Ok, about 2 weeks into using Ardour in a sustained test, and i will say i´m impressed. the 2.0-ongoing version has been really stable, runs quickly (the screen redraws are fast compared to other programmes i´m using), and does what it says on the tin. I would like to thank Paul for his timely advice on the ´tape’ paradigm near the beginning of the two weeks, as i recalled my own experience with recording to tape, and the lights came on literally. Ardour is a lot more than a tape recorder, but this perspective, for me at least, pushed the right button in the learning curve.
Naturally, as a result of this journey of enlightenment, some questions spring to mind, and i apologise in advance if any seem somewhat simplistic. I´ve been perusing the manual and forum, so i have reduced the list a bit. 
Midi.
I have three ports that appear in the preferences menu, being Control, Seq, and Mcu. I´ve been ok understanding Control and Seq, and experiments with both of these have proved fruitful, but, erm, what´s Mcu?
MMC.
So far so good with MMC, and Ardour´s good in terms of response, but does anyone know which of the current batch of midi sequencers (Rosegarden, Muse, Qtractor, etc…) can send transport controls as MMC to Ardour? I can get play going in sync ok, but record seems problematic.
Timecode.
Excellent results with Jack as the time source, and MTC seems pretty tight too. What´s the default for internal?
Extra Midi ports.
I have read quite extensively (repeatedly) the section in the manual related to adding midi ports to ardour,rc. I´m little the wiser at this stage, as my single experiment with adding a software port to this resulted in failure, and crashed Ardour at startup.
Can i add software ports to this file at all, or is this particular line of testing on my part mute in the face of upcoming midi implementation?
The reason i ask this is i´m trying to trigger a multimidiport sampler from Ardour, but i currently can´t see a means of defining specified port or channel within A2 to record only particular lines, or audio input channels. I have to use an external sequencer to do this, and this brings its own challenges. (Time consuming, two sets of record controls, a lot of scrolling, etc…)
Audio
Multichannel track.
After some experiments and thinking, i now have a clearer view of what playlists, regions and tracks do in relation to each other, and i will confess, once i got to the top of this particular learning curve it all seems rather more simple than at first appearance. I have a violin section track set up with 8 channels (coming from violin articulation channels in my sampler) and would like to define each channel record input. Can i do this with a multichannel track, or is add another track the only sensible way of handling this?
Finally, on a wider more linux specific note, i am currently using xfce as a window manager in preference to the UB Studio X default.
I have 7 workspace windows for various means, including two labelled Daw, and Mixer. When i open Ardour, iwould like to have the mixer automatically open in the assigned workspace, but currently it doesn´t want to play. As a generally new linux user, i´m a bit lost as to how to achieve this.
Any help with any of all of the above would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex.
p.s. I´m using Ardour2 ongoing in UBstudio Gutsy, on an AMD dual core 5600+ with 4GB of ram, if that helps define any of the above questions.