Ubuntu and Midi

[Nathan Sprangers]

I must preface this post with this comment: I am extremely impressed
with Ubuntu and all that it's doing - this is in no way a complaint but
a request.

Now, the one thing that I need in Ubuntu to make it complete is better
midi support. I don't have an audio card that supports midi however, so
what I'm talking about is midi synth.  As a musician there are two apps
that I would like to use that I can't right now: Rosegarden4 (notation
software, anyone know of a gtk subsitute?) and Solfege.  I have tried
installing timidity from the Ubuntu repositories and timidity-patches
from Debian stable, however timidity is a nightmare to configure.  MIDI
is something that I think should *just work* - as so many other things
in Ubuntu do!

So my question is: has anyone else been able to successfully get midi
synth on Ubuntu?  Midi and sound seem to be a common problem in Ubuntu
without much of a solution - at least that's my observation.

Thanks
~Nathan