A Guide to switching to Linux as your music production OS (If you really want to!)

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Thinking about switching to linux?

Here is something that may come in Handy. I switched to linux from windows an almost 18 months ago and I've never looked back. My reason for switching is a combination of many things. Firstly, i hate that microsoft telemetry collects your data without most of its userbase knowing it. Most people who know it hate it, but most are not willing to switch out because of thier software not working on other platform. In my case, i am also a data scientist, who mainly works with python and the tools i use are way faster and convinient than on windows. This along with Windows Updates eating up my disk space finally convinced me to switch. At this point, i'd like to mention that i've been dual booting Linux and i have used linux since 2011.

Things to keep in mind


1. Not all of your software and plugins works on linux

2. You might have a hard time choosing the distro you want to use.

3. Although most people do not mention this, but 90% of windows plugins work on linux via wine

4. There are some big plugin companies like U-he who offer native linux plugins

5. Your DAW might not work on Linux, which might be a deal breaker.

6. Terminal is your best friend, however you can do 99% of the task in GUI, Terminal is way faster once you know how to use it.

Choosing a distro

Most people have a hard time choosing what distro to use. The answer is very simple in my opinion - Use Ubuntu. Almost all companies and software that support Linux support Ubuntu and you'll get the best online support for any distro with ubuntu. You can use any ubuntu based distros like Linux Mint, elementaryOS, pop!OS as well. You can use ubuntu studio if you want most of the audio stuff preinstalled.

Here is a guide to install ubuntu - [How to Install Ubuntu 20.04 [Step by Step Beginner's Guide]](https://itsfoss.com/install-ubuntu/)

Software that you need

1. Wine - Wine is extremely useful, it'll allow you to run Windows software and plugins, increasing your linux plugin palette. Here are some DAWs that I've tested that work well with Wine.

1. Cakewalk by Bandlab

2. Akai MPC Beats

3. Ableton Live (Lite, but full version should work too)

4. FL Studio 20 (Works with minor bugs)

5. Windows version of Waveform (There is a native Linux version)


Studio One 5 was tested and it didn't work

2. Carla - Carla is a plugin host which has rack and modular environment. It is especially good because it supports a wide array of plugin formats, allowing you to make use of most linux plugins (ad windows via bridge). It mainly supports LV2, VST2, VST3, Windows VST2 and VST3, It also doubles up as a SF2 and SFZ player. Carla is also available as LV2 and VST2 plugin allowing you to use it in any DAW.

3. Jack - Jack is a low latency audio driver and a audio routing protocol for linux. Most audio programs in linux use Jack. It can be said as the equivalent to ASIO on linux but it offers a little more functionality. You can use Cadence, a more powerful way to manage Jack.

4. linvst - linvst creates a wrapper around a windows vst and you can use them in your native linux DAWs. An alternative to linvst is yabridge.

5. linvst3 - same as linvst but for vst3 plugins


Installing software - methods and formats

1. deb files - These are like your windows exe installers

2. sh files - These are shell scripts that can be executed using command line. U-He plugins are installed using shell script. It can be installed using two simple commands

1. chmod +x install.sh [chmod is used to change permission, +x gives permission to execute, install.sh is the filename]

2. ./install.sh [,/ is used to execute the script]

3. appimage - portable single click executable

4. flatpak and snap - these are containerized formats where an application is packed with its dependencies and runs in a sandboxed environment.


Commercial DAW offerings on Linux

1. Bitwig Studio

2. Waveform Pro

3. Harrison Mixbus

4. Reaper

5. ReNoise

6. Radium (Open Source)

7. Zrythm (Open Source)


Free DAWs for Linux

1. Waveform Free

2. LMMS

3. Ardour

4. Qtractor

5. MusE

6. Rosegarden

7. Audacity (Audio Editor)


DAWs that i have tested and work with wine (Wine Stable 5.0)

1. Cakewalk by Bandlab

2. Akai MPC Beats (Pro version is also expected to work)

3. Ableton Live (Tested Lite version)

4. FL Studio 20

5. Caustic 3

6. nanoStudio 1

7. MuLab


DAWs that DO NOT work with wine (Wine Stable 5.0)


1. Studio One 5 (Prime, but most probably all versions) [Does not load]

2. Reason 11 (Tested Version - Lite) [Loads, cannot access menu, makes sound, vst version cannot be bridged, offline authorization does not work, making it unusable]

3. SoundBridge [Does not load]

4. Pro Tools First [Has been consistently reported garbage in wine appDB]

5. Cubase [Requires hardware activation]

6. Mixcraft [Fails to load]
I'll be testing more soon

7. nTrack Studio [Fails to load]

Plugin Hosts
1. NanoHost

2. Carla

3. Element by Kushview

Sequencers
1. Muse

2. Seq24

3. Patroneo

4. Guadalupe

Misc
1. Hydrogen Drum Machine

2. Frinka

3. OrDrumBox

4. Fluajho

5. Fluidsynth

6. Yoshimi

7. Guitarix

8. Agordejo

9. Luppp

10. VCV Rack

Commercial Audio Plugins

1. U-He Plugins

2. TAL Plugins

3. Audio Damage Plugins (Not all)

4. Auburn Sounds Plugins

5. Audio Assault Plugins

6. discoDSP Plugins

7. Glitch 2

8. Inertia Sound System Plugins

9. Harrison Plugins

10. Tracktion Plugins

11. Loomer Plugins

12. Modern Metal Production plugins

13. Overtone DSP Plugins

14. Pianoteq Plugins

15. Redux by Renoise

16. SynthV Studio


Most windows vsts work with wine + linvst [or yabridge]. As long as they don't use ilok or similar copy protection, you have a good chance of getting it to work without any tweaks. Some popular plugins that are tested to work are Serum, Native Instruments Stuff, Synth1 etc.

Free Audio Plugins

There are a lot of plugins here to cover, some of the best ones are Vital, Helm, Surge, obxd, dexed, zynfusion, dragonfly reverbs etc.

Resources

1. Linux Musicians Forums - linuxmusicians.com/

2. This thread - viewtopic.php?f=16&t=160807

3. This list - http://linux-sound.org/linux-vst-plugins.html

4. This reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/

5. Reaper Linux Forums - https://forum.cockos.com/forumdisplay.php?f=52
Last edited by Paree on Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:21 pm, edited 13 times in total.
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Nice one.

I was dual booting Linux (and BSD) in the late 90s, lol. Not trying to outdo you here, btw - some time thereafter I went the way of Windows for many years, so forgot (and missed) a bunch of stuff in fact. Keeping up to date is key when it comes to computers, I hear.

Been getting into Linux once again lately though. It’s come a long way!

More hardware support (for interfaces, say) is another thing I’m particularly glad to see.

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Thanks for the kind words, I can't dispute the Linux seniority as I was just a small kid in late 90s. Linux has indeed come a long way since 2010.
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If anyone needs help setting up yabridge for using Windows VST2 plugins, then feel free to shoot me a message (or you can post on the issue tracker)!

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coolblinger wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 10:08 am If anyone needs help setting up yabridge for using Windows VST2 plugins, then feel free to shoot me a message (or you can post on the issue tracker)!
Thanks, more options are more than welcome, I might mess around it and try to write a tutorial. are there any plans of supporting vst3?
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Paree wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 10:19 am Thanks, more options are more than welcome, I might mess around it and try to write a tutorial. are there any plans of supporting vst3?
I want to support VST3, but I have not yet gotten around to it since it's going to cost a lot of time and effort as VST3 is completely different from VST2 (and also much more complex implementation wise). It's definitely on my list though since VST2 has technically been phased out since the end of 2018 and because there are no real VST3 bridges for Linux yet! With version 2.0.0 I've rewritten the way yabridge handles communication so that it is fully concurrent and can handle any situation you throw at it in the same way it would be handled when running the plugin under a regular Windows DAW running under Wine, which should allow for the best possible compatibility. That was something I've been wanting to do for a long time since that made it possible to get rid of all old workarounds that existed solely to provide compatibility. So now that that's done VST3 is the next thing on the list (but I don't have an ETA yet).

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Nice summary Paree.

I've been playing on and off with Linux, only really put off by a couple of ilok protected plugins I'd lose. And Reaktor authorisation sounds traumatic... :)

One thing I've never really got my head around is which folders to use for what. Things like Reaper which reside in just one, some pages say use usr, others oth etc...

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GaryG wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:16 pm One thing I've never really got my head around is which folders to use for what. Things like Reaper which reside in just one, some pages say use usr, others oth etc...
There's conventions to this, but if your desktop is not a multi-user machine, the importance of following those conventions becomes less important.

For instance, the /usr folder is for shared 'user' files. Say for the Reaper executable, so other users can access it. /opt is for 'optional' files, like test software; it's probably the most ambiguous. /etc is where configuration files and other system-wide files go.

Really though, you should be okay and never have to touch these areas of Linux. Unless, you're a power-user. In general, most everything can be done from within your /home/user folder. This includes installing and launching various optional software, like what's listed in the OP.
For instance, whenever Bitwig is doing betas, I'll download and unpack (un-compress) their .deb file and launch the executable from there. Reason being, there's no need to properly install the beta files to /usr and /opt for testing purposes.

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Thanks, I'll boot up my linux laptop and have a dig.

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GaryG wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:16 pm Nice summary Paree.

I've been playing on and off with Linux, only really put off by a couple of ilok protected plugins I'd lose. And Reaktor authorisation sounds traumatic... :)

One thing I've never really got my head around is which folders to use for what. Things like Reaper which reside in just one, some pages say use usr, others oth etc...
Native Access does work on Linux, so anything by NI is not really a problem. I can’t say anything about third party reaktor patches.

The Linux file system is a tree structure starting from root. Particularly types of files are stored i particular folders. Generally, you only need your home folder for most of the installation, especially for plugins and daws, Certain plugins (like surge) installs in /usr/lib/vst3. You just need to enable the paths in your daw to scan them.
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GaryG wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:16 pm Nice summary Paree.

I've been playing on and off with Linux, only really put off by a couple of ilok protected plugins I'd lose. And Reaktor authorisation sounds traumatic... :)

One thing I've never really got my head around is which folders to use for what. Things like Reaper which reside in just one, some pages say use usr, others oth etc...
Yes, more good info from Paree! I need to check out Caustic pretty soon.

I've been using Reaktor and Native Access for awhile. Once I get it setup, I stop 'upgrading' wine, and it's dependencies. So I have newer setups on external drives, like a Sabrent usb case that holds sata drives which are easy to slide in/out if needed. Costs around $30 worth of cheeseburgers and fries here.

My 'keeper' setup with Reaktor, Kontakt, SynthMasters, and IK products, is wine-staging 5.10, but I have others that are newest staging 5.21, and older 5.02 stable, and puppy linux with wine 4.1x...each offers specific things worth having and I backup the .wine folders periodically, as they hold most registration data, and can be re-used in many cases.

.wine/drive_c/users/GaryG/Downloads

This is where NI downloads their iso files, and usually report the download failed, when in reality, it finishes, but is not found their own iso loader software :hihi:

So we have to mount that iso, browse to that location, and run the NI installer from there. For example, download Monark, and issue these commands;

sudo mkdir /mnt/ni
cd /home/GaryG/.wine/drive_c/users/GaryG/Downloads/
sudo mount -t udf Monark.iso -o unhide /mnt/ni
cd /mnt/ni/
ls (to view the installer name now listed in ni)
wine "Monark 1.3.1 Setup PC.exe"

The latest Reaktor came as a standard zip file, so just an extraction
in place, no iso mounting, and run the wine command from that place:

cd /home/garyG/.wine/drive_c/users/GaryG/Downloads
ls
wine "Reaktor 6 6.3.2 Setup PC.exe"

When it's time for Native Access to appear, after doing a registration, I have to restart Native Access for the product to show up in the installed area. And Native Access checks for it's own updates when launched. If there is a failure, don't panic, just run NI's registry-clearing tool to remove old Native Access entries, and do a fresh install. The tool is provided at

https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... s-Windows-

(Lord, I pray, please please please don't let me get Komplete 13 Ultimate Super Duper Kollectors Krazy Extended Kustom Version for Christmas :dog: :hyper: )

Cheers

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Some important software repository links,
falkTX now maintains both wineasio and the jackd audio system, which have proven to be good teammates since he has eyes on the codes. For copy/paste instructions to add his kxstudio repositories, and current wine repositories to your
Ubuntu or Debian package managers, go to

https://kx.studio/Repositories

wine repos:

https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

https://wiki.winehq.org/Debian

Cheers

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Thanks @glokraw as always.
This is another great resource - https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio
Someday, I'll clone this thing and add more info.

I'll be testing a couple of VSTs and Reason DAW on wine.

I also intend to write guides to do common tasks for beginners like installing wine, etc.
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Another DAW for your to be tested / working list: MuTools' MuLab -- I've heard it works under Wine. Also worth checking MuTools' Mux VST. An-n-n-d... One I'm pretty sure doesn't work: Sforzando (which is annoying).

Does Kontakt itself work? Did I miss someone mentioning it?

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pljones wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 4:56 pm Another DAW for your to be tested / working list: MuTools' MuLab -- I've heard it works under Wine. Also worth checking MuTools' Mux VST. An-n-n-d... One I'm pretty sure doesn't work: Sforzando (which is annoying).

Does Kontakt itself work? Did I miss someone mentioning it?
Sforzando works fine for me with yabridge and Wine Staging 5.21 (also no issues when I tried it with older versions of Wine in the past, but I just tried it again just to make sure). Only weird thing is that when changing tabs it sometimes changes to the wrong tab, so you'll have to click around a few times. Kontakt also works mostly great. You will need to do a little bit of trickery to get the plugins to install (I have it documented here), and for best performance you will want to use a Wine build and kernel with Valve's fsync patches.

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