Re: [PLUG] Recommendations for Linux Distro for Content Creation?

["Keith C. Perry via plug" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

I'm going to +1 this with a some comments from a point of view as someone who has produced music with Linux.

If you want to ***try*** things out without a lot of grief, I'm a HUGE fan of Ubuntu Studio.  It includes some of the most popular and in my opinion most of the best FOSS offerings for digital art work and A/V production including finalizing music for consumer or professional audiences.  Back in the day, that master is what would be sent to the CD production facility- today, most of what is published would be sent back by any in-house pre-press mastering engineer worth his craft (i.e. mastering has become a lost art)  I only point that out to say that even an un-optimized experience is likely to do well for you initially.

That said, when I was heavy into this I would compile everything I needed because when it comes to video and audio production workloads, you want an optimized system that you can rely on.  For that reason, I would not recommend Arch or other rolling distros because unless you are able to statically compile most if not all of your production components statically, something ***WILL*** happen that you are not prepared for.

Now... this is where the Arch and other rolling disto folks are going to push back on this but to avoid that and get ahead of any religion wars.

1) You rolling distro folks are all right about what you think I did not do or got wrong. :)
2) I've lived this and from the ***artistic*** pov when you have your artistic juices flowing nothing will kill that quicker than having to deal with your tools not working for ANY reason.  Doesn't matter whether the problem exits between the chair and keyboard or not.  As soon as you are taken out of that vibe your are done.  Having to address an issue that you didn't expect or don't immediately understand will make that 10 times worse and kill your creative vibe for longer than you expect.

Once you find the things you want, I would say a LTS Distro of any variant or a source distro like Gentoo is the way I would go.  My original studio system was built on Slackware.  Back then I compiled all my studio apps and my kernels because it was the only way to get my overall system latency below 5ms.  Most CPUs can do that without breaking a sweat for a good segment of production workloads.  Once I switched to Kubuntu for my main system (an AMD FX8350 system with 32Gb of RAM), I got away from compiling kernels.  I still tend to compile the major apps but I haven't done any professional level work in some years now.

Case and point for not-series-work... I still compile ffmpeg whether I am in Kubuntu or Arch.  I'll do basic editing and production of PLUG vids in either and for more involved editing, I'll use Openshot installed from the distro's packages (for either distro but yes, Arch's is newer).

If you are just starting out you'll probably be fine for awhile with whatever you use before you have to consider a "serious" system build out.  When you do, compile compile compile  :D
  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E. 
Managing Member, DAO Technologies LLC 
(O) +1.215.525.4165 x2033 
(M) +1.215.432.5167 
www.daotechnologies.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "brent timothy saner via plug" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
To: plug@lists.phillylinux.org
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2019 2:57:30 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Recommendations for Linux Distro for Content Creation?

On 12/19/19 14:31, Steven Shim via plug wrote:
> Hello PLUG mailing list!
> 
> What’s the best Linux Distro for Content Creation?
> 
> I’m looking for a stable, fast, user friendly Linux Distro for the following purposes:
> 
> -photo editing
> -illustration 
> -video editing
> -3D modeling
> -digital audio workstation 
> -podcasting
> -video streaming 
> 
> And when I get bored, is there a way to play Windows games on Linux? 
> 
> Patiently awaiting the recommendations of the wise tribal elders here on PLUG.
> 
> Thanks 😊 
> 
> Steve

depends a bit on prioritization of performing those tasks, really.

if you'd rather a lightweight system that'll require some work to get
the platform lined up but will let you tailor exactly to your workflow,
Arch[0].
if you want the above but also want to be *extremely* selective about
tailoring down to even what *codecs*/image formats/etc. you want
supported on the system, Gentoo[1] (at the cost of rebuilding everything
all the time for updates).
neither are for the faint of heart, though. because they're so flexible
and barebones, it takes a fair bit of work to get them to a usable state.

if you want something that "just works" (or at least tries to) in terms
of codecs/formats/etc., Mint[2] should fare you better.

there WAS puredyne[3], which was a livecd-based distro designed for
multimedia creation but it's dead now - no work's been done on it since
2011 or so but the site's still up.

there's also AV Linux[4], which lets you use live media or install to
disk, and is still actively under development.

but really, *any* linux distro should let you do that since it all boils
down to what software you install (whatever you're most comfortable
using), and most of the bigger players have at LEAST one, if not
multiple, options for software for the above purposes in their
respective repositories/user-provided repositories.



[0] https://www.archlinux.org/
[1] https://www.gentoo.org/
[2] https://linuxmint.com/
[3] https://puredyne.org/
[4] http://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/


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