puredyne is a live

Live CD

A live CD, live DVD, or live disc is a CD or DVD containing a bootable computer operating system. Live CDs are unique in that they have the ability to run a complete, modern operating system on a computer lacking mutable secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive...

 Linux distribution

Linux distribution

A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like operating systems built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions are operating systems including a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications...

 based on Ubuntu

Ubuntu (operating system)

Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...

 and Debian Live

Debian Live

A Debian Live system is an instance of the Debian operating system which boots from removable media, without requiring installation or previous configuration. Supported removable media include CDs, DVDs, and USB flash drives ....

 and dedicated to live audio-and-visual processing and streaming. It focuses on the Pure Data

Pure Data

Pure Data is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open source project with a large developer base working on new extensions to it. It is...

 audio synthesis system as well as SuperCollider

Supercollider

A Supercollider is a high energy particle accelerator. The term may refer to:* Superconducting Super Collider, planned 80 km project in Texas, canceled in 1993...

, Csound

Csound

Csound is a computer programming language for dealing with sound, also known as a sound compiler or an audio programming language, or more precisely, a C-based audio DSL. It is called Csound because it is written in C, as opposed to some of its predecessors...

 and others, plus live video-processing systems such as Processing

Processing (programming language)

Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment built for the electronic arts and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the basics of computer programming in a visual context, and to serve as the foundation for electronic sketchbooks...

 and Fluxus. It also includes hardware related software such as arduino

Arduino

Arduino is an open-source single-board microcontroller, descendant of the open-source Wiring platform, designed to make the process of using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. The hardware consists of a simple open hardware design for the Arduino board with an Atmel AVR...

 and comes bundled with home-studio and graphic design software (Ardour, JACK

JACK Audio Connection Kit

JACK is a professional sound server daemon that provides real-time, low latency connections for both audio and MIDI data between applications that implement its API...

, GIMP

GIMP

GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...

, Inkscape

Inkscape

Inkscape is a free software vector graphics editor, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Its goal is to implement full support for the Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 standard....

, etc).

Development of puredyne is supported by the Arts Council England

Arts Council England

Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...

. Puredyne was a Featured Download on productivity weblog Lifehacker and was named as one of the two softwares of year 2010 by the pixelache network of electronic festivals.

Teaching

The main goal of puredyne is to provide a portable and easy to install live distribution to simplify the teaching of sound and video processing software which are either absent from the standard Linux distributions or incomplete. Its live form makes it a perfect system for workshops or installation in locked down workstations which is the case in most universities and institutions.

Media art

Another aspect of puredyne is that it is maintained by media artists for media artists. The system provides particular optimizations at the kernel and compilation level to take the most out of i686 machines for real-time audio and video. As a consequence, this operating system is well suited for live performances and art installations. The modular aspect makes it easy for artists to customize and deploy it quickly to their own project needs.

Live distribution

Used as a Live CD, puredyne is a complete Linux multimedia desktop environment that can run from virtually any x86 machine. The system can be booted from a CD, DVD, or USB stick. Thanks to AuFS and the Debian Live system, it is possible to combine the CD and save all system changes, including new drivers and software, in any storage device (from hard-disk to USB sticks and other flash memory).
Installing puredyne can be done in several ways. The fastest is just a matter of copying a folder from the CD to the Hard-Drive (liveHD) or to a flash key (liveUSB). The system is truly a live distribution as it remains unchanged no matter which medium it is booted from.
The system also comes with GCC and special SDK tools to facilitate the modification of the distribution, the addition of new software and the creation of new ISO images.

History

puredyne was started by Aymeric Mansoux, and for a long time, exclusively developed by members from the GOTO10 collective. It was initially based on the dyne:bolic

Dyne:bolic

dyne:bolic is a Live CD/DVD based on the Linux kernel with a focus on multimedia production, and is distributed with a large assortment of applications for audio and video manipulation...

multimedia linux distribution, and focused mostly on Pure Data, hence the name. The later "leek and potato" release in January 2009 marked a transition to Debian, and the January 2010 release was primarily Ubuntu-based but with Debian tools.