Hello,
With my recent discovery of “Remastersys” which basically automates the creation of a LiveCD based on your current setup for Ubuntu and related distros, I am toying with the idea of an Ubuntu based -rt A/V centric distro, This would be on a LiveCD with installer, or perhaps a booting USB idea as well.
My choice of Ubuntu would be Gutsy 7.10,…before the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins let me explain why:
The Ubuntu 7.10 -rt 2.6.22-15 kernel is secure, (a recent flaw has been addressed) EXTREMELY stable, quite lean resource wise, devoid of all the paranoid policykit and security mumbo jumbo that makes an Audio centric distro a nightmare to build. Also for building a “stable ArdourVST” setup is the best choice to align the best versions of JACK and Wine and Ardour for this particular purpose.
I have been able to relatively easily upgrade the base packages by compiling the latest versions of many A/V apps.
The proposed package list would look something like this:
Gnome and LXDE would be the WM choices
Abiword
Amarok
Ardour 2.6 with LV2 and VST see below (ASAP)
Cinelerra CV (Latest version of the 2.1 branch)
Firefox 3
DSSI-VST 0.7
A custom 1212 I/O version of WineASIO
Rosegarden 1.7.2
Hydrogen (Stable)
K3B
WinFF w/full codec ffmpeg
VLC 0.9.4
Filezilla
Kompozer
GIMP
F Spot
This is still in the EARLY planning stages.
If possible I would include all the necessary development libs to build ArdourVST or work out a way to have users agree and download the Steinberg SDK’s before downloading the distro from a secure FTP site and Include Ardour 2.6 built with VST support, this is unlikely to work though!
If I could get the necessary clearances I would also include a “VST Starter Pack” of free VST plugins known to work with this setup.
Anyhow this is currently a slow passing thought in my slow-thinking head. I would really welcome honest feedback from the community to see what the feasibility of this idea would be.
There would be many permissions to acquire and details to work out.
The Ubuntu 7.10 base is a must…that is not up for discussion.
I look forward to your feedback…my wife would probably pay you well to tell me I’m crazy!