You're better off running Snow Leopard on an old mac mini for pro audio, unless you really just want to play with FreeBSD (you'll spend more time configuring your system rather than making music)
I actually develop modern-day plugins on an old Snow Leopard macbook pro, before porting them to other systems and making the more modern, signed, M1-enabled versions. I've not run across anything that the Snow Leopard box can't handle, at least without expecting to run lots of instances of it.
So if you went for a Snow Leopard audio/music machine you'd be in good company :)
What are you running for an OS? If it is MacOS, how do any of your apps work? I would not think that even recent web browsers would install on Snow Leopard.
I put Linux on old Macs precisely because I cannot go a day on older MacOS without hitting 10 applications whose latest versions I cannot install on MacOS.
If you are not having that problem, I would like to know more.
Followup post has it figured out. I code initially on the SnowMeow laptop, so I can have retro AUs and VSTs: that also runs an old Parallels which runs a Windows VM and a Linux VM, where those VSTs are made.
All that stuff is old, the laptop's air-gapped and never talks to the internet, and I bring the code over on an SD card to the Mac Studio where I do the signed versions of AU and VST, make the videos, etc.
I also resist 'latest versions' of things quite hard. Generally that's not what I want. I want stuff where it's working consistently. Even my web browser is a Chromium picked specifically so I can be sure it will get old and go out of date until _I_ have a reason to change it, which will doubtless happen but it'll happen when I want.
I can't imagine running Snow Leopard but also feeling like you have to run the newest of everything. It can't even run a remotely current web browser. You have to already have programs that will be exactly what you want and need. Then, you use those and get used to them, like cooking with an old chef's knife you've had for decades :)
That's often also the problem with Linux and audio.
The easiest way is to connect Ardour directly through ALSA to an audio interface . The second easiest way is IMHO jackd and if you want to get in some trouble it's Pipewire (at least within the development state mar 2023).
What's the current problem with Pipewire? Pulse (for simple audio stuff) and Jack (for low latency stuff) integrations both work fine for me, so I'm wondering what problems you've run into recently are.
In my recent experience the problem isn't pipewire per se but rather how it interacts with rtkit (it's particularly bad with the FocusRite interface recommended above for home users). You can set it up to request realtime capabilities directly but you're going against the workflow and at that point you might as well use jack since you're going to be fiddling around anyways.
Though honestly, on Linux I just use ALSA for everything and don't think about it after that. By definition neither Jack nor Pipewire can be faster than the ALSA they are talking to.
You're not wrong, and I suspect it has something to do with hardware. My Behringer U-Phoria worked fine on Linux, then my Scarlett shit itself, then I replaced it with a MOTU M2 which does just fine. If you interface isn't USB-class-compliant, don't expect it to work on Linux.
> By definition neither Jack nor Pipewire can be faster than the ALSA they are talking to.
Sure, but that's like saying that you don't need an operating system when you can compile to baremetal. Both Jack and Pipewire are slower, but offer pretty substantial routing options on top of that. Furthermore, I believe both protocols support ALSA connections too.
I use Bitwig on NixOS and it's not too bad with PipeWire. Latency and routability generally rivals CoreAudio, which is good enough for me.
IME Bitwig is heavyweight enough it doesn't really matter what you're connecting with, plus it "wants" Pipewire (IIRC that's the only thing CLAP will work with?)
And I don't want to sound like I'm dumping on Pipewire; I think the work Wim has been doing is absolutely awesome and (unlike a lot of what FDo puts out) actually solves existing problems rather than hypothetical ones. It's just not quite (yet) what I need as a DJ and looper.
The problem is, that it's crackling also in normal use. The log always says, that the client is too slow.
Maybe it's my sound card (driver) which I doubt because it should make no problems with a Focusrite interface. However ... I'm tired of tuning the system when I want to make music.
So pipewire is really cool but not usable for pro audio yet (IMHO)
