Pure Data (aka  Pd ) is ‘a real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing’, as described on the Pd community site. By patching elements or externals, together one can build systems to generate and process audio and create video effects. Pd runs on Windows, OSX and of course Linux.

Pure Data as it is currently packaged in Ubuntu is commonly known as Pd-Vanilla. Pd-Vanilla is shipped with a minimal amount of externals and while they are powerful, it means a fair bit of  work to track down and build some of the other externals libraries that are out there.

Worry not, though for there is an easy solution. Thanks to the efforts of Hans-Christoph Steiner and other we have Pd-extended. Yes, you guessed it, Pd-Extended contains Pd and more externals that one could use in a lifetime. It’s not an all-inclusive list, but it is still quite comprehensive.

Now for the installation. First go here and find a link to an installer package. Depending where H-C is in the building/testing cycle there may be links to different version on this page. Once downloaded, simply install the package using your preferred manual package installation method.

You can make the process even easier. An apt repository has been set up for Pd extended releases. Just add this line to your sources.list file using your preferred method:

deb http://apt.puredata.info/releases hardy main

After that, Synaptic is your friend.