Yo. Just throwing in what I’ve seen. Newer laptops with saving-battery-on-simple-video-cards technology from either firms, have a bunch of trouble getting proper linux support. I’ve used AVLinux on my desktop PC for production for a long time, no problems. When I just got my laptop (with NVidia “Optimus”, which is in this case definitely not the best) I couldn’t even get AVL to launch from cd. So I had to switch to KXStudio. It only recognized the NV card, never used the Intel one. Now I’ve returned it for repair 2 times already, I’m sticking with windows 
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I have had the same problem here. The issue appears if you use the ALSA device of Renoise. Using JackD solves the problem, That’s why it also works in wine,In wine Renoise does not claim the full alsa device, there is a layer between Renoise and ALSA through wine, just like with JackD that creates also a layer between Renoise and ALSA. At least thats what i think that happens. On some systems its probbably an issue if Renoise claims the full ALSA device. Other applications cannot play there sounds and i think that there are apps fighting over the ALSA device while Renoise keeps it claimed.
I have Jackd standard running for renoise now, and for me it works like a charm, also other application are able to play there sounds when needed.
Only changing desktop creates Crackles, but hey, when you are create a song you don’t have to switch 
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For the ones that are instrested:
sudo apt-get install jackd qjackctl.
Start qjackctl and start the JackD server. There are probably better ways to start jackd, but this was quick way for me to test this with jackd.
This may seem off topic but using Linux for music making is just silly. that said, some of the smartest people I know use Linux for all there personal computing needs, but they aren’t musicians.
Now I’m using Fedora 19, and Renoise works faster than on Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu/Kubuntu/Debian/Calculate Linux. Horizontal scroll works fine.
Do you use CCRMA and the RT kernel? Or have the finally managed to release the official Fedora Music distro they have been promising for some time now? (I know I could Google that…) I always had issues getting Fedora working smoothly with my hardware for some reason.
I’m using standard Fedora 19 LXDE.
In big projects it still slow, but in any case faster that other distros what I use.
It’s not the one I was looking for but just found there is a spin called Fedora Jam for musicians.
https://spins.fedoraproject.org/jam-kde/
Unless it is actually an offshoot of the original Audio Creation spin project, which states it should have had a version ready for Fc18 but I don’t recall ever actually seeing (but haven’t followed it for a while.)
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Audio_creation_spin_development?rd=AudioCreationSpinDevelopment
(EDIT: Hmmmm… KDE. Really??? For “both” audio related Spins.)
I initially thought I would try Fedora as most of the linux-based boxes I came across at work at the time were RHEL, recently (well during my currect role) I’ve come across a lot of Ubuntu too. Therefore I’ve decided to give the Ubuntu Studio 12.04lts a go again…
Try AVLinux or KXStudio .ISO
And be limited to a 32bit system. no thanks.
Why KXStudio over Ubuntu Studio. It’s based on Ubuntu (same version as I chose to install) but uses the heavyweight, resource-hungry KDE desktop environment rather than the nice and lightweight XFCE one which Ubuntu Studio uses and has always been my preference anyway.
You can always choose the middleground and install KXStudio repository on vanilla Ubuntu/Xubuntu and add only those programs you actually need. I second your opinion on KDE.