What works for you is just that.
After experiments I tried to work with the elegant if not the simple solution(s). I do not have to run multiple plugins and in fact I don’t need them at all. Mostly I record my own voiceovers and then perhaps flesh that out to a finished product. So for me synths and plugins that create music is overkill. I have only a few ideas of what I would do if I had different requirements, but I think it would be roughly the same.
There are a few sites like Penguin Producer that give even rookies and idea of how to set up any distro to be optimized for sound and/or video. If you can bring a stable distribution into that mix and can satisfy the requirements of a mouse monkey like me, then your on to something.
I have modified Mint 17.2 to be that distribution. I spend a lot of time evangelizing my work probably more than actual work itself so being connected and having great tools is a requirement as much as the audio/video production part of it.
So in short no sacrifice can be had at the desktop level.
I used Ubuntustudio and found way too many synths and plug ins. The same for KXStudio and AVLinux. AVLinux had some buffering problems with the hard disk I didn’t like. Great people, I communicated with them for a while, but again the paradigm wasn’t close to a single performer/producer. All the them pretty much wanted plugins on the plugins.
So Mint 17.2 and soon 17.3 is what I use given that its stable, you can deal with repositories like the KXStudio repos that are used to bring in Cadence to handle desktop audio and jack. It makes the whole thing plug and play once its up and running you can use the patch bay paradigm or in some cases just run the software, like recording a skype interview for audio.
If I was to go to the pub and record the local talent I don’t think it needs to be more complex as there are fireware and usb sound cards that can at least capture performance via mics or possibly drift into direct boxes and an external board. Its a matter of channels and a little forethought.
On the rare occasion I will play live using Mixxx and that is simple using an internal card for pre-monitoring and usb for the mains. I haven’t been at the level where visuals would be a part of it, but its not hard to put that into it if you really need it.
I consider my use to be more project studio than studio. Considering that Eddie Van Halen according to most accounts records in a dump which is more cigarette ashes than anything else. Anything is possible and if your open enough to happy accidents, anything will do.
We are far beyond some of the studios I recorded in with 20 year old analogue equipment. I don’t think a debate over which distro matters that much. I decided to concentrate on simply making it work.