Re: [LAU] how does ubuntu studio compare to jacklab?

From: Thomas Kuther <gimpel@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Mon Jul 23 2007 - 10:30:02 EEST

On So, 22.07.07 14:44 Robert Persson <ireneshusband@email-addr-hidden> wrote:

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> How does Ubuntu Studio compare to JackLab?
>
> The reason I asked is because I want to set up a workstation that
> (hopefully) will be dedicated to audio and video, although I might
> still find that I need to use it for graphics, research, writing,
> email etc.
>
> The relevant factors that I am aware of so far include the following:
>
> 1. Ubuntu doesn't ship with wineasio. This means, if I have understood
> this correctly, that I would have to patch and compile wine myself to
> get working asio and jack support, which would in turn mean that I
> would have to do patch and compile it again and again every time a new
> version of wine appeared in the repository. I don't want to be
> worrying about that kind of stuff. If wineasio were made available in
> a 3rd-party repository, this would probably cease to be a problem.

As of wine-0.9.40 the ALSA midi patches got merged into upstream wine,
no need to patch anymore.

> 2. JackLab ships with a kernel better optimised for realtime than the
> ubuntu low-latency kernel. However a realtime kernel for Ubuntu is
> available from a 3rd party repository.

Jacklab uses ingo patched -rt by default, ubuntustudio provides that
only from 3rd party AFAIK.

> 3. Between Ubuntu and its 3rd-party repositories, and between SuSE and
> its 3rd-party repositories, you can probably get more or less anything
> you want, but is one nevertheless more comprehensive than the other?

Most multimedia/audio rpms used in jacklab are available in the packman
repo - eventual bugs/problems are mostly fixed inbetween a day after
reporting. Quite good service.
Not sure how ubuntu studio handles that.

> 4. SuSE uses rpm and yast. That used to be more problem-prone than
> dpkg and apt. Is that still the case?

No, Jacklab uses smart by default, that can handle yast and yum repos.

> 5. Ubuntu Studio ships with Gnome as the default desktop environment,
> although you can easily switch to KDE or XFCE. JackLab ships with
> Enlightenment as the default environment, but with KDE also installed
> (have I got that right?). KDE is slow and bloated (although I still
> like it for general purpose workstation use). Gnome is not as slow,
> but it is relatively inflexible considering its complexity; if I don
> need to use the workstation for graphics then Gnome would be useless
> because you can't manage fonts. I could live with XFCE for audio and
> video stuff, but not for much else. I'm not at all familiar with
> Enlightenment. Theoretically I should just be able to log into
> whichever environment suits the need of the moment, but in practice I
> have found that KDM doesn't play well with Gnome, nor GDM with KDE.
> Would switching from Enlightenment and KDE in JackLab, depending on
> what I was doing, cause me any problems? Will the better optimised
> KDE4 make KDE a viable option for working in time-based media?
> Is one distribution more stable and reliable than the other?

If you choose E17, only some core KDE packages are installed by
default. Though if you prefer XFCE or some *box you can easily install
that afterwards too.
You can use KDM to log into E, or GDM, or whatever. Default for E17 is
Entrance. But switching is easy.
Regarding KDE4, there is a repo available that installs it in parallel
to KDE3 (configs go to ~/.kde4, so KDE3 configs stay untouched).
To me it seems snappier than KDE3, but hell it's still buggy.

> 6. Are the binaries in one better optimised for more powerful
> processors (a pentium 4 in my case) than the other? Would this make
> much of a difference in any case?

I don't think so

> 7. I have found the community of Ubuntu users to be less knowledgeable
> than, say, that of Gentoo users. For instance I have not managed to
> get solutions to technical problems with Ubuntu on IRC. I have had
> better luck on the forums, although this has not been nearly as good
> as the help I used to receive on the gentoo-user mailing list in the
> days when I was using Gentoo. (That said, I haven't had too many
> serious problems with Ubuntu). How does the SuSE community compare in
> this regard?

Nothing will ever beat Gentoo's community support ;)
For jacklab there is an own forum, IRC etc. For SuSE in general there
are forums, ml, IRC too.
 
> 8. Are the packages for one distribution (including those from the
> principal 3rd party repositories) more stable and reliable than those
> of the other?

I don't think so.

> Are there any other factors one ought to consider?
>
> Best
> Robert
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Received on Mon Jul 23 12:15:02 2007

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