Why stable?

Hi :) I wish 64 Studio to base on the stable etch and to be a stable DAW if I need one. I can understand Federico, because I'm looking for one Linux for all, so I have a mix of Etch and Lenny for my 64 Studio. I do this on my own risk. I suggest Federico to do the same. In case of doubt I would prefer a stable 64 Studio, based on the stable Debian. It's easy to install a second Linux for everyday use, if 64 Studio isn't fine for this, but not easy to get a stable DAW. Cheers, Ralf

64studio stable is exactly that. A studio that is stable. My 64studio install has been on this disk longer than any other distro. It gives me no trouble, has a recent version of Ardour and just works. I have other partitions used for experimentation, but I wouldn't dream of experimenting, and risking my actual recording studio. I certainly don't think of it as old. Cheers, dave

my understanding of 64studio is a dedicated, focused and specialized media production platform that doesn't really try to do much anything else. and i think it works really well like that. for example, i am writing this from ubuntu 8.04, which is my "main" operating system. I just boot into 64studio to do music-related stuff, and i don't have to worry about setting up flash, e-mail, power-saving, etc etc. just the hdparm fix, some desktop settings, and a few other software/hardware tweaks and i'm ready to go. i think it is an absolute success in not trying to be the "linux for everyone and everything" -- that's why we have "realtime kernels" and "generic kernels" in the first place... so i will wait for 64studio 3.0 before i venture further...as Quentin said, "i'm not ready for the pain..." i just want to make music.

One of the great things about Sidux, is that their smxi upgrade script. It's an elaborate bash script that is maintained daily. It will let you do full upgrades with less worry about breaking things. Other than one hiccup with proprietary wifi hardware once, it has been flawless for me. It also has scripts to use ATI/Nvidia drivers as well as several others.

Before I found 64studio I was doing just that, and I don't have fond memories of trying to hack an OS into a multi-media machine... I think I'll stay with 64studio testing, with some backported and self-compiled packages to compliment the mix. Good luck!

"I would suggest that 64 Studio users willing to stick to Debian/testing should simply upgrade to Debian/testing, where all the development actually takes place. After that testing (lenny) gets released, it serve as a new stable base for 64 Studio and the regular 64 Studio users can upgrade as well." Free Well I did that, and also compiled my own kernel (2.6.24) with the rt patches, but I really had a hard time getting some things working. I needed some time getting jack apps working in realtime without running them as root. I still can't get jamin and other things to work. what I was trying to say was that for some users willing to do some testing (I mean something like beta testing) haveing a lenny based testing repo would be nice, so that we could also foresee some lenny related problems in 64studio. It would help making the upcoming lenny based version of 64studio come faster. I mean upgrading from 64 studio to lenny results in have a defacto lenny system where one is left alone trying to configure jack and jack aware applications. But maybe it would be a lot of work for Free and not many people would be using lenny. Or is there some hidden beta-version of 64studio I have not seen yet?

Oh wow... I think I'm sold! Sidux looks great, thanks very much for the tip, can't believe I hadn't encountered it before! Until just now, I was thinking of giving Kubuntu a try (and may still), but Sidux looks like it has the right blend of stuff (and edgyness) for me, so I'm going to give that a whirl and see how I get on. Still, I've really enjoyed my week of 64studio and will be heartily recommending it to people who are keen to make music on Linux. (I am, but I have to balance that against all the other stuff I need to do on Linux as well.) Not least, I've found (though this may be partly because I'm quite geeky and prepared to put in the legwork) that jumping between distros really isn't that much of a problem. That's exciting and empowering for me, because I've realised I can try out various different things without much of a worry about how long it's going to take me to set up. (I've been using Gentoo for so long I was slightly scared of going elsewhere, but it's really been no problem so far.) I've set up several Windows machines lately as well as several Debian-based machines, and (unsurprisingly) the Debian-based distros have been a breeze to set up and get to fully-useable-with-all-required-software state, like a matter of a few hours tops. Windows machines for setup and software install, generally it seems to take me at least a day and a lot of effort to get everything how I want it! So, major kudos to 64studio and Debian folks in general - I love my experience of it so far! Sidux here I come, but see you folks around sometime! Thanks! :-D

For those that have the HD space, and the ability, dual-booting with http://sidux.com would be an easy way to have the latest and greatest apps, yet keep the realtime kernel and stability of 64studio. There would be zero danger of scrambling your 64studio install. Sidux is Debian Sid, but even though it is labeled 'unstable', I have found it more reliable than any version of Windows. There is a very active community, upgrades are effortless. I have been using it for a year on my work laptop. Of course, you are not far from 64studio then anyway, just a bit ahead.

I've been using 64studio for about a week now. Was on Gentoo x86 before, but took the opportunity of upgrading to an Athlon64 machine to try out something else. I still have my Gentoo installed on another partition, though was contemplating trying Gentoo x86_64 before I found 64Studio. I've also tried Ubuntu Studio (on my laptop) - seems OK but has it's problems. But I'm already finding that 64Studio has a few limitations for me - mostly due to being based on stable, older versions of things. As well as playing around with music, I'm also a graphic designer. I'd been really getting used to GIMP 2.4, and am slightly saddened that I'm back to 2.2 here. I've read about people dist-upgrading from Etch to Lenny. Would that work with 64Studio, or would I break things badly if I tried? Perhaps I'd do better with some other 64-bit Debian based distro, since music isn't the main thing I'm doing on Linux? I'm not even that sure I need the realtime stuff in the Kernel, though it's nice to play around with. I really like this system so far - it runs great and it's extremely speedy! I just need a few newer packages, and I'm wondering what's the best way to proceed? I'm more than happy to get my hands dirty and deal with occasional broken stuff, as long as it works OK (say) 95% of the time. I think my love affair with Gentoo is pretty much over (too much compiling for me) - looking for a binary distro really, but one with slightly newer software than Etch. Thanks for your help and suggestions!

I for one am quite happy with 64Studio being based on etch. Using development branch software is always "a walk on the wild side" whereas stability means you get your job done. OK, be adventurous and learn how to compile software from source, libraries and all. In Linux you can define your home directory as the place to install and run software. The latest source is always available on the net. Not everyone wants to experiment. May I remind here, that people running WinXP are mostly reluctant to upgrade to Vista? Why? Because the software they use will for the most part not run on Vista. Despite XP being already 5-6 years old.. But I know this is a weak comparison.

I work with Linux 100% of the time, I erased my last Windows partition in 1999. I know that for many, 64Studio may be their first excursion into Linux. I don't want Java, I don't want Flash, I want a reliable, stable music platform, and 64Studio has been that for me. I know there is a lot of exciting things going on in Linux, but hardware is cheap, I do the exciting things on other machines. I push the envelope only a little bit, to get newer versions of Ardour. For the most part I spend the least amount of time in 64Studio messing around with the operating system than I do on all the others. I applaud the developers' direction, and encourage them to stick with it.

This question arises from time to time. Please have a look to the last paragraph of http://lists.64studio.com/pipermail/64studio-devel/2008-January/005299.html Maybe we should add this to the FAQ.

Yes - the headers are in the 64studio backports repository at the moment - deb http://apt.64studio.com/backports etch-backports main The only reason 64studio "testing" is not based on Debian testing, is because 64stduo testing is the next stable version of 64studio. The developers, Free and Daniel decided that any stable version of 64S will be based on Debian stable because of the security updates. 64studio is not old at all though, because all the app that really matter in an creative distro like this one is quite fresh. (we get some updates before lenny - ie. Ardour) Hope it helps!