I'm looking to partition up my Dell desktop into two distros: Sabayon, which I'm using as a desktop, and some media creation distribution.

So can anyone recommend a good distro to use for dedicated audio production? What I'm looking for is a quick install, stable (but not outdated) system, and a good setup with programs such as Rosegarden, JACK, and Hydrogen. Any ideas appreciated!

Thanks

There's a few 'studio' distros, ubuntu gutsy gibbon, etc. I tried a couple but they didn't see my emu 0404 pci card. you might find someone with better results searching homerecording.com bbs.

i'm thinking of getting a usb audio interface and trying linux with that. (audio did come out of my usb skype phone fwiw)

64studio.com and jacklab.net are 64studio and JAD which were reviewed by LinuxPro magazine (LinuxPromagazine.com). ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/ gets you "Planetccrma at home" which is similar to what I installed.

I already had Fedora and I got the realtime patch working and installed jack Qjackctl hydrogen rosegarden audacity lilypond Ardour and I forget what else. Do you need VST support? That was apparently easier for LinuxPro with 32bit JAD than 64studio (which is 64bit). With Planetccrma you use their repositories instead to customize Fedora and after trying JAD for a bit that's the way I decided to go. Even though I liked and recommend JAD.

I lied I just got started on a dedicated laptop and stuck with Fedora (now 8) and am now installing the apps separate as before. Am not looking forward to patching the kernel for realtime support again...