks. You may not notice the difference if this is your first time with a multimedia GNU/Linux distro, of course, since you have anything to which compare to. This distro uses the Pulse audio system, which is supposed to be the successor of ALSA, but in its actual stage of development still lacks of reliability. For example, Jack audio server works fine in RT processes after you do some changes to your configuration files, the whole system sound volume turns to be very low, and opening a previous Ardour project, created on your early distro, may result in a drastic reduction of the original audio quality. Besides all this, you may not have full access to the old, good and known parameters of your sound card. The good part is that you won’t have problems with audio applications like Rosegarden asking for a better kernel, as you may experiment within other Ubuntu distros like Jaunty. (This problem can be easily fixed, please refer to the FAQ). Anyway, I have nothing against Ubuntu Studio and this could be a good choice to start for them who dare to face music creation with Linux for the first time. Linux distributions are always improving themselves and Ubuntu Studio is not an exception, so many bugs and issues pointed here may be fixed right now. You don’t need trust me, you must try. Anyway, and this is a very important point, Ubuntu Studio documentation is great, comprehensive, useful as a reference even for other distros. That is a good reason to start from here.

Puredyne 64 bit version

Highly recommended for experimented users and researchers

Well, when you try the live DVD you’ll realize that it has almost every piece of software to work with sound that you may need (with the remarkable void of Ardour, which you can install later, anyway). Jack works fine at real time processes and the sound quality is good, but even when it is said that you can work directly from a flash memory, simple applications like Rosegarden failed to start when opened from the live DVD tested with a fast 64 bit machine.

Things are going to be different when you install it onto hard disk. While the Puredyne manual explains some weird procedures to do it, editing configuration files (Grub menu list, etc) , says nothing about the “disk installer” option in the System menu of the Live DVD, which is an easier and faster way. Aside this extravagance, the rest well worths a try.

At a first glance, many settings resemble those of the Ubuntu Studio distro, but here the little troubles are solved. By default, Puredyne uses the mixer for the Xfce Desktop Environment, which may not be able to rise the volume of your audio system , but among the numberless applications you will find the GNOME Alsa Mixer which will fix this issue. You can easily find and execute applications by the Applications Finder at the Accessories menu. This is a very good alternative to the need of cover your desktop of icons.

ArtistX Live DVD

A mixing between Ubuntu Sutdio and…

A mixing between Ubuntu Sutdio (you will find “Ubuntu Studio Controls” at the main menu) and the worst features from Ubuntu Jaunty upgraded to Karmic Koala, which means some audio drivers deleted and the like. The only good thing I can say in favor of this distro is that is full of applications and maybe there are more than you can ever need. Please refer to the Ubuntu Studio review for further considerations.

Musix GNU+Linux

Highly recommend for new Linux users and musicians

Surprisingly (we argies are really skeptical about ourselves) I’m going to talk wonders about a product that is Argentinian in a good part. Of course this won’t be a surprise for those who know the Argentinian development level at the GNU/Linux stage. (At the present Musix is an international project, mainly fueled by Brazilian and Argentinian people). This could be the perfect distro for musicians, because the distro (100% free software, and one of those recommended by the GNU project) is very well-organized and divided into Desktop Workspaces: Audio Desktop, Midi Desktop, Office Desktop, Internet Desktop, etc. Not being a minor thing that every single application -and there are many- works right. It comes with good working examples for the use of main applications that a musician may need: ZynAddSubFx, Rosegarden and Hydrogen, that is, the software synthesizer, the Midi-Audio sequencer and the drum machine, respectively. This speaks by itself about the education-oriented approach of this distro, that was created with Linux beginner users in mind. At the actual stage, the main problem with this distro could be that sometimes it may not be able to detect some hardware, but the Musix control center allows you to force the detection of sound and video cards, among other devices. No problems with Jack audio server on real time, which is pre-configured with a standard set of values. Based on Debian Lenny, it has a remarkable stability. Fast, functional, stable, educational, practical, a good starting point to begin with.

Tags: Distros, linux, Multimedia, Review