This is an excellent idea …but … I am always fishing for ideas on the net even whilst recording or need to fix something.
Even with a 2nd networked machine it is cumbersome .
Being a one man shop (composer, artist, sound engineer, producer, IT support 
)
For the last few years I had never any problems as to interference with the wider setup.
Only recently when Suse switched to pipewire I have the odd (annoying) XRUN.
anyway happy recording
Hi, that’s nice to hear! If you’re not in a big hurry I’d suggest waiting for the soon to be released AV Linux 25.2 ISO update, it will most likely have Ardour 9.3 on it (full version) and I’ve really been working hard on improving the Media File Action experience: https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=88657
I have tried a number of distros over the years for music, but what I’ve been using for the past 5 years is Kubuntu (latest LTS version) combined with the KXStudio repos. KXStudio turns Debian-based distros into audio specific ones. I started this off by using Cubic with Kubuntu to “roll my own distro” though this is not needed.
I tried a number of now-defunct audio-specific distros – Agnula Demudi, Studio-in-a-box, 64Studio, AVLinux, etc. But for me the best experience has been Kubuntu+KXStudio.
I am thinking of switching from Ubuntu to Mint for my base distro because I am sort of unhappy with snaps. Doesn’t affect audio however.
May I quote the user operadude in that forum:
Amazing
Man, you’ve been a busy boy !!!
I’ll definately keep your suggestion in mind. I’m in no hurry anyway 'cause I’ll shelve the recording equipment for a few months a soon as the upcoming single is finished. I have to attend to a few things that cannot be delayed and I will return in winter.
Thanks Mate!
Yeah you certainly have a point there, I’ll see how far I can get with my plan. It’s just that I find the idea of a clean and specialised array quite appealing…
So, Pipewire causes you hickups? I’ve only recently learned that it will be the default with Debian 13. I hope I won’t run into even more trouble than I occasionally do with my current Debian 11 installation, where it is still just an option!
I noticed that after stopping and restarting Ardour a few times in a row, Xruns begin to occur. DSP jumps to 100% when the main record button (not the one on the track) is activated or the song plays for a minute or so. Closing and reopening the session is a remedy. That’s allright with me, I grew up with black-and-white valve TVs and the present still feels like real existing Science Fiction…
Debian is usually too slow to update to keep up with the pace of bug fixing in pipewire. I would recommend finding the repository which ports the latest pipewire releases to debian stable.
‘debian-backports’ is very good about keeping pace with PipeWire updates, not really a concern, simply enable the backports Repo as needed. In my experience there isn’t much seemingly wrong with the default PipeWire version in Debian Trixie but I personally only use ALSA so I haven’t done hours and hours of recording with any version of PipeWire. When most people have an internet connected smartphone (with exceptions of course) I really don’t understand the burning need to watch YouTube, Edit a Video and play a Steam game while recording with Ardour all on the same machine at the same time… 
So that means I could still choose ALSA (plus alsamixer in the terminal) during Ardour session setup in Debian Trixie? That would be nice. I like to stick to the well-proven.
On the other hand, learning two or three things won’t hurt, will it. I once added backports in the sources.list, I think it was with Debian 9 or 10… Gosh, I just realised I’ve been using that Distro since 2012!
AMEN !!!
In AV Linux it’s even easier, since I use MX Linux for it’s build system I also inherit it’s Repos and the MX team does even more backports (including PipeWire) so much to the point that it is almost like using a Rolling Release with a Stable Core. To use ALSA it’s as simple as selecting Ardour’s ALSA backend in the Audio/MIDI setup and you can select the sample rate and buffers and hook directly into your Audio device and circumvent all other Audio servers, sure the cost of entry is that Ardour claims the card making it unavailable to PipeWire and thus any external programs but if you’re focusing on your recording session exclusively then this isn’t a hardship. Of course the option to use PipeWire is also always there. For an Audio mixer in ALSA I also provide a relatively new Qt-based ALSA mixer called ‘JaqalMixer’:
Of course if you enjoy the minimalism of the terminal-based alsamixer it’s there too…
Fear not, chief. On any Debian-based distro (like LMDE, which I use), it’s dead easy to just nuke Pipewire and keep the bog-standard old-skool ‘ALSA plus Pulseaudio (plus JACK)’ configuration. That’s what I did because I’m a luddite for whom Pipewire is surplus to requirements…
Amen!
Really brilliant work on that distro by the way, Glen. It’s so good having a turn-key go-to out-of-the-box distro for audio stuff, complete with FOSS and non-FOSS tools baked in. Nice one.
It matters, at least if you are working professionally. You should, in general, use an LTS distro with long support.
The reason I stress this is that everything should work predictably and stably any time you use your gear, be it software or hardware. You don’t want anything to go wrong if you have a client on your shoulder, or are tracking people, or are in a creative mood, or even worse: -If you are in a live situation! And if trouble arrives, then it’s always good to use a distro that many knowledgeable people are using, which can help you if you’re stuck.
But as stated above: -Almost any distro works! If someone asks me what to choose, I always say AVLinux or Ubuntu Studio. My thinking is that if someone asks, then they are relatively new to audio work on Linux and should have something that works easily out of the box. I assume that anyone who does not ask mostly knows what they are doing. 
I’d certainly recommend AV Linux if you want a ready to run audio distro. I used it for many years and even helped Glen out with a UK based mirror back in the days when his web server was bandwidth limited.
I found the MX based version harder work because I’m used to stock Debian+XFCE systems on so many other machines, so recently I’ve been using freshly installed Debian with a few necessary tweaks and the liquorix low-latency kernel, which does all I need, mostly Ardour for audio and KDEnlive for video editing. You do need to know what configuration adjustments to make, though!
Stop trying to scare people, Pipewire is miles better than Pulse. It sometimes does have sketchy JACK implementation, so if you don’t want to deal with that then remove or do not install pipewire-jack and use jackd, but keep pipewire-pulse instead of old PulseAudio.
I can relate to that . vividly … remembering opening up the back ( was switched off) , pointing/touching with my naked finger some??? and got the shock of my lifetime ! Capacitor discharged
You said something about restarting Ardour fixes problems… I feel ( little things) 9,2 is not quite there yet. i am hoping it will be fixed with 9.3
cheers
But Pipewire causes hair loss and tooth decay???
On a serious note - apologies, it wasn’t my intention to sound like I was warning against Pipewire. I anecdotally disagree with your assertion that Pipewire is better than Pulse but you seem to know a lot more about it then I do so I’ll happily yield that to you 
However, as mentioned, if you’re like me and prefer good old ALSA + Pulse + JACK, then it’s very easy to set up.
Admittedly my perception may be skewed by using Fedora. Fedora is a sub-project of Red Hat, and the primary Pipewire architect works at Red Hat, so Fedora has always had very up to date Pipewire installation.
I double checked, and PulseAudio is still actively maintained. I was afraid that it was going to be abandoned since all of the major distributions have switched to Pipewire now, but at least for the near future it seems it will be updated as needed for any security issues, serious bugs, or compiler compatibility problems found, so should be reasonable to keep using.
In the dedicated audio distros mentioned in this thread, pipewire sure enough works like a charme.
Mainly the last weeks i looked again at a couple of distributions, and i can say for a guy like me setting up pipewire for audio-production sure is anything but fun.
I quickly give up and just use jack, mainly as websearches are also anything but helpful.
And from what i read in chatrooms, not even related to audio-production, there is a certain amount of people who have problems (which usually take really long to solve).
@GMaq question for Glen.
If i set up dual boot with Win11 & newest AV Linux on separate, dedicated drives for each OS, is that going to work?
I’m asking because, as i remember, Windows11 has to have secure boot turned on, and, as i recall, once before Windows11 took my freshly installed linux down (Deleted Grub, i surpose…i can’t remember exactly what went wrong, i only remeber it did ).
How would you approach this, if you would have to keep both OSes?
I’m trying to make some more space, get my mixing room/atelier in order. Curently i’m runing different OSes on separate machines, which creates cabling/connection mess.
On top of that, current Windows machine has a cool graphics card, and the Linux one doesn’t, and i would like to do some more KDEnLive & Resolve tryouts on Linux too.
Hi, hmmm I actually am not acquainted with Win 11 nor am I up to date with the exact deets of Secure Boot, I triple boot with Win 10 on 2 machines without issues but obviously Win 11 is different in this regard. Since I use the Liquorix kernel and it is unsigned it won’t pass Secure Boot. In AV Linux you could use a stock signed Debian kernel but then you also need signed wifi drivers and all that BS for certain external kernel modules. Does your UEFI allow you to select the drive to boot? If so I think Secure Boot will still be an issue unless it only works through the bootloader EFI partition…? If you can boot the drives independently in you UEFI utility then for sure that is the way to go IMHO…
Again I strongly suggest waiting for AVL 25.2, I’m essentially just waiting for Ardour 9.3 to appear…