Best distro for audio production on older PCs

[iheartqtracto]

Does anyone know whether one audio production distro is better for use with older PCs than others?

Lately I've been using Ubuntu Studio, but I really have to crank up the buffering to eliminate pops because my desktop PC (a Dell Inspiron) is ₁₂ years old.

This isn't ideal when recording guitar or vocals because I have to turn off monitoring so I don't get any latency. That means I don't get to hear the effects on my guitar or vocals in real time, which is kind of boring.

I recently booted AV Linux from a USB just to experiment and found that I could record at 128 with monitoring turned on so I could hear the effects in real time. And there was barely any latency. I was pretty impressed.

Wondering if maybe this has to do with AV Linux using the liquorix kernel instead of the low-latency kernel like Ubuntu Studio does...

Anyhow, I'm considering switching to AV Linux. Would this make sense? Is AV Linux typically better for older PCs?

[Michael Willis]

When I read the title, my immediate thought was AVLinux, and then I found out that you have already tried it with good results. I don't think you'll get a better audio production experience "out of the box" with any other distro. Additionally, @GMaq maintains AVLinux and he's regularly on this forum.

[amc252]

My two cents,

I tried AVLinux and found it more confusing than useful, same as Fedora Jam.
The time invested in setting up your own distro for audio is well spent and will pay off in the long run. At least that worked for me.
I'd recommend Devuan, lightweight and easy to setup.
Install the RT kernel, follow the tips in this post viewtopic.php?t=25775.
Install a frugal window manager (I've been using JWM for years and love it).
And of course favor command line apps like fluidsynth, liquidsfz, arecord, aplaymidi, etc. whenever possible.

Hope it helps.

[DiyellJ]

I put AVL-MXE on a 2011 Dell Inspiron laptop- two core, 4 Gig RAM, spinning rust- and found it worked surprisingly well. For better performance, go through your start-up menu with a fine-tooth comb and remove any services you don't absolutely need. Disable desktop features you won't be using.

Shut down the browser, email, bluetooth, conky, etc; stop intermittent services (big xrun creators on slow computers) such as the update checker (may already be off in AVL; I've forgotten), and so forth. You will probably need to experiment with different DAWs, synths, and plugins to find the ones with minimal CPU loads.

[Nachei]

My previous laptop was more or less of the same generation (bought in 2009), and in those days I got my feet wet in audio with PuppyStudio. I don't know if it's still around, maybe you can find some .iso around in the web... it was great for audio because the philosophy of the distro was being minimalistic so that it worked in RAM only, without having to swapp stuff to and fro with the drive, etc... This made it very fast...

I know the developer got some heat in this forum because of some practices he did to promote it, truth is I never wanted to know the details, because I on my side I'm very grateful to that distro, with which I created my first demos and albums... I thought I'd just mention the name to add it to the list...

[Linuxmusician01]

I think that the only thing that makes a difference is the Desktop Environment (DE) one uses.

XFCE is one of the lightest you can get nowadays. I thought there was an audio distro that uses something event lighter but I'd try something like XUbuntu first to see if it's fast enough for ya. If it ain't then try something exotic with an even lighter DE. But I think you'll be surprised at the speed of a12 yo laptop. Debian w/ XFCE takes along time to boot on my Asus EEE 901 mini-laptop (only 1 GB RAM!) but runs just fine for me.

Good luck!

[matyas]

I used to swear by Ubuntu Studio. But these days, I'm using Pop!OS and I'm more than satisfied. It's not an audio-optimized distro, nor is it is as minimalistic as an XCFE-based distro, but everything works more-or-less out of the box. It's very stable and would be great for a Linux newb, although I've been using Linux on and off for 20 years. It might not be ideal for really old hardware, although it does run well on my 2017 Thinkpad. The received wisdom that you need to run some super-slimmed down ultra-tweaked out distro seems to hold less true these days. I made a few tweaks and get great performance with the stock Pop!OS kernel (which does have prempt patches and a custom scheduler.) This is even using Pipewire, which likewise is doing a great job of emulating JACK with recent releases.

[sunrat]

XFCE is one of the lightest you can get nowadays.

Xfce is not so lightweight any more. Since it adopted GTK3 it is more medium weight, similar in resource usage to KDE Plasma. The only DE Xfce is lighter than is Gnome.

[GMaq]

My two cents,

I tried AVLinux and found it more confusing than useful, same as Fedora Jam.
The time invested in setting up your own distro for audio is well spent and will pay off in the long run. At least that worked for me.
I'd recommend Devuan, lightweight and easy to setup.
Install the RT kernel, follow the tips in this post viewtopic.php?t=25775.
Install a frugal window manager (I've been using JWM for years and love it).
And of course favor command line apps like fluidsynth, liquidsfz, arecord, aplaymidi, etc. whenever possible.

Hope it helps.

Distro creators whether it's Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE or something more independent like AV Linux or LibraZik have to offer a system that caters to a wide range of Users. I personally use 5 apps and about 15 Plugins..

It's not very helpful to compare this to some minimalist system that only applies to your own situation.

[amc252]

My two cents,

I tried AVLinux and found it more confusing than useful, same as Fedora Jam.
The time invested in setting up your own distro for audio is well spent and will pay off in the long run. At least that worked for me.
I'd recommend Devuan, lightweight and easy to setup.
Install the RT kernel, follow the tips in this post viewtopic.php?t=25775.
Install a frugal window manager (I've been using JWM for years and love it).
And of course favor command line apps like fluidsynth, liquidsfz, arecord, aplaymidi, etc. whenever possible.

Hope it helps.

Distro creators whether it's Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE or something more independent like AV Linux or LibraZik have to offer a system that caters to a wide range of Users. I personally use 5 apps and about 15 Plugins..

It's not very helpful to compare this to some minimalist system that only applies to your own situation.

Well, whether it's helpful or not should ultimately be up to the OP.
He mentioned an old computer, and while Ubuntu, Fedora, AV Linux and so on are all fine distros, a leaner system might be a good option.
When resources are scarce usually something gotta give and, in my personal experience, it's easier to start small and add than start big and cut down.

That said, I used to boot AV Linux in frugal mode to check some apps and configurations and decide whether they were something I needed or not.

[nils]

Archlinux has the easiest pro-audio setup (except pre-configured systems) and the most, and most up-to-date pro-audio packages of all distributions (^citation needed).
It is as configurable as it gets without invoking the arcane arts.

Install the pro-audio package group as well as realtime-generic-setup from AUR and reboot.

Also you get this on top:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unoffi ... s#proaudio