Recording while on the move

The other day I upgraded my netbook from my trusty EEE 701 to a nice shiny Samsung NC10. One gripe I had when buying was the lack of being able to buy netbooks running Linux any more. Apparently too many people had returned their netbooks when they realised that they were to moronic to embrace the change that Linux brings.

Anyways, I took it home, stripped it of anything Microsoft manufactured and installed Ubuntu Karmic Koala. It's fucking awesome. One thing I noticed while waiting on Karmic to download was how little functionality a clean install of Windows actually has, beyond writing a simple RTF document, playing minesweeper and browsing the net in an unprotected fashion.

Today however I realised how cool my setup was when I decided to try and install Ardour on the machine with a view to having a portable system that I can record demo's on. Ardour is a fully featured Pro-tools like multitrack hardware recording studio, it's what I record everything on with my main PC. After a simple "sudo apt-get install ardour", I clicked it's icon, and this is what I got:

A full featured portable music studio! Hell yes.I tested it out by recording a simple demo of a new song I've been working on, and the quality is great. Input comes from my Novation X-station connected via USB, with a condenser microphone and DI for the guitar. This will come in very useful when on tour and I want to do small demo's, or just mix some older stuff at quiet times.

Apologies if you were expecting a rant.