Hello,

As I want to dedicate my old laptop only for pure data experiments - the question what OS to choose appeared.

Would linux (latest ubuntu) or windows (XP) be a better choice for a more stable work with pd extended?

Let's assume that all my laptop drivers (sound, graphics etc.) are 100% available for lnux and for windows. And I'm familiar with booth of these OS. The only question is the stable work of pd.

you'll find a stripped down version of linux (not regular ubunutu) to be the best choice for your laptop.

may I recommend: http://puredyne.org/

Linux as the kernel can be patched for real time operations.

I do agree with arif.

I use http://tangostudio.tuxfamily.org/en , which is a stripped down version of ubuntuStudio, and it rocks !

Nau

I use windows and i guess it rocks too. Unless with [breakpoints] when it's spitting out numbers and you close the patch pd will crash. Some plugins loaded in [vst~] also can bring pd to its knees. But appart from that pd runs solid as a rock...

i like the update mechanisms which keep all your programs up to date
in windows you have to update everything by hand.. especially if you don't work as admin (then even firefox)
some programs throw updates up every two days.. which gets really annoying

the downside is that on linux you have to install by hand if you want something curious which just got a new update (like pd)

sadly Dollie is too right on most of the points

But i guess if your experienced in both platforms, it really doesn't matter. I'm under the impression that pd runs equally well on all platforms. Hooray for its developers!

I don't have a clue what I'm doing and I've got pd running great on linux. I'll admit it was very frustrating getting it set up. I like the 8 ms latency.

I have pd-extended installed in Linux and Windows. In Linux you can work with less latency than windows.

give use some comparable results
minimum realistic (no drop outs until the cpu gets near its limit) latency on win/lin/mac/bicycle