Which Linux Distro?

[Jostein]

...
What distribution are people using these days? Should I use UbuntuStudio? They were having issues a year or two ago, but maybe they are solved now?

You can probably use any new mainstream Linux distro you want and just use a Low Latency or RT-kernel. Personally, I prefer Kubuntu and the two main reasons are: 1: I like the KDE desktop and 2: Ubuntu's big user base almost guarantees that you programs work, problems will be fixed quick and that any binary package (I have Mixbus, Loomer Aspect, Pianoteq and a few more) works.

Jostein

[JWL]

My preferred distro is Mint, usually with KDE but sometimes for GNOME if I want a simpler desktop.

I've heard people are having luck installing kxstudio over Mint, since Mint is based on Ubuntu. Gonna check that out I think.

[Chris Kennedy]

I like the debian net install for sheer ease and stability, and familiarity because i used ubuntu for a few years. However a lot of the binaries in the debian wheezy repos are fairly old so it pays to know how to compile programs from source (like jack and ffado etc) though i seen theres a debian 7.2 update just out which worth investigating.

I recently did an arch install on my laptop which was a bit of a mission but worth it. Arch has its AUR (arch user repository pkg build scripts etc) aswell as its official binary repos which is cool. You can build this program from the AUR called 'Pacaur' (as opposed to 'Pacman' the arch package manager) which automates compiling and installing stuff from AUR. So first thing i got from the AUR was a pkgbuild for a real time kernel i used pacaur as i would pacman - totally awesome it pulled 3.10 kernel source from kernel.org compiled it rt patched and installed it - totally winning!

[sonik]

I tried Ubuntu Studio a dozen of times and i never was convinced.
I tested US 12.04LTS against AV Linux and the same project (20 Tracks @96k) played smoothly in AVL without xruns, but gave about 30 xruns/sec. in US.
Other thing, in the two hours, US was installed, i had three freezes with hardreset as only solution.
I definitely would try AVLinux 6.01.
Rocksolid.