Hi, my name is Dan, and I'm new to the forums!

I've inherited a PC for personal use (1.6ghz Intel Celeron D processor, 80gb HDD, 512mb ram, nothing special) and I'm looking for a Linux distribution that would enable me to make optimal use of the system resources for music production (IE: Multi-Track mixing, VST instruments, MIDI interfaces, low latency audio I/O, etc) but also to run basic things like MSN IM & web access (like Pigin and FireFox).

I like Ubuntu (i've only ever used the LiveCd, never tried it from a HDD before) but I'm afraid it might use up too much of the systems resources for me to use mixing software (Using Adobe Audition 1.5 in XP was a nightmare. Major lag & constantly crashing).

Anyway, if you guys could help me out chosing the right distribution of Linux that would be great (I have absolutely no programming skills whatsoever, although I think I may have a QBasic book lurking around in the attic somewhere!) and I'd really appreciate your help

Many thanks!

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

Any of the major distributions will do what you want. There are essentially no differences in how well they run the applications you are looking at.

You will end up choosing among the distributions based on how well they recognize your specific hardware, how easily they install, how comfortable you are with the package manager, and how close the default application set and default desktop look come to what you want. That is to say that you don't want to have to spend days changing the appearance of the OS to what you prefer the OS to look like.

Since you like Ubuntu start with that. If it works out OK then you will end up sticking with Ubuntu because when you try a different distribution you will have to put in some extra work to make the new distribution look and act like the now familiar Ubuntu. If you end up dissatisfied with Ubuntu then move on to something else and try that.

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Steve Stites

http://ubuntustudio.org/

That's amazing, thank you so much

For music production try JackLab Linux http://www.jacklab.org/

i am a musician, i use fedora 8.

with the planet ccrma repository, it installs a low latency kernel, that plus ardour is all i use.