Hello forum folks. My partner and I have recently hit a snag. We have been running Ubuntu Studio on a PC with the Hammerfall DSP pci card and a Multiface II for years, tracking in Ardour and mastering with Jamin. There were almost always minor issues with every update to alsa or the kernel, but we always got things to work. I don't think I had any major problems until alsa 1.0.24.
A few years ago, we updated Ubuntu Studio and couldn't get the card and box to work at ALL...so we downgraded back to, I think, 10.10.

And never updated since.

Now we've been forced by circumstances to update, and we cannot get the card working in Ubuntu Studio. 2 weeks of searching the internet have yielded countless unanswered or unresolved threads.  No matter what we try, we usually hit one of these two brick walls:
-we get an input/output error
-hdsploader tries to load Digiface firmware

Since issues like these seem to persist, is there anyone who can recommend a relatively stable and relatively easy-to-set-up distro of Linux? Something that will play nice with the RME DSP Hammerfall pci card and Multiface II breakout box?

TL;DR    What Linux OS is my best choice for multichannel audio recording if I have the RME Hammerfall DSP pci card and Multiface II breakout box?