Linux distribution
Nate Drake puts his ear to the ground to hear the latest version of AV Linux, Enlightenment, rumbling into town.
AV Linux is specifically designed for multimedia content creators. As it's based on Debian (in this case, version 12 Bookworm), you could use it for your daily driver, but the distro's main purpose is audio production and its kernel has been optimised towards this end. It will be supported until June 2028.
When reviewing distros, one of the first things we do is check the system requirements, to make sure you are informed and to ensure it will run well in our test machine.
We were able to discover the fairly comprehensive AV Linux Manual (https://bandshed.net/pdf/AVL-MXE-User-Manual.pdf) but it makes no mention of this, so we've cobbled together some specs based on what others have posted online. We also noted that the manual refers to a previous version of AV Linux and was last updated in 2022.
We were eager to take AV Linux for a test spin, so booted the hefty 5.7GB in live mode in our virtual machine. This is where we discovered that the desktop interface has been upgraded to Enlightenment, from which we assume the latest iteration of AV Linux gets its code name. This is in contrast to previous versions, which used other desktops, such as LXDE and Xfce.
Enlighten us
If you’ve used Enlightenment before, you’ll see that AV Linux has adapted it to the OS’s needs; the right handside of the desktop contains a dedicated column of colourful icons for common apps such as Ardour, Audacity, Avidemux, Blender, Openshot and Reaper 7.
Having criticised the piecemeal documentation, we were impressed by the welcome guide, which opened on first boot, offering helpful information such as links to the AVL-MXe and Enlightenment websites, as well as tutorial videos and PipeWire settings.
Speaking of which, beneath the hood AV Linux has also shifted to using PipeWire v1.0.0. Given the move away from PulseAudio by other major Linux distros, this may not seem surprising. Still, PipeWire solves an issue that had plagued Linux for years, given that previously the OS had no fewer than three different ways to manage audio (PulseAudio, ALSA and JACK). As PipeWire offers a universal method for apps to establish media streams, it’s much better suited
