third party aplications installations ....

ok, now I think I understand. Could this work? deb http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/64studio.com/apt/ 64studio main EDIT: And Debian Etch (oldstable) repos are now here, but as mentioned, security updates are not available anymore: http://archive.debian.org/ deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security/ etch/updates main contrib

Just some few precisions : - First, I'm not professionnal, and it's not critical for me to have the latest apps favors, even if I enjoyed to discover news fonctionnalities ... - Second, and it's the bigest reason why I don't want to change 2.1 to 3 beta : I tried it some monthes ago, and had much and much difficulties to have an xinerama working with my G450 Matrox graphic card . It never work . Another reason, is Ardour2, I was familiar with and was a bit lost with new ways commands I didn't have time too much to discover them ... - I had a very strong system with 64Studio 2.1, and I was familiar with . After trying 3.beta, I changed to Ubuntu Studio (9.04), it gaven't me satisfactions ( performaces particulary, and xorg versions idem 64Studio 3beta ) like 64Studio 2.1 ... That's all reasons why I recently reinstall 2.1 ... I'm not in doubt your solutions are good solutions for you, but I'm afraid a bit to have to change critical apps like Xorg, or ardour to more recent versions ... And all these to have possibilities to install apps like vlc, openoffice, etc ... So I think a lenny + backports based distro don't fit to me ... Is there possibilities to find an Etch repository ?

Etch is indeed really old and Debian does not provide security updates for it anymore. If you try to upgrade, I'd first make a backup of the system, e.g. with Remastersys. My own system relies on Lenny repos and it runs ok. Sorry, maybe I should not call it 2.1 system, because if I remember correctly, 64Studio 2.1 was originally based on Etch, and I have upgraded a long time ago. Here are the repositories I use (three first are the essential ones): deb http://apt.64studio.com/backports/ lenny-backports main deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free deb http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/repository debian/ Here is some discussion about upgrading to Lenny too. If you don't get things going alright, maybe it would be worth to consider 3.0 beta once more. Also, I've built my other production system on Ubuntu Minimal 10.04 LTS, and I have to say that it is just as stable as the good old 64Studio, but with up-to-date apps. Here is a how-to for such Minimal setup.

Which repositories did you try to add? For instance, trying to install e.g. JACK-dependent applications from Debian Testing/Squeeze or Unstable/Sid repositories often results to wider dependency problems, so I would not recommend adding those repos to 64Studio 2.1. I've gone through that, and the result was much less stable than the original 2.1. I guess that the same applies also to any third party repo that is not meant for Etch/Lenny, so be careful. I'm still running 2.1 in my other system. Latest versions like Ardour 2.8.11 just had to be compiled from source, I could not find another way. That system is anyhow very solid. However, I have not been able to compile some of the newer apps like Muse 1.0.1. Btw, before making experiments with upgrades or external repos, I always make a backup-DVD of the system with Remastersys. It's very handy tool for restoring the functioning system, if things get awkward.