[PlanetCCRMA] Planet on Fedora 8 -- basic questions

[Chuck Cooper]

I got freshly turned on to Planet CCRMA talking with Julius Smith at a conference, and  now I'm starting to set it up on two different machines, one of them brand-new with only XP installed.  My questions are pretty basic but perhaps timely since I gather Fedora 8 is pretty new.  I haven't used Linux in several years and was never fluent...

1) Is Fedora 8 the best/easiest way to go for a newbie?  Both machines currently have Windows XP and I'll re-partition the drive(s).  The Planet web pages mention older versions of Fedora but then say Fedora 8.

2)  I would prefer to just buy Fedora 8 in a nice package with a DVD instead of downloading, making an ISO image, updating, etc., but I gather you can't... But I ordered a "re-spin" DVD (I think) of Fedora 8 from DiscountLinuxDVD.com for a tiny price.   Is this a good approach?  Was this re-spin really only released a coupla weeks ago?

3)  Is it OK to skip loading the low-latency kernel for my initial activities, then try it later?  Even a 15 ms latency would be fine for now and I won't have anything else (intentionally) running on the machine.  I'm a little afraid of screwing things up.

4)  What's a good sound card to buy these days?  I still have an M-Audio Delta 4x4 recommended by CCRMA many years ago, and it worked fine with Linux then in the earliest days of Alsa.  Is this still a good thing to buy for a 2nd machine?  I don't mind spending a few hundred bucks, but don't need lots of IO channels or super-low noise. I do need low latency.  Also, is an external USB audio interface like the M-Audio Mobile-Pre reasonably low-latency with Planet/Alsa?  I already have two of those.

5) Finally, and sorry for all these basic questions:  I gather Linux mavens would use GRUB to do the multiple-boot setup (I want to have both XP and Fedora), but I was thinking that for an old-guy Linux newbie like me that Partition Magic (now from Symantec) might be easier/safer. Advice?  Or would I use Partition Magic first in XP (to set up a partition for Linux) and then GRUB jumps in as part of the Fedora install?

Thanks for your help. I'm excited about landing on Planet CCRMA.

Chuck Cooper
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