I don't know that this will be of interest to many people, but I thought it would be worth bringing up since most people I know who do any serious audio recording on Linux are using Ardour, and there are some problems associated with running Ardour on the current stable Slackware64 (it isn't an issue for 32-bit Slackware). The problem involves some weird interactions between zlib and libxml2, which I don't pretend to really comprehend, but it causes serious stability issues in Ardour and a handful of other apps. Up until a few weeks ago you only real options were to run 32-bit or downgrade to 13.0, but the problem has been solved with packages available in the -current tree. The really good news is that you don't have to upgrade to -current to take advantage of this... the upgraded packages run just fine on Slackware 13.1. Here's what you have to do, and take note... these steps have to be taken in the correct order or it isn't going to work.

1) For starters, get all of Ardour's dependencies on board. This step can be taken any time before the actual Ardour install, but I find it easier just to get this out of the way first. Aside from stuff that's already installed on your Slack box you'll need aubio, jack-audio-connection-kit, libgnomecanvas, liblo, liblrdf, and scons. All of that stuff is available from Slackbuilds.org. You'll probably also want qjackctl for running jack; you can get it from Slackbuilds.org but a newer (and better) version is available at slackware.opennix.com. You'll also want the swh-plugins package for effects plugins, which is available from the Opennix repo and depends on ladspa_sdk, which you can get from Slackbuilds.org.

3) Get zlib from the testing/ directory in the Slackware64 -current source tree. NOT the one in the source directory. Make sure you get all the patches and stuff. Build it and run upgradepkg to install.

4) Get libxml2 from the -current tree. Important note: you cannot just install the pre-compiled package... you must get the source code and build it against your upgraded zlib package. Then run upgradepkg to install. Another important note: even though it was zlib that got patched for this, you MUST run the new libxml2 from -current for this to work. If you use the libxml2 package in the stock Slackware64 13.1 Ardour will build and install, but will segfault at launch time before the splash screen even loads.

5) Get Ardour. There's a package available at Opennix, but there are two problems: first, it's an older version and second, it's a pre-compiled binary. Ardour has to be built against the the new libxml2 for this to fly. Download Ardour 2.8.11 from the Ardour website.

6) Install Ardour. As root cd to the ardour-2.8.11 directory and run scons install.

7) Failed build? Repeat the above steps, and make sure you get the right packages and do them in the proper order! It won't work any other way. If your build failed because any of the above steps was incorrect, fix the problems and before installing Ardour go into the ardour-2.8.11 directory and run scons -c to clean up the mess... otherwise the build will fail.

If you completed the above steps in the proper order you should now hava a working Ardour 2.8.11 installed on your system. Mine is running great and without a hint of instability. Enjoy!

you can consider also for step 6 and 7 a nice ardour.SlackBuild on slackbuilds.org (I'm using that and it works fine)

Whoa, when did that happen??? I don't think that was there a couple of months ago. That's awesome... I'm going to install it at once.

I also notice that swh-plugins is there as well... same version as opennix. Excellent.