tl;dr: Arch fresh install with KDE Plasma. I installed professional audio package and I feel it working better than a fresh UbuntuStudio.
It is maybe a couple weeks since I got in this Linux endeavor mixed with my current preferred hobby that is playing guitar. I found guitar playing to be a great excuse upon to base my “need” of a convenient environment. One that gives me freedom of choice, actual freedom to choose what I want to pay for, a stable machine dedicated to sound, that I can take away with me in my old laptop, etc. All of this is, as said, a set of excuses that you could package in a big single “I just want to install Linux”. Not that I need an actual excuse package, but part of my brain does.
Without getting lost in the details of the usual endeavor this usually is, the point is that, among the other distro-hopping stops, the most relevant was probably UbuntuStudio. It worked for me out of the box, very little to configure, and (in the case you are not a noob in linux in general and in linux sound in particular) you are up an running in less than an hour. It did run pretty well, comparable to my Windows setup: a Focusrite scarlett solo interface, Amplitube 5 as amp sim and Reaper as DAW. It worked pretty well and comparable -but not any better- than my windows setup. It didn’t justify the effort of solvign the different challenges that would keep me away from focusing on actual guitar playing and recording. … and I noticed some sound glitch here and there that I thought I could solve eventually. It’s Linux, you are supposed to be willing to solve things. I was in the verge to forget it and get back to Windows. But I was still not done with Linux. The best was yet to come.
That’s how I jumped two feet in and decided to test Arch. I will again save you from the adventure details besides the usual “it was not easy”. But it’s been worth every bit of it. But today’s point is not about how great it feels to get to know your OS, know it is only running what needs to be running, etc. The point is that getting an Arch distro ready for music production seems to be darn easy. Just freakin’ go to the Wiki, search for audio production and you’ll be pointed to the Professional audio section, where you’ll find the reference of the pro-audio package group. So it’s literally a “sudo pacman -S pro-audio” away.
Once run I found my Arch to have which seem to be the “usual suspects” set of apps you would use for audio production. A couple of minutes later I was testing my guitar plugged through my Focusrite interface and Guitarix as the amp sim. I meah, there is a sh*t tone of software there for me to explore, but I am not missing anything I had in UbuntuStudio. Guess what, I found no sound glitches. Maybe it was my fault with UbuntuStudio, but I’m not looking back. No reason to.
And one more thing. I see you coming with that low-latency kernel you need for audio production. Well you can certainly go for it, but I confirm what the Arch Wiki states: “A vanilla Arch Linux kernel is sufficient for low latency operation in most use cases.” I am certainly not pro, but in case you need further optimization, the Arch Wiki has you covered, including installation of the realtime kernels.
In summary, I don’t have any proof of Arch Linux with pro-audio performing better than UbuntuStudio. But I don’t feel any need to prove or even to further test. It does work better for me: I don’t get the sound glitches I found in UbuntuStudio.
Do you use UbuntuStudio? Congrats. That’s how the world should be. A distro specifically built for that. Let me state this very clear: I am NOT stating Arch is better. It just turned out better for the noob I am.
Happy Linux Musician’ing.