A bit of recent history...
For a while now, I've felt that something has been missing from my life, and earlier this year I decided to do something about it by putting a bit more music back in it. My favourite software on Win XP was "Sync Modular", but didn't have much else to go with it. Basically I wanted something that would help me write scores and allow me to create layered keyboard recordings. After looking around for a bit I realised I had to either buy a bloated software package that had never heard of K.I.S.S., or go Linux.
So I gave Ubuntu Jaunty a go, was amazed at the number of improvements since version 6.06, installed the US packages, and have been tinkering around with it ever since.
It has been a mixed bag... Ubuntu detected my old Evolution MK 249c keyboard out of the box, but would crash the kernel if I unplugged it. JACK took me a while to set up, then wowed me with amazing latencies 3~5 times faster than I ever had under windows - and that's with the standard kernel. I couldn't get speed-stepping to work with the RT kernel, so I normally boot with the standard one. I then upgraded to 9.10, which automatically reinstalled Pulse Audio, which I hate because it's so slow. The ALSA mixer sliders in 9.04 were terrible, but at least the multimedia playback/game sounds didn't skip. Maybe I'll install a kernel-level mixer, such as OSS4 or something.
...But hey, I like it a lot! I installed Ingen, which seems very promising even though I haven't produced any sound with it yet. Zynaddsubfx is very quick and easy to run, Musescore looks nice but only sounds as good as the soundfonts (haven't been able to get MIDI out to work yet), and the hard part seems to be actually concentrating on making music instead of endlessly chasing after better integration. I really felt the dust lifting from the rusty cogs (metaphorically speaking) as I wrote down some notes for the first time in years, and it felt pretty good!
