I did it...I took the plunge. I opted to switch to 64Studio

Hello all, As you all may know from my prior postings, I been on Ubuntu Studio now for about 2 months. I been having continued problems with the Ubuntu Hardy Heron version and it has gotten to the point where I was searching for a new distribution that could handle audio/video editing work. After much fence sitting, smoke coming out of the head, and debating, I ended up with three options: 1) Stick with Ubuntu Studio (at least until the next release) 2) 64Studio 3) JackLab Out of the three, I heard of constant troubles with Ubuntu Studio...mainly because it is new and they really don't have all the kinks worked out of it. But it still looked good enough for me to mess around with. Besides of the three OS's, Ubuntu Studio was the only one that could partially support my SoundBlaster X-Fi card. JackLab proved to be a strong initial contender and I was going back and forth on this one. It has much going for it such as just about all drivers for hardware ready to go...so it would seem that JackLab was more plug-n-play. Also JackLab came set up with WineAsio for VST plug-in support. THAT was a strong point and it almost sealed the deal for me. Two things hindered this decision: 1) JackLab is OpenSuSE/Red Hat based, which would mean a new learning curve. I wasn't too fond of the idea of the countless hours I spent on Ubuntu Studio to have the knowledge I gained there not be garnered in this new OS. 2) The support just doesn't seem to be there. The forums are like a ghost town. I did sign up to the forums and when I posted there it would take DAYS for a response, whereas I did get used to having a response within hours over in the Ubuntu forums. Enter 64Studio This one I was totally unsure of. But right off the bat it had quite a few positives going for it: 1) Rock Solid build like JackLab 2) Better support than JackLab (but not as good as Ubuntu) 3) A familiar Debian based architecture, meaning less of a learning curve But being Debian, I was worried about configuring my system. Would I have the same troubles as I did with Ubuntu? Also it didn't seem that 64 Studio came with Wineasio set up for VST plug-in capability So, mainly because of my Soundblaster X-Fi issue, I decided to stick with Ubuntu Studio for a while just to learn some of the nice Linux applications it came with. In addition, I didn't own a DVD burner in which that was needed to burn the iso images for either JackLab OR 64Studio. However, that thought was short lived with I had a large problem with my system and my Windows installation became the victim of a partitioning error (my fault). So I decided to make changes to my system prior to reinstalling Windows. I changed my sound card from a SB X-Fi down to a SB Live (which is much more Linux compliant than the X-fi) and I installed a new DVD burner (since I am going to work with video anyway, having a DVD burner would be a necessity). Anyway, the change in sound cards caused a MAJOR problem with my video driver. So now I was out TWO operating systems. I went back to reinstall Windows and I got that up and running. But now it knocked out my Grub bootloader! At this point, because I had the DVD burner, there was nothing stopping me from switching OS's right then and there. Since it appeared Ubuntu Studio was now royally messed up via both Grub AND the video driver. Also I remembered that the OS didn't get as good reviews as either JackLab or 64Studio. So it was back to the fence, splinters in my butt, and smoke coming out of the ears. I decided that the knowledge garnered from my experiences with Ubuntu Studio and good support were paramount over features. I didn't want to loose more time on relearning a different OS. So it became very clear that 64Studio would be the choice. I broke-in my DVD burner last night with a fresh burn of a 64Studio installation .ISO. While I am on the thought of burning. I do have to say that most threads recommend the InfraBurner for burning of iso images. Forget about that program, it will NOT let you change the burning speed. Install this program instead. Click on the link below and scroll down to the Burn CDCC program: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads-free-software.htm I set it to 1x speed (I know rediculously slow) and it burned the disk in a few minutes. The installation seemed to go without a hitch but I do have a problem with Grub still (see my other posting in regards to Grub). However, I found I was able to get into 64Studio by doing a warm boot into the computer's boot menu and select the primary (first hard drive). Then Grub would come up and I could get into 64Studio. Overall impressions are FAN-TAS-TIC. The thing looks like Ubuntu Studio. So I know I would be in for less of a learning curve. First thing I looked for were my applications. Just about all of them were there as they were in Ubuntu Studio. I did find that Open Office, Evolution and Firefox was missing. BUT a quick find of Synaptic and I solved that problem by installing those packages. One thing though...I didn't need to install Firefox because 64Studio has a version of it already...but it is under the name IceWizard or something like that. I opened up Jack and the coveted real-time box was ticked. (I had a problem with this in Ubuntu Studio as well. Jack wouldn't run with RT, ticked. It kept crashing. I learned that my custom kernel that I needed to support the SB X-Fi card was NOT a real time kernel and this issue wouldn't be fixed unless I replaced the audio card. A good reason to get rid of the X-Fi, if you ask me). I only poked around very little in 64Studio as it was late and I was tired. My head was ready to hit the keyboard! So I will be looking foward to playing around with it some more tonight. I do have a question: Does anyone have some good links or advice for setting up WineAsio for use with VST plug-ins? Geo