[n00b101]

> I found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, even though I had one of the few soundcards that had drivers for Linux (Edirol FA-101).

I don't know anything about your area, but it sounds like a pre-built Linux image with realtime kernel and maybe some custom driver setup would be useful here. I use LinuxCNC [1] and they provide a super-convenient Linux image that take only a few minutes to get setup and controlling real CNC machines / robots.

[1] http://linuxcnc.org/

[ghostly_s]

There are a number of these targeted at Linux audio production: http://linux-sound.org/distro.html

[AstralStorm]

In fact, any modern PREEMPT enabled Linux can do realtime audio if you enable threadirqs=1 option, as I found out.