gentoo stage 1 is still possible, but not recommended, and the documentation is probably a bit hidden. but there is no functional difference if you do a stage 3 and a world rebuild, which is the recommended way.
the problem with gentoo is (and i say this as a former gentoo dev and enthusiast) that there is a lot missing on the audio side. last i looked (about a year ago) there was no ebuild for vcv rack, and a lot of other relevant packages were spottily available and maintained. i was thinking of becoming an active contributor again, but decided it would take too much time that i would rather spend on making music. there is no structural way in which packages get maintained in gentoo. you are dependent on the interest of individual volunteer devs, who come and go, or you need to learn how to do it yourself.
Thatās very useful. One question - you recommend using a lean window manager, but isnāt KDE hardware accelerated? I was thinking maybe XUbuntu myself because XFCE is not.
Iām on Fedora 26 at the moment, which is fine, but I donāt have anything to compare it with. I have used Lubuntu and Xubuntu in the past and I would be fine with either of those. Basically Iām looking for the lowest overhead, reliable system to run VCV Rack. I have done music live and know what can happen. I work as a Linux systems admin and I know what can happen. Not planning to run anything else on it. Basically a VCV Rack server. Whats the best distro?
Iāve also been impressed in the past by Puppy Linux and I just heard about Alpine Linux today. Are those contenders?
What is the tool that shows you the microseconds on the screen? I just loaded a system with Xubuntu 18.08 LTS (I think). It would be nice to be able to monitor performance. Is there a better tool?
Tom
Run this in the terminal in Xubuntu (also other Ubuntu variants likely), and it will install a menu on the top right to switch between performance and powersave
I have been using Ubuntu Budgie and Solus (with Budgie desktop) for many years. Linux is not my main OS for audio, but with some of the tips found in @David list my computer runs great.
On the GUI side I picked Budgie because is minimalistic, nice looking and fast. My second favorite is Xubuntu but it does not look modern and I feel it lacks easy access to some features. I hate bloated desktop environments with unnecessary information onscreen or animations.
Aha okay. For me it would be to make it the center of my live performance setup so connectivity and low latency are key. Iām trying out kxstudio now.
It would be nice to see rack get included in some of the musical linux distros
Ardour was not in Debian and I have it in OpenSuSE under a third party repo.
Debian would require an indefinitely transferable trademark grant (c.f. Debian iceweasel problem.) I donāt know what the SuSE criteria is (for OBS, just being open is enough); VCV might qualify upstream so long as it didnāt ship with anything remotely patentable (cf. crippled VLC dilemmas)