The 64 Studio Platform Development Kit (PDK) is a Free Software tool that we use to automate the production and maintenance of several different projects. PDK is a kind of version control system for distributions, allowing us to create and manage many different custom products based on Debian and Ubuntu sources.

Isle of Wight, UK, 9th June, 2008

64 Studio is a GNU/Linux distribution tailor-made for digital content creation, including audio, video, graphics and publishing tools. A remix of Debian 4.0 'Etch', it comes in both AMD64/Intel64 and 32-bit flavours, to run on nearly all PC hardware. We aim to combine the stability and quality of Etch with a specialised real-time preemption kernel and the latest creative tools demanded by multimedia artists. Our tweaks to Debian include simplified installation and default settings which help get production started quickly.

Isle of Wight, UK, 22nd April, 2008

Bespoke GNU/Linux distribution specialist 64 Studio Ltd. announces today that its Debian customisation platform has been extended to support Ubuntu sources. This means that the company can now produce, maintain and support one-off distributions which retain package compatibility with official Ubuntu releases.

Rather than forks, 64 Studio's bespoke distributions can be updated in parallel with Ubuntu's half yearly release cycle, or against Long Term Support releases, including the forthcoming Ubuntu Hardy Heron LTS.

Harrison Consoles demonstrated its Linux and Ardour based post-production tools for the film and TV industry at Sounds In Motion in Cardiff on the 7th April. Ben Loftis gave an overview of the Xrange products, and explained why Harrison has switched to Linux, while Pete Clark demonstrated the Trion control surface and IKIS automation system.

Pete Clark (Harrison), Ben Loftis (Harrison), John Emmas (Creative Post) and Chris Cadogan (Harrison) standing behind the Harrison IKIS automation system and a small Trion control surface.

GNU/Linux is now found in thousands of embedded products and specialised systems, but starting the development process with a general-purpose distribution can mean unnecessary extra work and a maintenance headache, particularly when development of the underlying code advances at a rapid pace. We can help!

The 64 Studio Ltd. company, which supports the free software project, now offers commercial support to users of the distribution. Standard pricing is not per-machine or per-user, but based on a typical small studio with up to three machines (desktop, laptop or rackmount). This support package is offered five days per week, in office hours (9-5pm UTC). Support is delivered in English via email, and the guaranteed response time is one working day.