64 Studio 2.0 released!

64 Studio is a GNU/Linux distribution tailor-made for digital content
creation, including audio, video, graphics and publishing tools. A remix
of Debian, it comes in both AMD64/Intel64 and 32-bit flavours, to run on
nearly all PC hardware.

64 Studio 2.0 is designed to retain compatibility with Debian Etch, to
create a long-lived and stable creative desktop. We combine the
stability and quality of Etch with a specialised real-time preemption
kernel and the latest creative tools demanded by multimedia artists. Our
tweaks to Debian include simplified installation and default settings
which help get production underway quickly. It's our target that users
should be able to get from a blank hard disc to a fully
hardware-optimised and usable creative desktop in just half an hour.

Rather than a fork of Debian, our package improvements are returned
directly to Debian Sid, and our releases are built from Debian sources.
We have also uploaded new multimedia packages to Debian, which are now
available to all users of Debian and Debian-derived distributions.

The second stable release of 64 Studio is named after Electrical Audio,
Steve Albini's studio in Chicago, USA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_Audio


Downloads

DVD-R ISO images for amd64 and i386 are available here:

http://www.64studio.com/download

If you would like to mirror the stable release installers, you can do so
with:

rsync://64studio.com/installer

Please let us know of any new public mirrors.


Upgrades

You can also upgrade from a 1.0 install, or from previous testing
releases, using our stable APT repository:

deb http://apt.64studio.com/64studio/stable 64studio main

and running the 64studio-upgrade script (as root), or pressing the 'Mark
all upgrades' then 'Apply' buttons in the Synaptic package manager. To
avoid system breakage, please comment out or uncheck any third-party
repositories (for example an official Debian one) first, as these might
interfere with the upgrade procedure. If you have a large number of
systems to upgrade, you may wish to mirror the stable branch from our
APT server:

rsync://64studio.com/apt


Installation

The DVD image will install Debian with X.org, the Gnome desktop, Linux
kernel 2.6.21 with realtime preemption patches (supporting both
single-core and SMP systems) and a selection of creative applications,
as well as the internet and office tools a creative user is likely to
need for their daily work. Adding favourite packages from Debian is as
easy as apt-get, or a few clicks in Synaptic.

To install, burn the iso image to DVD-R, put the disc into the DVD drive
on the target machine and reboot it. After the reboot, make sure you see
a screen with the Debian logo on it. If you don't see the Debian logo,
please check that your computer is configured to boot from the DVD
drive. You may need to make changes in the BIOS settings of your PC to
alter the boot sequence.


Live CD version

For the first time, we also have a Live CD version of 64 Studio
available, which is based on the Debian Live framework. This version
does not contain all of the tools included on the install DVD, because
it is designed to fit on a 700MB CD-R. You can download iso images here:

http://www.64studio.com/download

We would welcome feedback about which additional tools users would like
to see in the 64 Studio Live distribution.


Hardware requirements

Please note that these releases are free software, and come with no
warranty. However, the software does actually install and run on the
project's dual processor Opteron, dual core Athlon 64 and single core
Turion test hardware, and is already in daily use by many of the
project's community members. The 32-bit version has been tested on a
variety of older PC hardware, including a Via C3 and a dual Pentium Pro,
but the project suggests a practical minimum of a 1GHz processor and at
least 256MB RAM to take full advantage of the distribution's features.

If you would like to send feedback or make a suggestion for improvement,
please subscribe to the 64studio-devel or 64studio-users mailing lists:
http://lists.64studio.com/

There are also forums on the http://www.64studio.com/ site; registration
is required before you can post. For other communication, please have a
look at the contacts page at http://www.64studio.com/contact or see the
Frequently Asked Questions pages.


Community and business model

Developers and users who are interested in getting involved with the 64
Studio project are most welcome. We have an active and friendly
community, with lots of creative and helpful people in it. The 64 Studio
Ltd. company, which supports the free software project, now offers
commercial support to end users of the distribution:

http://www.64studio.com/support

It is also producing custom distributions for commercial partners with
Linux-based audio products.


Thanks!

The 64 Studio team would like to thank the Debian Project and the
upstream developers for all the code, and our ISP Bytemark Hosting for
their support. We would also like to thank the Oregon State University
Open Source Lab and Linuxaudio.org for providing download mirrors. Not
least we would like to thank all the 64 Studio community members who
have contributed bug fixes, test reports, documentation and a
considerable amount of their time to the project, over the last two years.



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