My girlfriend is looking for a distro centered around audio editing and recording and I am fairly new to linux. I am not sure what distros are good for this nor the apps to go with the distro.
What all distros are out there for this and what hardware should she focus on getting (ie. dual core processors, audio cards, memory)?
Thanks for any help...

If you both are new to Linux I would suggest Ubuntu. It's very easy to set up and got alot of user help. If you do go with it, try this guide. It has some video and music editing software that might work well for you. I don't do much with that kind of stuff. This guide also has other basic apps you might find useful.

http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2009/...nstalling.html

Let me know what you think. Cheers!

wow thanks for the info. she is still up in the air about using either a package deal, or trying to piece things together.
on a side note, i have decided to use openSUSE for the computer i will start building in the next week or so. so even if she decides to stay with XP and grab a hardware/software deal, i will still be joining the linux family soon....

I haven't checked it out in a long time but Dynebolic ( http://dynebolic.org/) is heavily into audio/video.

Ubuntu is fast, straightforward, and lets you get started with your work without worrying about complicated settings to get a usable desktop.

There is a specialty Ubuntu distribution called Ubuntu Studio [WP], and you can upgrade an existing Ubuntu system to it by typing "sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-desktop" (and perhaps look into other "ubuntustudio-*" packages as well).

You could also look into the Personal Package Archives (PPA's) for latest daily builds of Audacity and other audio software.

It is also extremely outdated. Not recommended unless you are a Linux archaeologist.

I heartily second the recommendation for Ubuntu (or Ubuntu Studio) for a first-time Linux user. That's where I started.

Any of the major distributions will be fine. What's important is getting access to the right programs (aka packages). For OpenSUSE, check out http://opensuse-community.org/Package_Sources and http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories

Enabling different package repositories will give you access to the various packages you'll need for setting up a decent Audio Editing and Recording studio. Some recommended packages are: Audacity, Digiband, OpenDJMix, WinFF, lmms, jokosher, muse, rosegarden, etc. Unfortunately I couldn't find an openSUSE package for terminatorX, but you could install it from source (terminatorX is just a curiosity, really, but I find it interesting nonetheless.)

If you are looking for a professional grade audio editing machine, a big bonus is the Jack sound server. It can be a bit of trouble to set up. Look at the documentation for Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio for more info.

Most pro audio tools in Linux work with Jack... and this provides you a whole new realm of functionality. In a few words, Jack is like a switchboard/mixer where you can grab the input from one application and feed it into another. So you can do a lot of audio tricks/effects and also use instruments and MIDI keyboards, etc. Jack is also very low latency and can even be run in real time mode which may be important for a dedicated audio workstation.

PulseAudio, the default Ubuntu sound server can be laggy and does not provide the functionality of Jack. Read up on Jack and decide if it is worth the trouble implementing.

You can start here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ub...dioPreparation

wow thanks for all the info, you guys rock!