14 DAY TRIAL // Based on the famous Debian Etch Linux distribution, the Studio release has now reached its 2.0 version. Addressing both the 64 and 32 architectures for the Intel and AMD processors, 64 Studio also comes with high compatibility with its ancestor, Debian Etch but also with the other Debian or Debian-based distributions.
As its development team was stating in their official press release, 64 Studio "combines the stability and quality of Etch with a specialised real-time preemption kernel and the latest creative tools demanded by multimedia artists. The tweaks to Debian include simplified installation and default settings which help get production underway quickly.". The team also said that the package improvements are returned directly to Debian Sid while the release is built directly from Debian sources.
Codenamed Electric, 64 Studio is said to have a large compatibility with a variety of hardware configurations, but the developers team does not offer any warranty for that. However, the 32-bit version has already been successfully installed and used on many PCs, including a Via C3 and a dual Pentium Pro. A minimum configuration is recommended, based on a 1GHz processor and at least 256MB RAM, in order to properly take advantage of the distribution's features. The 64 version has been tested by the community members on a dual processor Opteron and dual core Athlon 64 and it was also successfully installed and run on a single-core Turion test hardware.
The 64 Studio release comes with X.org and Gnome desktop, Linux kernel 2.6.21 with real-time preemption patches (supporting both single-core and SMP systems) and a selection of creative applications, as well as the internet and office tools. There is also available a Live CD version for 64 Studio, which is based on the Debian Live framework. As it has been designed to fit on a regular CD-R, this version does not contain all of the tools included on the install DVD.