Up until now installing and configuring audio and video software on Linux systems has been a long time challenge for my poor Unix command line repertory and a frustrating experience to the even the geekiest user. I have tried hard with Knoppix, OpenSuse, Ubuntu and Kubuntu distributions and had little or no success in getting a fully functional digital studio out of Linux. Even the more specialized multimedia distributions like the Agnula and Dynebolic projects have been outdated and remain immature for real world demands.

As a weekend project I have gone through the installation and configuration of the Ubuntu Studio and it has been rocking my world ever since. At last a stable, well integrated free Linux operating system that meets the demands of the audiophile and open source purists alike. Check out a few tips and tricks on getting the most out of this great opensource OS.

One of the fastest ways to download the Ubuntu Studio DVD is with a torrent peer-to-peer client, such as uTorrent or Azureus. Just download this torrent file and open it in your preferred client.

Run these two commands on the terminal to have full access to the full Ubuntu Studio repository packages.

sudo su -c ‘echo deb http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio feisty main >> /etc/apt/sources.list’

wget -q http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

You can find a lot of help online from the ever growing Ubuntu Linux user community, always fast to publish the latest hacks and support tips for the newbie. A good place to start is the Ubuntu wiki, but there is also the Ubuntu Forums, an Ubuntu Studio Mailing list  and even a  IRC chat room (#ubuntustudio on irc.freenode.net).