Re: [LAU] Distribution Usage?

Excerpts from Joel Roth's message of 2010-05-14 00:11:02 +0200:
> On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 09:57:56AM -0700, Kevin Cosgrove wrote:
> >
> > I've been using Mandriva for a very long time now, as it's been good
> > to me for audio work. But, they are having financial troubles and
> > looking to be bought out. Maybe they'll survive that, and maybe they
> > won't. At some point I might want to change distributions.
>
> To piggyback onto this question, how far is Linux audio
> performance a distibution dependence thing?

I think it doesn't matter too much, there should only be a difference in
how much work there is required to set it up properly and whether the
distribution messed something up.

> To wit:
>
> 1. There are some kernel settings related to audio
> performance. These are easily found for those interested
> to compile their own kernel. Can't pretty much any
> kernel be run from any distribution?

I guess pretty much, but some stuff still needs to fit together. Some
distros patch the kernel heavily, others don't do it at all, it totally
depends. Obviously it's probably safer to run a preempt-rt patched
vanilla kernel on a distro that doesn't patch the kernel than on one
that patches heavily.

> 2. Isn't JACK and ALSA configuration pretty much kernel
> indpendent and distribution independent? For example,
> you can start the JACK server with whatever parameters you
> want, and ALSA asoundrc is also independently configurable.

Yep, that's all the same, except for version differences. Some distros
are way behind the latest release.

> 3. Each application requires some configuration, including
> compiler options during build. Do some distributions handle
> this so much more wisely than others? For example, is the
> Planet CCRMA version of Ardour better than the Debian
> version?
>
> Curiously yours,
>
> Joel

It may make a bit of a performance difference, but I don't know whether
it's significant. Some distros optimize their binary packages for i486,
others for i686 and some are source based and optimize for the machine
they run on. No idea whether it really matters.

I'm quite sure any distro can be used for audio, the specialized ones
have done some work for you, some are more up to date than others, some
mess things up one way or another. That's all there is IMHO.

-- 
Regards,
Philipp
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