Originally posted by: bluemax
	
	
		
		
			One likely programs is called 
Ardour
I am not expecting anybody to go "WOW" and switch to linux for higher-end audio developement. But it's worth to keep a eye on.
For instance if you could use this to set up a extra cheap workstation to get more work done, then switch to a  Mac or a Windows machine to finish up and do the extra 10% that you can't do on Linux.
I don't know. It's not like I realy know a lot about VST, digital audio workstations or anything, but I am just trying to be helpfull. 
		 
		
	 
:Q :Q  That's enough to make ME say 
WOW!!  That's some serious stuff!   If they live up to the claim of being as good or better than all the "big boys" in the pro-audio biz, they've got my attention!  Especially if the program is cheap/free!!  That's enough to make me create a partition to try it out!!  Where can I get the best/easiest version of Linux to use this?  Bear in mind I'll be a total newbie!
		
 
		
	 
Well they don't live up to the big boys yet. 
Read the FAQ on their page and see how far they've gotten with their project. Looks like they have gotten to the point were it's a great tool for making music, but stuff like support of VST is lagging behind because the propriatory and non-standard ways people make plug-ins.
But this is one of those projects that shows lots of promise and is probable capable of 60-80 percent of what the high end programs are capable of. Projects like these can realy go fast depending on how well received they are by the target audiance. Wouldn't be the first time that a open source program outstrips the performance and usefullness of high end programs.
The major great thing about it though is that using it a average joe can get a good taste of what it's like to run high-end stuff. But since this is designed to be a professional tool the setup isn't going to be the easiest thing in the world. They have strigent requirements on proccessor speed and you have to go thru extra steps of setting up Alsa and low-latency Jack stuff. If your intrested probably the best distro to start off with would be Suse since they support Alsa well out of the box. But I am not sure, maybe something like Debian would be better because it's more easily modified. 
This would be great if your a amature musician and can't afford all the highend stuff. You can probably get a nice midi keyboard,  a nice Audigy2 or Extigy (or a profession sound card if you can afford it) sound some nice Mics and studio style stereo equipment and be able to bang out some realy nice quality music for a low bugdet.
Another good example of a media program designed for pro use is 
Cinelerra. It's designed for real-time editing and mixing of media streams. Check out the samples you can download. Very high quality stuff.
It's another thing that is difficult to set up and has some strigent hardware needs. But it's designed for pro use and is usefull for creating high-quality video. The recommended hardware requirements are something like a high-end AMD dual proccessing machine with SCSI or a small PC cluster. But if you have a fast computer it's possible to use it. 
They actually recommend that you use other programs if you just want to fool around with video stuff. But I bet it's cool to mess around with if your serious about this sort of thing.
They warn that many people who just want to be able to make home movies and stuff end up getting very frustrated by using this program, because it's just not what it was designed to do. I think that this ardour thing is probably in the same catagory.
But if your realy serious, right now nothing beats a Mac for this sort of stuff. But since I don't own a Mac and like my Linux these are things worth taking a serious look at.   
PS. I am using Debian unstable and Ardour is aviable to me thru the apt-get system.