I just got a new notebook, yay! Aside of the pure joy it brings, setting it up has also been a great opportunity to have another look around on what's the best way to get linux audio software onto an Ubuntu based system.
I have decided a while back to stick to LTS releases, in order to spend less time tuning my system and more time making music. It was a great idea. This means right now I'm looking for 10.04 Lucid Lynx packages, with bonus points for any indication of a smooth upgrade path to 12.04 Precise Pangolin.
My needs are:
Starting out the main repository, linux-rt was the obvious choice for a kernel. It didn't boot properly though, probably due to the older kernel version. UbuntuStudio seems to be recommending the use of "softer" realtime kernels like linux-lowlatency, but that just won't kick it if you're after pristine 24bit/96kHz sound at below 2ms latency for heavy fftw based sound processing. Hello, PPAs!
UbuntuStudioDev didn't have anything available for Lucid and neither did Alessio Bogani's or 64studio.
Excitingly, Google finally uncovered kxstudio, which has it all: realtime kernel, 12.04 Precise Pangolin beta packages, jack2, and a very non-invasive approach to packaging. I did find some breakage, namely PulseAudio dropouts with the build in sound card, but the kernel is the best I found. Hopefully that will go away with Precise.
So here's what I did:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kxstudio-team/kernel
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kxstudio-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install linux-realtime jackd
Rebooted. VoilĂ .