When a distribution needs to be very specific, it will only attract a specific group of users with a specific requirement. If that requirement is too narrow, it's likely that the distribution won't be of much use to other people without the same interest.
Music production is a good example. Audio processing on the Linux platform requires several kernel modifications that can compromise its usefulness as a general desktop. These modifications are required to keep the system responsive and audio latency low, but they can add to the CPU overhead of your system, and in some cases, make it unstable.
They benefit from specifically tailored Linux distributions, as can gamers or anybody with specific needs. The way distributions can be remixed and re-spun like this means that whatever trends emerge, Linux will be able to adapt and quickly take advantage.
Best for music production - 64 Studio
Open source software development has created some of the best music production software available. The only real difference between this software and the commercial packages available for OS X and Windows is that open source music software can be harder to install and use.
The main problem is something called audio latency. This is the delay between a sound entering your computer (or being generated in software), and the time it takes for the sound to appear in your headphones or speakers. Getting this latency as low as possible is the key to a finely tuned recording system, and it's what most music-based Linux distributions spend most of the time getting right.
And the distribution that gets this more right than the competition is 64 Studio. 64 Studio provides a complete audio production environment, as well as all the kernel and system tweaks to optimise your hardware. It has been designed to create a professional setup that's capable of recording, mixing and mastering many simultaneous tracks of audio.
Jack of one trade
Installation is straightforward, but you don't get any help after you first see the mostly blank Gnome desktop. Fortunately, 64 Studio has already configured the trickiest part of the system, and that's the Jack audio layer that's already running in the background.
Jack is the reason why Linux audio is so powerful, but it's also half the reason why it appears so complicated. Jack sits between your audio driver and any Jack-compatible music applications. It handles audio routing and could be considered analogous with a large, infinitely expandable mixing console.
Jack can be a complete pain to get running, but if you click on the launch menu and select 'Jack Control' from the Sound & Video menu, the small window that appears will include the word 'Active' in its pretend LCD status panel. That means that Jack is working, and you can look at the current connections by clicking on the 'Connect' button.
The Sound & Video menu is crammed full synths, an oscilloscope, guitar and studio effects, an audio sampler, a turntable emulator and several methods for monitoring audio. But the two most important entries are Rosegarden and Ardour.
These are the open source equivalents of Cubase and Pro Tools in the commercial world, and they're both exceptional applications for composing and recording music. Rosegarden is great for working with MIDI and composition with real and virtual synthesizers, while Ardour lacks the MIDI support but allows for multi-track recording, mixing and mastering, making it a better choice for recording a band or a podcast, for example.
When you've created your masterpiece, maximise its sound and volume using the Jamin application, trim the final audio files using the Audacity wave editor, and drop the resulting WAV files it creates into the Gnome CD Master application from the Sound & Video menu.
All of these applications are part of the default 64 Studio desktop, and you can see that this distribution covers everything from the recording, and sound generation part of a project, through the editing and mastering to the final CD burning. We can't think of any other system that provides anywhere near the same amount of functionality for the zero cost.
Best for gamers - Live.linux-gamers
If you live for gaming, Linux isn't the best choice of platform. Most of the major releases don't offer Linux versions, and there's little third-party hardware support for controllers. But most of us love playing games, and switching to Linux doesn't mean you have to abandon this wonderful time waster.
From first-rate first-person shooters to brain games and real-time strategy, there's an open source game for every mindset. Many of these games are free, but there are also a few independent games developers releasing some excellent paid-for titles.
Most distributions will include a few games in a standard installation, and most will let you install any number of other games using the package manager. But most games are quite large, and you'll find your hard drive quickly filling up.
We've found that the best solution is to boot into a live distribution specifically tailored for games, and the best we've come across is called Live.linux-gamers.net.
It contains a DVD's worth of data and includes almost anything worth playing, along with the proprietary graphics cards drivers to ensure maximum performance from your hardware. Our favourite titles include Termulous and Nexuiz, which are FPSes built in the style of Quake III Arena.
Astro-Menace is our favourite shooter, and Neverball seems to improve on the timeless gameplay from Marble Madness. Strategists will enjoy Glest and Bos Wars, and there really is something for everyone. If you really must have the latest games releases on your Linux desktop, then there is another option – or rather two.
There are two companies that sell a commercial version of Wine, the Windows compatibility layer, specifically tweaked for running the latest Windows games. These two applications are called CrossOver Games and Cedega, and both claim to run titles such as Spore, World of Warcraft and many Steam titles.
Packages are available for most popular distributions, and in our experience they work quite well. Even without those commercial alternatives, you may find that a vanilla Wine installation works well for older games, as its compatibility has been going from strength to strength thanks to the company behind CrossOver farming its fixes back into the main development tree.
Best for multimedia - Mythbuntu
We've written a lot about MythTV recently. It can play your music and movies, as well as letting you browse your photos and the internet.
It can be a pain to install, and it requires complete control of a machine. But Mythbuntu, a heavily customised version of Ubuntu, goes a long way to making this as easy as possible.
It features its own installation routine, and a customised configuration tool that steps you through the difficult MythTV configuration. The end result is that you have a working system within an hour or so, rather than the weekend of work it would have taken before Mythbuntu.
The installation includes everything you need to get started, and bundles the most common MythTV plugins for media playback. You can even use the installation disc as a live CD in a spare machine, turning it into a MythTV client on the network for ad-hoc TV and movie watching.
Even without a MythTV system on the network, you can still use the disc for basic multimedia playback, as it operates as a standard Ubuntu disc with a few additional packages.
The easy way
An alternative to Mythbuntu is LinuxMCE, which attempts to provide for Linux what the Multimedia edition of Windows has done for Microsoft – a standard and visible platform for connecting to a television and music system.
LinuxMCE has the advantage of not being built on MythTV, immediately halving its complexity. Using custom-built and standalone open source packages, LinuxMCE looks much better on the average television.
The GUI is accelerated through OpenGL, and there are transitions between each playback mode. It all looks much better than Mythbuntu. But the reason why we can't fully recommend this distribution is that updates have been quiet, and while a new beta was released at the end of last year, it's unclear when a new version might appear.
Until then, we think it's easier to stick with Mythbuntu if you're after a multimedia distribution for your home entertainment system. But if you want a slick user interface without the hassle of configuring MythTV, LinuxMCE is worth a look.
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First published in Linux Format Issue 118
Liked this? Then check out The pain-free guide to switching Linux distros
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