Hey gang,
In a search for distraction from the project I'm really supposed to be working on, I decided to update my (until now stable but very outdated) Gentoo media editing machine. A couple days of circular package blocks, missing dependencies and vanishing libraries later, I'm really curious why I once decided it was a good idea to compile everything myself ;-) (Note to Gentooers: "emerge --update --deep world" once a month, or get the thing stable and never touch it again! If you wait too long, and your current packages go out of Portage, it can be hellish!).
So if and when this machine is hosed, what would be a good distro to put on it? I don't feel much like the super-hacker I was a four or five years ago when I got into Gentoo, but I like a distro that I can configure to be extremely minimal and transparent. And what is absolutely necessary is that it has well-configured versions of all the audio softs that I depend on, such as Ardour (w/ VST support!), Jamin, LADSPAs, JACK, etc. Realtime/prempt kernel = A-OK. Ability to use PD-Extended is of course a plus, and also the ability to mount HFS+ drives without destroying them (as Ubuntu has done to me in the past) is also necessary.
I looked at Ubuntu Studio, but I wanted to ask who actually uses it. From the page it seems like maybe it's not well-maintained, and that's another requirement for me after messing around with different audio-related overlays for Portage that eventually get abandoned.
If Ubuntu Studio isn't the right one, can anyone suggest another option? My last criteria is that it has a coherent user community and excellent docs (strongest point of Gentoo, and from what I recall a weak point of straight Debian, IMHO).
thx + best! D.