Setting up a new Linux DAW with Gentoo

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Thanks mosc. I can still field reaktor/max questions just not upload patches, unless I can get them to run with WINE.

Yeah, linux is awesome. I plan to write up a little thing on how to have a kick ass multimedia workstation running linux once I have everything set up perfectly. My original plan was to create a small distro for this purpose until I realized what a massive undertaking that is. I'm using gentoo (http://gentoo.org) which is a really spectacular distro. It has it's own package amanagement system that is basically a bunch of scripts that check dependencies and automate compiling, etc so you only get the software you want and you still get to compile everything with your choice of optimize flags. Originally I was running SUSE9.2 but i didn't really have enough control over the system and it was a bit bloated. I built gentoo from stage1 (bootstrapping) and it runs like a dream.

Hardware:
Dual 1.6GHz Opterons
2GB physical memory
2x 160GB SATA drives
Radeon X800 pro

I am currently using the onboard audio card as I bought a firewire audiophile that's not supported under linux yet but I plan to get a PCI audiophile. M-Audio makes linux drivers for pretty much all of their products (except firewire). The only thing that didn't work like a charm was the ATI card. Their drivers are difficult to install but now that it's working it performs very well. One could more easily just buy an nVidia card, they have very nice linux support.

There really is an amazing amount of multimedia software for linux, particularly audio. Many front-ends for C-sound, PD, rosegarden a plethora of trackers, audacity, etc. And supercollider3 which has not been successfully ported to windows (to my knowledge). Such a feeling of liberation using strictly open-source software and it's especially nice if you have a 64-bit processor since most programs can be compiled with opteron optimize flags and true 64-bit processing as opposed to windows where you are running the whole OS in 32bit emulation.

[kruhft]

I've been using gentoo for the past 4 years for all my audio work and it's great. the stable/unstable ~x86 keywords can sometimes be a bit of a pain, as was the upgrade to modular X, but overall it's a great distro.

I have taken to just downloading and installing most of my own software without portage, but use it to handle the dependancies, which it does like a charm. I'm a coder so I like to have the source around if I want to modify anything, but getting all the required libraries for some thing can be a total pain manually.

Good luck with your system.