Which distro do you recomend in my case?

[Jonidas]

Hello,

well I know, that this is a question kinda hard to answer, because everyone has his own favourite "best" distro. But maybe you can help me which one I should start trying.

I'm quite new to Linux, but using Ubuntu 11.10 happily. But like I'm using my computer mostly for multimedia issues, (recording, music engraving, graphics/photo stuff, sometimes video editing), I was looking for a multimedia distro. Although I should work well for all the daily office/internet stuff as well.

I'm using a laptop Intel Core Duo 2 Ghz, 2 GB Memory, and the Zoom H4n as an audio interface.

It would be great to have a distro what serves without the need of doing too much "terminal work". Yes, I want to learn these things as well. But I don't want to spend all my time on it. To me a stable, "working" version is more important than a highly personalized system.

I read about
AV Linux
Kxstudio
Ubuntu Studio
Dream Studio
and i know there are even more multimedia distros in the linux universe.

If anyone could sum the pros and cons of these distros it would be great. I couldn't find such a thread here, if there is one, a link would be fine also

Thank you for your help. And for all the great community work Linux is famous for.

[i2productions]

I'll start by saying Linux Mint 12 is my base OS. It's all the good parts of Ubuntu without being annoying!

AV Linux:A great live cd/usb to run on almost any computer fast and stable for audio work. Based on Debian and a great compilation of tools. Personally I've found it is the best thing to use on a computer other than your recording box. At a friend's house recording him with his computer for example.

KXStudio:My personal favorite. It's not it's own distro and that's kinda what I like about it. It's an all inclusive set of studio tools and tweeks to your system that can be used with most distros based on Ubuntu.(Works great with Mint for me) KXStudio is also unique in the fact that the developer, falk TX, has developed some amazing tools for audio work that you won't find anywhere else!

Ubuntu Studio:A studio to reach a wide audience but lacks in current packages and doesn't provide much with it. In my opinion it's obsolete. A few years ago it was a blessing, but with the work on AV Linux, KXStudio, and the like I wouldn't waste your time.

Dream Studio:I have no experience with it.

One for to Consider. ArtistX:An extremely heavyweight distro that has almost every major multimedia package included. In my opinion quantity doesn't always equal quality. It's got 2 or 3 choises for every package choise. For example 3 different disc burners.

My best advice to everyone is try it all and see what works for you. All these projects have live cd/dvd options to check it out. But my choice because of all the tweaks that Mint makes and then KXStudio also makes to make life easier to work on projects! Hope this helps!

[slowpick]

Using Mint with KX, on one hardisk, and AVlinux on another, with a coin-toss choosing
which one gets the external drive, would be a good setup. Getting to know both will
protect you, when life slows things down for a season, with one of the developers.
Jobs, health, family needs can all mean one might have a feature you like, some time
before the other one.

[Jonidas]

So maybe I will try the Mint/KX Studio option. Is there a list of applications KX Studio includes? Would be interesting...

[i2productions]

There is no published list but you can go through the repositories you would be synced to here:
http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net/KXStudio:Repositories

And when you have you Mint system in place(if that's what you're going with and I highly recommend it) use this page to do the upgrading. I know you said minimal terminal work, and this is about as minimal as it gets. 7 terminal commands and it basicly does everything for you:
http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net/Help:Ubuntu:Upgrade

[Jonidas]

Today I was trying openSUSE and I kinda liked it. Is it compatible with KXstudio? What about MusicSUSE? What do you think about openSUSE generally?

Thank you guys for your help

[GraysonPeddie]

FalkTX does not have a repository for OpenSUSE, which is mainly targeted for Ubuntu with PPA (Personal Package Archival) repositories. But, you can compile Cadence from source. Do note that Cadence uses a DBus version of JACK and DBus is already supported in Jack 2, provided that you look for jack2-dbus or similar package in OpenSUSE repositories, but since I don't use OpenSUSE (or MusicSUSE for that matter), I cannot help you with that. However, I did use OpenSUSE for my desktop and server in the past, but then I went back to Debian-based distros (Ubuntu Server for server and Kubuntu for my desktop, but then I have Debian Sid+Experimental for my server and Arch for my desktop/laptop).

Be sure to read the README or INSTALL file or whatever that came with the Cadence source.