Okey, ty for answer, ill join IRC and try it
Being as I now have two X32 consoles at my disposal (one at the theater and one in my home studio…) this interests me. My question though, is a bit different than recording. Is it possible to do some sort of automation that would allow Ardour to creates “scenes” (for lack of a better term) that would change the mute/level of channels? And be able to step from scene to scene? Could be 100 or more scenes. (I realize this is a stretch…) 
Ardour can automate mute and levels, but it is timeline based, not scene based. After all Ardour is a DAW made for recording, it isn’t actually designed as a live sound mixer, even though some people use the mixer part of the application that way.
Pretty much what ccaudle said, though a few options to consider (Depending on your OS etc.)
Palladium by Chris Hubbard
http://chsounddesign.com/palladium.php
Designed with theater in mind and for scene control. You could also use QLab, assuming you are using that for SFX playback to build some scenes as well, but that might take a bit more work. If your music is all timeline/playback based you could use Ardour or just about any DAW for this purpose though to launch scenes during the show. Just keep in mind how oyu are going to deal with understudies, etc.
SeabladeYes, I agree Ardour is clearly not scene based…but, ya never know what folks will bend things to.
I am very familiar with Palladium. I have used it for years with three O1V’s via MIDI. Unfortunately, the X32 is OSC based. The new OSC feature in Palladium requires upgrade to rev 4 and that’s a fee based upgrade. The theater I work in, being a non-profit, has asked me to look into FOSS alternative. We use CuePlayer for SFX. I think both CuePlayer and Palladium are easier to teach. And, we do a lot of teaching, since the theater has a youth theater program. And all the renters are community theater groups.
The alternative’s form a pretty short list. Having written software for longer than I’d like to admit, I have threatened to write a FOSS app…but would prefer to enjoy my retirement.
Mac
You must be based in Australia I am guessing? 
Truth be told there aren’t many options out there that have the same focus as Palladium. The primary reason is because Palladium was written by a theatrical sound designer that knows the field, whereas a lot more of these tools are written by musicians or musical engineers, and particularly when it comes to scene management you enter a whole new world when talking about theater compared to just about any other field.
As a result I would imagine Palladium is probably easier to teach for theater uses as it was designed for it.
If, however, you decide to get started on some open source tools for this, let me know:)
SeabladeSeablade,
Nope not Aussie, USA.
If you want to talk about FOSS tools for theater shoot me an email macdroid53 at gmail dot com
I just plugged a usb cable from my X32 to a pc that has Ubuntustudio 14.04. Jack doesn’t see any channels. Do you need the X32 app installed?
Thus Ardour doesn’t see anything either. I’m missing something since it doesn’t seem to work as seamlessly as described in this thread… 
Ok, got it working. Not 100% sure, but, at least, the X32 needed the latest firmware (2.16). Then I had to select hw:XUSB,0 as the device.
Seemed to get a click on playback (audio --> X32) every so often. Any tips on the jack settings for USB?
Mac